How many of these 5 practical and easy-to-use engagement tools are you already using?
One of the main questions I get asked is about how to more effectively engage in email marketing. The inbox is a very competitive place so you need to stand out, be interesting and be relevant but, although we all know this in theory, the execution often seems to get lost somewhere along the way.
In fact, I still see the majority of campaigns get sent out with very little, or no tailoring of content and I can still sign up to a retail outlet, for example, and give my age, gender and preferences and not see any evidence of this information being used in the campaigns received. This happens in companies big and small and across all industries so, I ask myself, is this because people just don’t know the engagement tools available to them? Do they…
Chart of the Day: What challenges you when it comes to email marketing? Part 3 of 4.
For email marketers, there will always be aspects of email marketing that are a challenge. This is the third of my four part series pertaining to issues faced in email marketing.
We will be looking at the following during the course of the series:
Targeting & Segmenting
Subscriber list growth
Tracking results
Main email marketing goal.
The third challenge in the series is "Tracking results". Tracking results isn't necessarily the issue, but knowing what to track is. Having the correct Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is extremely important because you need to know if your campaign has performed well. But metrics vary from business to business.
In the chart, we see that the Subscriber list growth is the highest metric tracked at 25% and on the other end of the spectrum is the open rates…
Chart of the Day: How often do Americans open and send emails per day?
The American worker spends a lot of time checking their email. All across the country people are spending large blocks of their workday in their inbox. But what exactly does the typical American inbox at work look like?
Email marketing company Reachmail surveyed one thousand American workers who consider email significant to their job. The survey focused on 4 core areas relating to email use at work:
How often American’s are checking their email at work
How many emails they send per day
How quickly that they respond to emails
How many emails are unread in a typical inbox
The goal of the survey was to get a better look at how American’s deal with email while at work. As a result of the survey, they discovered several interesting trends.
Checking Email
The survey found that 54% of Americans check…
Chart of the Day: What challenges you when it comes to email marketing? Part 2 of 4.
For email marketers, there will always be aspects of email marketing that are a challenge. The below chart looks at the various areas that email marketers are struggling with. I will be doing a 4 part series of issues pertaining to email marketing.
We will be looking at the following during the course of the series:
Targeting & Segmenting
Subscriber list growth
Tracking results
Main email marketing goal.
The second challenge in the series is "Subscriber list growth". Organically grown subscriber lists are challenging and it takes time to expand them. But having a large list isn't everything, you need to make sure it's an engaging list. Meaning clients trust your brand, open your email and ultimately click on the content that is relevant to them.
How do I grow a subscriber list?
In…
Chart of the Day: What challenges you when it comes to email marketing? Part 1 of 4.
For email marketers, there will always be aspects of email marketing that are a challenge. The below chart looks at the various areas that email marketers are struggling with. I will be doing a 4 part series of issues pertaining to email marketing.
We will be looking at the following during the course of the series:
Targeting & Segmenting
Subscriber list growth
Tracking results
Main email marketing goal.
There is no real surprise that "Targeting & Segmenting" comes up with the highest score of 40%. For most, the main issue will be the clients' data records. They will be inaccurate, out of date or incomplete. The more data you can obtain from your clients, that is relevant to your business, the more tailored you can make your emails. Segmented email campaigns have…
Interactive, creative and innovative emails to inspire your 2017 email marketing.
Email marketing consistently ranks as one of the most effective marketing channels in terms of ROI. But to stand out in a crowded field you need to optimise for device, utilise the latest technology, and have compelling creative. Without any of this crucial trio your email will fall flat.
It's all very well telling marketers they need to use dynamic email with creative designs and attention grabbing copy, but it's very different to actually produce it. Often the best way to get inspiration for your own campaign is to see examples of effective email campaigns that you can draw upon. That's way we're giving you 6 examples of creative and effective dynamic content emails to inspire you in 2017.
1. Knomo - Scalable design for mobile optimization
As you can see from the desktop and mobile versions of this email from Knomo, by…
Chart of the Day: How is video being embedded into email marketing?
Email has limitations in what can be displayed correctly in email clients. But none more so than video playback.
The safest route would be a static image, meaning that a static image would display for all clients. But as this chart shows, this has become rather old school, as only 2% use this method. A staggering 52% of the clients use fullscreen or inline video embedding. Animation (.gif animation), accounts for 46% of the total of sends.
Before we all suddenly start to add inline video, there are a few points we need to remember:
Fullscreen interaction only works correctly for iOS
Inline only works on Apple Mail, Outlook for Mac and Outlook.com (non-preview)
Gif animation doesn't work for Outlook 2007-2013 and Windows Phone 7
Email clients vary in how they accept videos playing in your inbox. So it comes down to…
Avoid these mistakes to prevent costly email marketing errors
If you’ve marked 2017 as your year to grow your e-mail list, congratulations! Email marketing is a powerful tool that can help enhance your business, bring in new leads, and keep your company name on the tip of customers’ tongues. However, the reality is that it’s quite easy to make mistakes while you attempt to build a list. Those mistakes can result in lost time, customers, and money.
Blunder #1: You Don’t Give a Good Reason to Sign up
In 2017, an email address is nearly as personal as a phone number. Think about the times that you go to a store at the mall and they ask for your email address for their records. You probably cringe and envision all the spam email that will soon flood your box—and you better believe that your customers do the same thing.
One of the first steps…
Chart of the Day: Gmail inbox placement and read rates
In 2013, Google rolled out its restructure of the Gmail inbox and introduced their tabs layout. Back then email marketers believed it would be the "death of email marketing". So we are nearly 4 years since the launch, how are marketing emails performing in the Promotions tab?
In the chart below, we see that Promotions has an Inbox Placement Rate (IPR) of 84.5%. We can also see that the read rate is the lowest of all the tabs, at a low 19.2%.
This tells us that out of all the promotion emails, in the tab, only 19% are read. So 81% of marketing emails will be simply deleted/unread. So if you land in the Promotions tab, chances of getting read are very slim.
What can i do?
First, check if you need…
Customers now demand personalisation and relevance at every stage of the buying process.
It seems as though every report we read has been written by someone with a different name for the business era that we’re in right now. We’re sticking with Forrester’s 2011 term, the Age of the Customer. However, terms such as the Digital Age, the Social Media Age, the Age of Recommendation, the SMART Age, all seem to be interchangeable.
Whatever we choose to call it though, each name relates to the explosion of technology in society, how it is affecting businesses, and how businesses are being forced to adapt to the new demands of this high-tech era. They refer to the effects that technology, social media, and efficient information exchange are having on product development and marketing. In particular, they refer to a period in which businesses are transitioning to become more agile and customer-obsessed than ever before.
We’ve…
