Strategies Behind The Marketing Inbox

With the snowballing popularity of social media campaigns, email marketing may look useless, old fashioned and simply dead to you.  However, when done right, it can yield great results and the conversions from email marketing can reach an unprecedented percentage.  Email marketing is appealing because it pairs low cost with a level of effectiveness that is hard matched by other channels.  MarketingSherpa conducted a survey among marketers asking the ROI of email marketing campaigns, and the results revealed an ROI of 119% on average.

Although, email marketing campaigns can also fail because of irrelevant content, emails to untargeted audience and other reasons.  As once said by Vidal Sassoon, “the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”  To be successful in email marketing you need to do the work first to determine your target and compile a targeted email list.  You also need to understand who you are speaking to.  One of our specialties at RAVEN5 is undoubtedly email marketing but for those of you who are unfamiliar with the strategies behind the marketing inbox, I’ve found an article that shares some basic things to focus on when creating your email campaign.

Emarketer.com recently posted an article called “For Emails, Name Recognition Drives Opens.” The article shared a study about the primary influences for reading promotional email conducted by a software company called “Campaigner”.

 

The US study found that almost one-quarter of respondents said the No. 1 influence on whether they would open a promotional email was the familiarity of the sender’s name.  If your target is familiar with your brand or company there is a better chance they will open your email.  It is time to move beyond “batch and blast” practices to a more targeted approach.  For email marketing to work, you need to understand exactly who your target is and speak to them directly.

According to the study, just over 15% said they were most influenced by the email subject line.  Being the first thing your recipients see in their inboxes, there is no denying that email subject lines are the gatekeepers of your email campaigns.

Some things to keep in mind when writing email subject lines:

1. Be Specific.

–          You need to be absolutely clear about your goal.

–          Being upfront and honest.

2. Localize, Personalize and Target.

–          Using customer attributes (like first and last name) and actions to tailor the email you’re sending and your subject lines is one of the most powerful things you can do.

When you’ve put countless hours of effort into getting your segmentation just right and even more hours into perfecting your email copy, why throw it all away due to a poor subject line?  Be specific and stay targeted, folks.

Jaclyn Bickerton, Social Media, Raven5 Ltd, Toronto & Oakville Ontario, August 2013

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