Email marketing is probably one of the best ways to reach out to customers but because of the constant flood of messages competing for their attention, it’s hard to make sure your emails stand out.
For every click your email marketing campaign is not getting, it is one more sale lost. But there are several things you can do to make sure those emails are opened.
During a recent luncheon put on by the Hudson Valley Direct Marketing Association in Greenwich, CT, Reggie Brady, an email marketing consultant, Marty Donner, CRO of eWayDirect, and Cynthia O’Brien, director of Consumer Marketing & Operations at Consumer Reports, compiled a list of “45 Things You Didn’t Know About eMail Marketing.”
Here are just some of the key takeaways:
Use your Facebook presence to encourage email sign ups. According to Brady, O’Brien and Donner, a perfect example of how to use Facebook when fishing for sign-ups would be the show retailer Crocs, who decided to embed an email sign up directly on their fan page. This campaign not only gave them the names and emails of all their “fans” but by including a 20% off welcome coupon after signup, they were able to create a prospective client. It turns out this move helps Crocs convert over 2,000 Facebook fans to email subscribers every week.
Personalize and speak to the customer as specifically as possible. When someone supplies you with their email address, it usually means that they are interested in your product and will, for the most part, shop with you again. Try to send emails that reach out to your customer in a more personalize way such as placing “Jack, We Want Your Back” in the subject line.
Watch out for the fat finger syndrome. Always remember that no two email marketing campaigns are alike and the ways your readers open their emails could change on a daily or even hourly basis. One minute they could be reading an email on their work laptop and an hour later they are checking their email on their smartphone, therefore not all links will work efficiently with their fingers, this is known as the fat finger syndrome. To conquer this, send out marketing emails that allow for switching views to mobile sites, this way a reader is more likely to click the links they know their fingers can handle.
Wake up your inactives. Reach out to those who haven’t had an active presence on your site but remember the definition of inactive can change within each ecommerce site. Some companies look at inactives as people who haven’t shopped in 6 months while some think an inactive user is someone who haven’t logged on to your site in 18 months. However your company defines them, the point is to check up on them via email and make sure their information and their interests are still accurate.
Review emails in preview pane mode. Do you know what your email looks like sitting in an inbox? Do you know the different between an email sent in Gmail versus an email sent in Outlook? If not, your better start! As Brady, O’Brien and Donner pointed out, some statistics show that about 25% of desktop traffic reads emails in preview pane mode only. Emails come in all different types of layouts depending on the service your client is using, because of that, make sure all your important information and calls to action are visible in the preview pane of the email.
Erin Lynch
is an associate editor for Multichannel Merchant. You can connect with her on
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@LynchMCM
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or calling her at 203-358-3755.