Email Marketing Is More Critical In 2021 To Increase Profits

Featured Image with email icon and title: Email marketing strategy improves relationship marketing

Are you wondering how to grow your business by implementing a better email marketing strategy? Maybe you've heard about email marketing and all its benefits, but you're curious about how you can use it to grow your brand. Email marketing has proven time and again that it's a powerful communication strategy - and it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

If you’re ready to take your email marketing to the next level, read on to discover what a successful strategy entails, why email marketing is so appealing, and how to achieve results in today's competitive market.

Studies show that 4.1 Billion users will actively participate in email by the end of 2021. While some may view email marketing as a waste of time because of their own experiences with spam or poor content, taking a closer look at email marketing reveals data proves that doesn’t have to be the case.

Many people look forward to reading their emails. Think about the updates, product announcements, and emails that hit your inbox that you can't wait to open. These are the emails that never get lost in your inbox - the ones that you open and engage with consistently.

We all like to save 15% on our purchases and hear the latest advancements in technology, science, products, and educational resources from experts who create great content. Are you ready to create the kind of captivating emails your readers look forward to opening? Keep reading.

We'll be covering:

Why is email marketing is important
How email marketing is cost-effective and has one of the highest ROIs
How email connects your marketing channels for a cohesive customer journey
How email marketing generates personalized and custom experiences increases engagement, and deepens brand awareness with leads, new customers, and returning customers
How to use email marketing to gain valuable customer data for more intentional and meaningful customer engagement
How to utilize automation to enhance your email marketing strategies

Why Is Email Marketing Important?

1. Email Creates an Engagaing Customer Experience

Chances are you already have a call-to-action somewhere on your site, but how is the user experience when someone clicks through?

Are you taking every opportunity to create engaging copy, design and relatable content? Do you have a “getting started” series promoting your products and services by inviting your prospect to learn more about your business, offerings, and company from a new user's perspective? Have you set up a dialogue to get the attention of users who abandoned their cart at the last second?

It’s not uncommon for a potential customer to forget to click "pay" or get distracted before completing a purchase. The average abandoned cart rate is nearly 80% across all industries.

The good news? With an email strategy in place, a third of those abandoned carts turn into purchases.

This means follow-through is essential. Don't miss the opportunity to engage with users who abandoned their cart or engage new leads through email automation.

According to Omnisend, a series of emails works 63% better than a single email for abandoned cart emails. For an abandoned cart workflow, try structuring emails in 3 steps:

Email 1: Cart reminder (sent a few hours after cart abandonment)
Email 2: Follow up (sent a few days later)
Email 3: Promotional discount (sent a few days after email two)

Email automation converts missed opportunities into more robust customer relationships with an increased potential for conversions. With a 50% conversion rate on all clicks back to your website, the effort will be well worth it.

You may think new customers will bring the highest return on investment, but in reality, returning customers are often the most significant source of revenue. A customer who has already purchased from your brand and had a positive experience is more likely to buy from you again.

How do you continue to foster that relationship and keep your customers on the journey to satisfaction and brand loyalty?

Start with the basics

Cart abandonment recovery
Promote new products or product discounts
Systematically introduce new customers to your brand's meaning, mission, and purpose (drip campaigns)
Personalize emails based on the customer journey (segmentation)
Time your email schedule for maximum open rates

By utilizing email marketing and automation, you can develop the infrastructure to create engaging experiences throughout the customer's journey, leading to more traffic, interest, and brand loyalty.

Email Builds Trust With Personalization

Personalization increases your return on investment, engages customers in a more meaningful way, and allows you to be more agile in your email marketing tactics.

71% of consumers say a personalized experience would influence their decision to open and read a business’s emails.

Utilizing personalization tokens to create what feels like a one-to-one experience should be a standardized practice, and means more than simply addressing your readers by name.

For example, say you receive an email from Netflix that says "We just added a new series you might like." They know what you’re interested in because they have the data on the shows you typically watch and can then create a customized experience.

Inside the email is even more personalized information. It's a 99% match to shows you have watched in the past. Talk about a personalized experience.

Take things one step further to becoming more intentional with your email marketing efforts — start segmenting your contact list based on specific contact properties or actions your customers have taken.

For example, many CRM's give you the ability to track page views. If a contact is viewing a page multiple times, there's a high probability they are interested in that product or service. You can create an automation to follow up with them and give them a personalized experience and further increase your effectiveness.

Here are steps you can take to engage those contacts through automation:

Create a database using the number of page URL views as criteria
Build a follow-up email automation series
Create if/then branches based on email engagement, actions outside email engagement or un-engagement

3. Email Marketing Has a High Return on Investment

Marketing budgets are seemingly exponential, and the need to maximize your marketing dollars has never been more significant.

When you look at paid advertising and realize the money that goes into those marketing campaigns, email marketing proves to be one of the most cost-effective marketing tactics.

A joint study from Shop.org and Forrester Research found that 85% of US retailers already recognize email marketing as one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics, especially for start-ups and small business owners (SMBs). In fact, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is 122%.

As you establish more personalized relationships with your contacts, engagement will increase with conversion rates, simultaneously decreasing the cost per email.

Don't be fooled, however: crafting an effective email marketing strategy with captivating content takes research, revisions, and a deep understanding of your audience.

4. Understand Your Customer Better Through A / B Testing

A/B testing and email marketing go hand-in-hand. By harnessing the power of customer data, you can better understand exactly how your target customer will respond to your emails or how they might take action in the future.

You may not realize it, but your personal inbox is a part of an extensive marketing study (depending on who you use as your email provider). Our inbox activities are monitored and analyzed, and your habits are deciding what goes to your personal inbox rather than the social or promotions tab.

To make the most out of your email marketing strategy, ask yourself these questions:

Does having emojis in your subject line improve your open rates?
Which is better: HTML or plain-text emails?
Does having more or fewer images/graphics increase or decrease subscribe rates?
What's the best time to send emails?
Which send-from address should you use? Does that matter?

These are the types of insights a conventional A/B will provide.

If you start testing and feel like you're not getting the results you deserve, don’t get discouraged: as many as 60% of the tests you run may not return the ideal results. Think of each test as an opportunity for growth.

For example, if you use emojis in emails and your open rate doesn't change, you know your readers don’t care about emojis and can make adjustments accordingly.

Consider another scenario: maybe 60% of your customers open your emails on mobile, and your click-through rates don't do so well with long-form content. Use that information to give your subscribers what they want: clear and concise actionable information.

Every "failed" test is an opportunity to learn what your readers are interested in and to use this information to make informed marketing decisions. The caveat is that each customer base is different, and you will only find out what works best for your unique audience through testing.

Even when you find that magical method to increase click-through rates and you seem to have reached the apex of your email marketing strategy, don't stop analyzing your results. What your customers love now may not be what they want to see in the future, and consistently testing new ideas can ensure you're prepared to stay in touch with your reader’s wants and needs.

The customer data you collect through your testing efforts will help you learn how to stay top-of-mind, create engaging content, and increase your ROI.

Integrate A/B testing into your email marketing campaign, and watch your results skyrocket

Crafting a Customer Journey With Integrated Marketing

Employing an integrated marketing strategy with email marketing as the core avenue throughout your marketing channels is highly effective. What's the point in paying top dollar for paid advertising to capture leads if you have no follow-up strategy?

While other marketing tactics ensure you're reaching a vast and broad audience—when your target audience finally emerges from social media, SEO and content marketing, you need to be ready to keep them engaged with your company rather than your competitors.

Once your prospective customer clicks the call to action, fostering that engagement and following up with valuable information is critical. Creating emails that direct them to specific pages on your website with helpful information can be key to their conversion.

Take these statistics into consideration:

Organic reach is around 4x higher on email than on social media
Marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue
Click-through rates are 100.95% higher in segmented email campaigns than non-segmented campaigns

Email marketing gives you the ability to create a marketing system that interplays perfectly with all the other marketing tactics. It's the most effective way to engage with your audience on a personalized level directly. Often, the point of different marketing tactics is to get into your prospective customer's email inbox and keep your business top of mind while providing your readers with valuable, easy to digest content. Ultimately this tactic encourages their belief in your brand and creates loyal and appreciative brand advocates.

When used consistently, email can become one of your most impactful marketing channels.

Why You MUST Optimize for Mobile

According to Google, mobile users check email 3x more than on other devices, and 70% of people read email on a mobile app. Statistics show that users are engaging with the web and email via their mobile devices more than ever.

If you're not already optimizing for mobile, you’re missing out on an incredible marketing opportunity.

What does it mean to optimize for mobile?

Someone opening your email will decide quickly whether or not it is a mobile-friendly experience, meaning your email marketing strategy could hinge on the user's device preference.

Your content can be informative and engaging, but if the user doesn't find your experience mobile-friendly, they will quickly disengage and potentially mark your email as spam. The next thing you know, your email marketing efforts are wasted.

What can you do to improve email for mobile responsiveness?

Add alt text
Properly size images
Use large buttons instead of links for CTAs
Format text and images evenly
Make sure you're using a responsive template

Summary:

Email can be a potent channel with higher accessibility than social media channels. By keeping responsive design practices in mind and coupling them with a strategic email marketing campaign, you're sure to see fast results.

While there are many ways to start an email marketing campaign, the most important thing to remember is to treat your subscribers like real people. They will notice and be grateful for the effort you put in. You can achieve all of your email marketing goals if you keep this top-of-mind in every automation, funnel, and subject line.

At BeNatural Marketing, our knowledgeable, responsive and creative team specializes in helping our clients make the most out of a holistic marketing approach. If you’re ready to grow your business with custom marketing solutions, connect with us today.