Whether you're holding an exciting promotion or want to inform subscribers of a new product launch, email marketing is a great way to spread the message. Growing your email list is important to stay in touch with customers, market content and build your business.
Email marketing has a high return on investment. Every $1 spent on email marketing, delivers a $43 ROI. With more than 3.8 billion email users worldwide, it's the most prominent marketing channel businesses use to connect with their audience. If you're neglecting this sector of your marketing strategy, you're missing out on expanding your brand and achieving your goals.
You want your email campaign to reach as far and wide as possible so it targets the right users, gets its message across and produces conversions. Without a proper strategy, however, this is quite difficult to do.
Among some of the key ways you can boost your email campaign's performance are by:
- Grabbing users' attention so they sign up for your email list
- Optimizing your messages for mobile users
- Using proper formatting
- Creating calls to action that stand out
- Monitoring your campaign's performance
Here are more details on each strategy.
1. Grab users' attention
Before you get tons of eyes on your email campaign, you first need to convince visitors to join your email list. For new visitors especially, this is no easy task. People know what they like, and if your brand can't convince them to hand over their information, then it's back to the drawing board.
A good way to capture visitors' attention is by using lightbox popups to collect their information. As users browse your website and consume its content, a popup opt-in appears asking for their email address. When they sign up, you now have a new subscriber who's invested in your brand. You are then able to move them down the conversion funnel. Lightbox pop-ups can increase your campaign's conversions by 25%, so they're worth looking into.
One way to grab the attention of those visiting your website is attention by incentivizing your opt-in form. If you offer them something of value, such as a lead magnet, it piques their interest and encourages them to sign up. This could be e-books, templates, checklists or whitepapers. Make sure the offer aligns with your target audience so you know it's content they want to have. If not, you won't see a difference in the number of subscribers you have.
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2. Optimize for mobile
Google introduced mobile-first indexing in 2018, and ever since, marketers have put extra importance on optimizing for mobile users. Google ranks content based on its ease of use on nondesktop devices. So, if you aren't creating emails with mobile in mind, you're losing potential traffic.
Research shows that more than half of all online traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices. People choose their smartphones over their desktop computers to perform most online tasks, and that includes checking their email. If you fail to optimize campaigns for mobile users, your email list will shrink and your unsubscribe rate will increase.
When someone opens your email on their phone, it needs to be easy to consume. All text and visual content should properly fit the screen and be easy to navigate. Use a clean, responsive template that works for mobile devices or use formatting that meets subscribers' standards. Keep your copy concise. People on mobile have even less patience than those on desktop, so keep that in mind when creating your emails.
Use a mobile-friendly, responsive contact form that's easy for users to fill out. If you ask for too much information, such as providing an excessive amount of form fields, you could see conversions drop by 81%.
3. Use proper formatting
If your emails don't provide a smooth user experience for its recipients, it'll prove challenging to build your email list and have a successful campaign. We've all had the unfortunate experience of opening a brand's email only for images not to show up properly and text that's difficult to read.
The more difficult it is for users to digest your email content, the higher your unsubscribe rate will be. You don't want your brand to be part of this bunch.
It’s crucial to use email-friendly formatting so your subscribers don't struggle to get through your emails. This type of formatting includes:
- Splitting up paragraphs of text
- Including visual content
- Keeping copy concise and straightforward
- Easily noticeable calls to actions
- Plenty of whitespaces
Pay attention to the subject line. This is the first bit of text your subscribers see before deciding what to do with your email. Around 34% of users say an email's subject line determines whether they'll open it or not. Depending on how you construct it, it could be what sends you to the trash bin or makes you the recipient's favorite. On average, subject lines have around 43 characters total, so make sure to keep it to 60 or less for the best open rates.
4. Create CTAs that pop
The call to action is the star of your email campaign. It tells subscribers what action to take and drives conversions back to your website. You should always assume your visitors don't know what to do next and use CTAs to lead the way. The more they pop, the better chances they have of converting.
For email subscribers, especially those on mobile devices, your CTA needs to be front and center. If it's at all difficult to locate, it needs a redesign, so be sure to keep it above the fold. Studies say different things about what colors to use for CTA buttons and text. However, the main takeaway is that your button should have a stark contrast to its background so it pops and is easy for subscribers to locate. Consider your branding and its color scheme when creating your CTA.
Place CTA buttons near text that talks about the offer. Because we read from left to right and top to bottom, our eyes naturally gravitate towards content at the bottom and righthand side. These are optimal places to put a CTA because they're easy for users to locate.
5. Monitor its progress
One campaign can teach you a lot about the dos and don'ts of email marketing. It's important to pay attention to those signs so you bring in even more conversions and avoid doing all the wrong things for the next campaign.
Pay attention to the following metrics when monitoring your campaign's analytics:
- Open rate: This is how many subscribers opened your email
- Clickthrough rate: This is how many subscribers clicked links within the email
- Conversion rate: This is how many subscribers took the action you wanted them to, such as clicking the CTA button
- Bounce rate: This is how many emails didn't deliver to the recipients' inboxes due to their server or a non-existent email address
- ROI: This is the return on investment for your campaign.
- Unsubscribe rate: This is how many users unsubscribed from your campaign after receiving an email
Tracking your analytics helps you determine why your emails are successful or why they fail, so it's a must to pay attention to every campaign.
It's crucial to pay special attention to your email marketing so you can boost conversions, grow your email list, generate sales and more. Email provides direct communication between you and your target audience. If you neglect it, you fail to cater to a huge portion of customers where you can boost your marketing efforts and grow your brand.