Chart of the Day: What is the most popular type of email marketing communication?
In email marketing, there are so many different ways to communicate with your client. But which are the most popular? And if they are popular, does that mean they are correct?
In today's chart, it is unsurprising that most use newsletters at 74%. This is a simple way of keeping clients up to date with news or content and has been an email marketing standard for many years. However, some simple additions to your communications strategy could make dramatic differences. For instance, having a multi-step automation for new subscribers/customers, reactivation emails and automated triggers through a client's lifecycle require a bit maintenance, but only 26%, 10% and 18% of the users surveyed actually use these in their strategy.
It's always good to know what others are doing in…
Chart of the Day: New Smart Insights research comparing how businesses manage their email marketing activities
Email marketing remains one of today’s core customer communications channels with analytics showing that, for most types of business, alongside search marketing, it is one of the main drivers of customer acquisition - for generating new online sales and leads. While the beauty of email marketing is that you can quickly start by sending promotional emails and newsletters, businesses will only get the full potential delivered by their email service providers they choose if they deploy marketing automation.
In a major, global research project with our partners GetResponse, Content Marketing Institute and Holistic Email Marketing, we were interested to see how many businesses are taking full advantage of email marketing capabilities. The free research report Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Excellence 2017 was published this week and included the views of over 2,500 marketers - thank…
Chart of the Day: We all know we should send targeted email marketing - so why aren't we?
"Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it."
― Agatha Christie
From being young we are given good advice like, "don't eat mud", "fire is hot" or "don't eat too many sweets". I don't know about you, but I still ate mud, burnt my finger and binged on sherbert. Now we are adults, we are still given advice and email marketing is no different. We know that targeted marketing has a better Return on Investment (ROI) and engagement rate, but why don't we all do it?
In the below chart, we see that a plurality of companies across almost all industries still have no targeting and everyone gets the same message. Publishing and media seem to be the worst, at 56%. Whereas Online Advertising Network has 28% using…
10 Delightful Email Design Trends to Flatter Your Subscribers
You've got mail! The design is quirky, colors bright and beautiful, and there’s an oh-so-amazing GIF. You love it at first sight!
Psychologists have researched to find out that we take 1/10th of a second to form an impression, and only a long term experience is capable of altering it.
So the point is… YOUR EMAILS MUST HAVE THE WOW FACTOR.
People love novelty, and more engaging the novelty, the merrier. Email marketers, the smart ones, have always gone with the flow, embracing new discoveries and paying heed to new age demands.
That's why I'm presenting some amazing email design trends that I feel will having a big impact this year.
Roll Out the Red Carpet for These Delightful Email Design Trends
Long live the GIF: How many GIF emails did we see in 2016? Countless. A GIF gives movement to a static image. And with…
Chart of the Day: What is the comparison of segmented vs non-segmented campaigns
Segmentation is an important tactic every email marketer should be using.
Firstly, what is list segmentation? List segmentation is when you segment (or split) your subscriber list based on your chosen criteria. E.g: if you want to only target clients in London, you would build your list, and instead of choosing everyone, you would only include those clients whose city was London. This means everyone outside of London wouldn't receive the email. You can make your list very specific and more relevant to your client (making sure that the email messaging reflects this, of course) but it will also make your dispatch list smaller. Segmentation is pretty standard with all Email Service Providers (ESPs) and they will have documentation of how to set them up for your campaigns.
In the below chart, the results are unsurprising. We…
1 to 1 dynamic content personalisation is the future of email marketing
I am a big fan of automation, a very big fan. Whenever you can, automate part of your email marketing process. While delivering timely, personalized and relevant content, automation is a big step forward in email marketing maturity of any program. So, the next big thing is Email Content Automation. Few email marketers are currently using it but it’s about to be the hottest trend – and a trend that’s here to stay.
Realistically a lot of production time goes into curating, copy-pasting and sorting content. Then there’s compliance and the multiple people who have to give their stamp of approval, checking details they shouldn’t be worrying about. It can take all your time just to manage and get “business as usual” email out of the door. Often that is a huge waste of creative power, time and resources. Wouldn’t…
Chart of the day: The biggest challenges for growing email list size include increasing sign-up rate and improving content
New research from Ascend2 found that improving email sign-up conversion rate and improving content quality and relevancy are both the biggest challenges for marketers when it comes to their email marketing list.
The research also found that improving list hygiene and reducing unsubscribe rates are also important.
Naturally, conversion rate increases are the biggest challenge but content is important to marketers, who realise that quality, relevancy and value of content is key to email marketing. It ultimately is what will encourage customers to interact with the brand.
Source: Ascend2 - Email List Growth Trends
Sample: 255 respondents split between B2B and B2C, most in a senior role (such as manager)
Recommended resource: Email Marketing Pre-Send checklist (Expert member resource)
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Chart of the Day: What challenges you when it comes to email marketing? Part 4 of 4.
For email marketers, there will always be aspects of email marketing that are a challenge. This is the fourth of my four part series pertaining to issues faced in email marketing.
Previous problems discussed during the course of the series:
Targeting & Segmenting
Subscriber list growth
Tracking results
Main email marketing goal.
The final point we want to discuss is "what is your main email marketing goal"? We need a end result to strive towards and this is best to decide in the very beginning of the campaigns. In the chart it shows brand-building (47%) and lead generation (42%) are very close. While lead nurturing (11%) is far down the priority list. When you are deciding on what to use as your goal, remember that it is specific to your company.
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Take note of these 5 tips for keeping your campaigns relevant to newer generations
A lot has been said about millennials. You know who I mean, you’ll have seen the definition a million times: those born between 1985 and 2000, the youngest of whom will not know what the back of a stamp tastes like, the generation for whom everything is Google'able and for whom there’s no lack of answers for life’s mysteries, big and small.
What makes this generation particularly interesting for marketing professionals is that, thanks to social media and cookies, this generation is easier to read, understand and know than generations past and, not only that, but they’ve been shown to be a more loyal group than their ancestors but, what about millennials and email? Is email still relevant?
Millennials and email
At Benchmark Email, we are particularly interested in…
Take the test to see what stage your email marketing is at
Email is an amazing marketing channel, and is consistently quoted by reputable sources as one of the best performing marketing channels for return on investment. In their Marketer Email Tracking Study 2017, the DMA found that for every pound spent, the average ROI from email marketing was £30.01. Email marketing has more users than Facebook and Twitter combined and results show that customers actually prefer to view marketing communications via email. Radicati write that that there is predicted to be over 2.9 billion users of email by 2019, which is over one-third of the population. As the digital world is constantly evolving, email marketers need to make sure that they are using the most innovative ideas and embracing change in order to succeed.
Your audiences are changing and your customers are more savvy than they ever were. They…
