Are we facing mighty changes in email marketing? Is that true that email marketing is fading away or it’s just ominous rumors? Even though some insiders claim that email marketing has known better days, the mail merge remains to be a powerful informational channel.
Some studies of western experts showed that today messengers allow delivering various ads and offers directly to the eyes of users and set a friendly contact popping up amid chats with friends or family.
Meanwhile, users declare that their messenger apps remind garbage cans where it’s hard to find chats with their siblings. So maybe emails are more convenient for business offers, and it’s not high time to say goodbye to email marketing?
Stats will be more solid evidence of what’s going on de facto.
- According to Pew Research, about 92% of online users prefer email, and 60% said that emails are crucial in the working processes.
- The Forester Research admitted that 90% of email letters get to the targeted inboxes, while only 2% of Facebook users will be able to see the company’s posts in their newsfeed.
- Statista stated that in 2021 it’s expected to see the growth of email users to 4.1 billion.
The value of email marketing in 2021
In fact, there are no precise indicators that would show the non-effectiveness of email marketing. As a stand-alone tool, it reaches out to certain audiences. Therefore, in 2021 as well as in 2020 marketers are still going to include mailout and search for new approaches to hook attention. Plus, we prepared several strong arguments on behalf of emails. Please, read below.
- Personalization and hyper-segmentation
The purpose of the text in your letter is to inform and spark interest. Think about the person who will open your message. What are the main needs, passions, concerns, and struggles of the recipient? Count on these factors to prove that your solution coincides with their requests. Providing an advanced segmentation allows sorting out customers by common criteria – age, gender, ethnicity, location, language, and clear-cut criteria that reflect habits of users’ online activity. You can learn search requests, product choice, completed purchases, and favorite categories to make a relevant offer. Track the time of engagement, device type, recent shopping activity, and whether the emails were opened and read. When the data is collected, you get higher chances to get into the limelight.
Benefits of hyper-segmentation:
- Emails will get the inboxes in primetime.
- Customized offers that resonate with users’ requests.
- Compliance with local privacy protection.
- Adjusting promo banners for screen parameters of the device.
- Offering products that are still wanted and not bought yet.
- Reactivation of neutral or passive customers.
- VIP prospects and cold lists warm up.
Essentially, the success of perfect email depends on awareness and good drill about your target. These arrangements will positively work to reduce subscription canceling and Click Rate growth. Plus, there is a chance to break some psychological barriers between a seller and a customer when you know each other closer. Trust-based and respectful cooperation can give a fuel to build long-term mutual gain. However, it’s highly important to check all the data you use to avoid mistakes that can simply spoil the reputation of your company and lose customers. Find services and formulas for ESP checking, or revise data manually with small bases. Don’t push on customers and don’t encourage them to buy in an aggressive manner. Make it a non-salesy catching letter where you state the benefits of your project/product/service.
- Duration
Information is in-demand until users are interested in it or the offer is active, thus every letter has its expiration date as soon as the information is irrelevant. For instance, push-notifications have a mechanism such as TTL (Time to live) where you can set limits of data lifetime while a user can see it.
But, when you have a certain event, holiday, or a significant upcoming business project an email campaign will be a great way to inform customers in advance. By this, email lives longer and users have time for ordering and purchasing. Also, email achievers can dispose of it as they please – redirect, reopen, put a mark, postpone, put it in a folder, and so on.
- Automation
Emails are still irreplaceable because they provide ease-of-use and swift interaction in any system. Except for ads-related messages, send by the company initiative, emails deliver system data upon the user request. Talking about various automated confirmation letters:
- Welcome and onboarding letters after the signup.
- Purchasing and transactions’ status messages.
- Reminding reports when ending the subscription.
- Customized reports with stats and featured offers.
Suchlike mails are handy for both sides to track processes. Customers get step-by-step info and the marketers don’t spend extra work resources for handling routine tasks. Moreover, the email correspondence displays the entire history with all the shopping actions, customer status, bonuses, events, and anniversaries.
Spam avoiding tactics
Email marketing includes risks and pains as well. Ask any marketer about his fears and each will state that spam is the key enemy for any campaign. Email services regularly update and improve filters to identify and disable spam segment. Nevertheless, there are cases when important letters are classified as junk ones by a mistake. Let’s figure out the rules of the spam game.
Spamming is the massive sending of unwanted letters by email to the list of recipients for commercial purposes. In the internet society, it is considered unethical actions and can be malicious for users because the source of gate-out can be scammy or even include some harmful viruses. So, when someone buys a base of email addresses and starts flooding inboxes with commercial pitch – it is spam.
But, unfortunately, when a customer took actions towards some goods on your platform, the system configurations can send more info in the future, even if the purchase is completed, it can also be considered spam. Quick reaction on tendencies and tools’ upgrade can help saving the number of clientele and income in general.
- Permissive marketing approach
People got used to the fact that commercial interrupts our lives through TV screens, radio, from banners in public transport and in the streets, pops up and blinks on webpages, breaks in our videos and apps. All those attractive promo objects surround us everywhere and at all events – we consume these messages.
Nowadays is a new era where each buyer is an individual. A seller must highlight personal needs in every pitch to call a friendly interaction and, of course, ask permission for sending promo materials. In case the user subscribed for notifications, marketers should insert the name of a person and all the preferences to convert a lead into sales. Making the offer more precise and personalized aims to guard an email campaign against getting into a spam folder.
Visual and psychological insights to attract subscription:
- Succinct enrollment forms. Express respect for the user’s personal time. No one would like to spend much time filling 10-20 points. Make it short and clear.
- Attractive graphic design with lines and symbols in the form that will easily lead a user to the finish point.
- Discount and bonus as a welcome gift to engage new users or perk up existing ones to grow loyalty amid clients.
- Extended information or the offer details can be placed in the personal account, so users open it if needed without spending time reading tons of useless info.
- Clarify which type of correspondence prospects will receive in case they tap “agree” to allow mailing from your company.
- Privacy policy link should be placed within a reach to express your liability and plain dealing. This is the way you can protect your good name.
- Safe emailing
Spam is not your story, right? You scrape around to find patterns of high-quality content to create your texts and feed good history with an audience? That’s why you are reading this and always searching for fresh tips.
Include the Double Opt-In process. It is yet the best practice for numerous marketers. By this, the user leaves email in the registration form and next confirms the desire to get more info from the company via the link in the email. It helps to protect from spam marking, boosting conversions, and having an organic base of email addresses. As a marketer, it’s better for you to save all the agreements if any vexed questions appear. Surely, this is a double gain as you can work with people who really get into your product as they interacted with your message and you are able to clean up the contact base to continue working only with ‘’warm” and active clients.
The Unsubscribe button will be another piece of evidence that you have nothing in common with spam. Users have to see that they are free to cancel subscription anytime. Make this function reachable and place it in plain view for both – desktop and mobile versions. We all hate spam for the inability to unplug it and complain of unwanted mailing.
- Firstly the Name
Emails are part of your business routine, so make sure all the correspondence is carried on through a unique domain. Set up authentication configurations with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC techniques. This trio will protect your domain name.
DKIM – standard cryptographic security method to detect email spoofing. Create a digital signature, so that receiver’s server could check it and verify that the email wasn’t altered during transit by the third parties.
SPF technique is used to authenticate the domain of a sender and to hedge your emailing from spammers’ interruption. Insert a list of IP addresses in the SPF line that are allowed to use your domain.
DMARC is a DNS TXT record that is based on SPF and DKIM specifications. It sets a verification policy to check the incoming emails and whether the email was sent from the original domain.
- Subject line matters!
Don’t talk in circles when you write to your clients. Make it easy to understand why you are addressing a person. The subject line is meant to briefly explain what’s inside of the letter. It is not clickbait as there is a risk to get the spam mark instead of a large number of conversions. People can take offense if they get a pig in a poke and block you with a spam button.
Over sophisticated topic or entangled thesis can be considered as something deceitful and damage your reputation. Another mega-important nuance you should know is the trigger spam words. If the system fetches them out, your emails will be flagged as spam.
Blacklist of spam trigger words:
- Free/Free trial/Free gift/Free grant money
- Bonus/Prize
- 100%
- Click now/Call now/Order now/Act now
- Best price
- Limited time/Once in a lifetime
- Buy/Buy now/Buy today
- Exclusive deal
- Expire/Offer expires
- Do it today
- Now only/Instant/Urgent
- Get it now/ Get started now
- Special promotion
- While stocks last
- Guarantee/Satisfaction guaranteed
- Cheap
- Giving away
- Get out of debt
- Join millions/Opportunity/Friend
- No experience/No catch/No strings attached/No purchase necessary
Apparently, you came across those much promising subject lines that scream with unique chances, lucky occasions, and unique offerings which are the hottest and available only here and now. But in reality a soap bubble or cheating.
To avoid getting into trouble, learn these dangerous email words because one single word can bring real double trouble, especially for the newly created domains. Plus, you’ll have to spend extra time fixing the mess.
- Pick the right time
It’s 3 a.m. and your smartphone is starting to alarm with notifications, you wake up for that reason and not able to fall asleep until the morning. What can happen? A slight longing for revenge for the dream interruption can make you press “spam”.
As so, know your customer’s time frames and send them emails when they are enthusiastic about checking correspondence. Most leading ESPs have a handy function to set up a business time for sending out letters.
Conclusion
As things go, email marketing has no symptoms of being called dead. It remains a powerful tool for engaging wide audiences and a way to deliver worthy information about your business activity straight to the final user or the prospects. Social media on its part can’t grant such precise coverage. According to the eMarketer researches, about 81.5% of retailers stated that emailing is more effective in acquiring new users, and the likelihood of getting click-through is higher. The 72% of surveyed also claimed that promo materials are better to be received via email than in the newsfeed of social media app. The success of the email campaign is in direct ratio to the content you perform, recent trends you follow, and the rules you abide by.