Seasons change, trends come and go, but one thing remains the same: email. Although social media and mobile are the hot marketing topics, email is a powerful tool for marketers. With more than 100 billion emails being sent every hour (MarketingProfs) and 28 percent of shoppers saying they want more (Exact Target), it’s no wonder that this tactic has remained at the top of the marketing pyramid. So, if you still think email is not an important piece of your marketing strategy, maybe you should rethink this!
According to Natasha Smith, Senior Editor at Direct Marketing News, the importance of email is about to grow even more as the year goes on. Companies need to not only keep up with email trends, but also stay ahead or even create them. Since 70 percent of people say they always open emails from their favorite companies (Exact Target), we can certainly see why so many of our clients trust us to relay their most essential and relevant news.
Email with eye-catching graphics, an easy to understand message and a clear call to action will help your target audience engage, take action and make purchases. When a prospect opens or interacts within an email, it lets the sender know they are interested in learning more about a particular product or service. Retargeting is a common email marketing practice used to reconnect with those who have already opened a company’s email once, and perhaps clicked on something within that email. Once those people have been indentified, another email is sent with more details or a promotional offer for that product. In order to compete with the daily deluge of information from other email marketers and to not bombard those who have already opened an email, retargeting can also be used across various other channels to further connect with the target audience.
Take Facebook ads, for example. Have you ever been shopping online for a new pair of shoes and, after hours of research, you finally narrow it down to the perfect pair? For one reason or another, you decide to not purchase the shoes. Later, you’re scrolling through your news feed and all of a sudden the exact shoes you were looking at appear in an ad for the company. Strange how that happens, right? Nope, that’s retargeting. Retargeting through email works the same way; you can find out exactly who is opening your emails, what emails people are responding to and the topics they are most interested in. You can then use that information to make even more specific lists to send better and more effective email that will most likely result in sales or lead generation.
If you have ever made a purchase in-store or online, chances are you were asked or required to provide an email address. Almost immediately, you received an email thanking you for subscribing; and then another one confirming your purchase; and then one with more products that might interest you. The list goes on and on, and the more you buy, the more you get. It doesn’t bother you though, because usually those emails contain special offers, pre-sales and new product announcements just for those lucky email subscribers.
Typically, there are three components of an effective email campaign: promotional, newsletters and auto-responders.
- Promotional. The goal of a promotional email, sent monthly or as needed, is to attract the attention of prospective customers with an offer or incentive to make a purchase. Recently, mRELEVANCE worked with client Essex Homes on a promotional campaign aimed to bring in new home sales and increase leads. Essex Homes offered home buyers a $5,000 incentive to use toward designer upgrades when they signed a contract with the home builder. The campaign was a huge success, resulting in 76 home sales in just two months!
- Newsletters. A monthly newsletter keeps current and future customers informed of specials and incentives, as well as positions your company as an expert. mRELEVANCE writes articles for our blog and then pulls this content into a MailChimp newsletter template via a special newsletter RSS feed. This process makes it easy to keep our monthly newsletter full of content and timely. Staying in front of your customers on a regular basis keeps your company top-of-mind and reminds buyers that your company is still one that should be considered for future services.
- Auto-responders. Creating an automatic system of auto-responders to follow-up system and keep in touch with prospects until they buy a product or opt-out of receiving further emails is an effective email marketing strategy. For client Rausch Coleman Homes, Marketing Relevance created a series of autoresponders for prospects who sign up on their “contact us” form. The series starts with a simple welcome letter that helps to set expectations for future emails and frequency, which is usually about 15 to 20 evergreen emails in a series. Out of 5,364 emails sent, the campaign saw an open rate of 45.8 percent; this is more than double the entire construction industry’s average open rate of 21.5 percent. The click rate was also way above the industry’s average of 1.6 percent at 10.4 percent. We’d say that’s a pretty successful email campaign, and that is only the beginning of the campaign!
High click and open rates are not only a sign of a successful campaign, but they are also indicative of a larger trend within the industry: opt-in versus purchased email lists. Because the recipients of Rausch Coleman’s emails signed up to receive them, it verifies that those people are interested in and trust the company, and believe that it has something valuable to say.
If you want to stay on trend and ahead of your competitors, Marketing Relevance can help you reach your target market and dedicated customers through email. For more information on Marketing Relevance and how we use email and a variety of marketing tactics to create client success, visit.