How To Boost Engagement With Your Email Marketing
If your business isn’t utilizing email marketing, you’re already missing out on one of your most lucrative segments of highly qualified and brand loyal customers. Think about it, these are guests who have stayed at your property before or opted in to hear what you have to say. However, often times businesses are faced with the daunting reality of designing, developing and launching email campaigns that have low engagement and, therefore, low returns. If email marketing is so important, then how do businesses ensure that their campaigns are engaging and effective?
SEGMENTATION
All great email campaigns start with your email lists. Who are you sending your emails to? Are you segmenting your lists to personalize and target potential customers correctly? The number one rule of marketing is to know and speak to your customers, and segmenting is an effective way of making sure that the right message gets to the right customer at the right time. Asking yourself “Who are we targeting and what would interest them” before designing a campaign is a surefire way to kick off on the right foot. You can segment email lists based on many things including demographics, interests/behaviors, or even their position in the conversion funnel. The more relevant the message is to a customer, the more likely they are to engage with it. Segmenting correctly can increase open rates, click-through rates, and conversions while decreasing unsubscribes and avoiding spam filters. Below is a graphic (See: Effects of List Segmentation on Email Marketing Stats) of how list segmentation impacted global marketing stats for Mailchimp:
Related GComm case study: https://bit.ly/2lReOjP
Image: https://stocksnap.io/photo/YK0PRWX6MC (Business)
Related Graphic: https://bit.ly/2lQ4Ujo
DELIVER GREAT CONTENT
Now that we’ve answered the first question: “Who are we targeting?” the follow-up is “What do they care about?” The whole point of segmenting is to get the right message to the right person, so what is the right message? Understanding your segments is key to sending the right information. For instance, are you targeting business or leisure travelers? Business travelers might be interested in conference rooms, technological capabilities, or app-based concierge services that can cut down on time while leisure travelers may be more interested in local “insider” information on your hotel’s locale or new services or amenities. Again, relevancy is key, and customers only care about what you have to say if it will directly affect their experience with your brand.
While creating great content is a starting point, make sure that whatever great content you’re creating shines through in your subject line as well. According to Hubspot, 33% of email recipients decide whether or not to open an email solely based on the subject line. Keep it short, sweet, and simple while still keeping it personal by teasing what’s inside without giving it away. You can use online subject line testers that can give you performance estimates based on keywords. Utilize these services to make sure that your customers are getting what they want in your email marketing campaigns.
Related GComm Case Study: https://bit.ly/2kylD8V
Image: https://stocksnap.io/photo/7GJLOO70WH (Exploration)
Alt Image: https://stocksnap.io/photo/XKJDEWN1B6 (Local)
MOBILE FRIENDLINESS
Instead of reiterating, possibly for the 100th time, how important mobile is in today’s digital marketing, I’m going to leave you with one statistic from Litmus: 54% of all email was opened on a mobile device as of March 2016. So how exactly do we cater to these mobile email users that make up over half of your list? The first step is to ensure that your email template is mobile responsive. Nothing is more annoying than getting an email built only for a desktop and having to zoom in and out to read and click links. Most email clients offer mobile responsive pre-built templates to make your life easier, but if you’re custom designing a template, be sure that its mobile user experience is functional and seamless. Other tips include utilizing one column layouts, limiting clutter by keeping copy simple, short and to the point, and a personal favorite: use buttons for your call-to-actions. Text links are a thing of the past, having to zoom in and tap on a single word or phrase is time-consuming and off-putting for mobile consumers, it’s also visually disconnecting. The better and more simple option is to use buttons for your primary links, and noticeably long text for your secondary links. Constant Contact reported click-through rates of up to 30% just by using a button for their primary CTA. However, buttons alone aren’t enough, be sure to stay creative when designing your call-to-actions avoiding friction phrases such as “book now” or “sign up” that can turn a reader off to clicking. (See: Most Emails Are Opened On Mobile Devices)
Image: https://stocksnap.io/photo/67AWU2C0IR
SUMMARY
Email lists are one of a business’s greatest assets, providing easy access to brand loyal customers that have the potential for high return. Boosting engagement is key to email marketing success, and leveraging segmentation, great content, and mobile friendliness can help make sure that what you have to share is relevant and engaging for customers. When designing an email campaign, always be sure to ask yourself “Who am I targeting and what interests them?” to get in the right mindset for delivering the right message to the right customer, at the right time.
