Better Email Marketing Pt 1. Is Email Marketing Still Relevant

This series of blog posts will help you increase email open rates, bring more clicks to your website and make the content of your email marketing much more appealing.

You don’t have to read all the posts in order, hit the buttons at the top of the page to move to another section.

Does email marketing work?

In a world of social media likes and shares, we can forget that email is still a potent tool to excite existing customers and generate new ones. Email is a huge pain in the backside, we get far too much of it, but a regular, well presented email can still provide you with sales and leads.

The above graph shows that marketers believe email marketing is much more effective than Social Media for fulfilling their goals. Only Content Marketing (your website) and SEO is more effective.

Here’s some facts from MailChimp, one of the largest Email Service Providers (ESP).

Most industries achieve around 20% email open rates

Most receive 2-4% click rate on the links within the email

The ‘Hobbies’ industry achieves, on average a 28% email open rate

This means that if you have a list size of 5000, emails opened should be more than 1000 and clicks more than 200.

You can see the latest report from MailChimp here.

Look for your own industry and check the figures. We are going to aim for even better numbers.

“Email marketing is still a top converter”

If the extra clicks don’t get you excited about email marketing then remember your list is your own!

That’s right, it yours. You have spent time building it and it’s part of your customer data. No one can take it away from you.

Remember MySpace, Friendster or Bebo? These Social Media sites are either shut or not very popular. I’m not saying that Facebook or Twitter will close but always remember that goal posts can change and those ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ may not last forever.

Your email list will last a long time, I still have people on my list from the late 90’s!

Personalisation is the key to relevance and performance

Being able to target your customer in a more personal way will drive much better open rates and click through rates.

Being relevant to your customer will mean your email marketing will become much more powerful in generating leads and sales.

Making an email personal does not mean you say:

Hi Dave!

It means you are sending emails about men’s trousers to men or talking about your Manchester store to people around Manchester.

There are many ways to personalise an email but remember the ‘P’ word as it’s going to be key to your email marketing success.

Fingers crossed this has got you ready to take your email marketing to the next level and you’ve regained some confidence in your mailing list and how it can improve your business.

Move along to part 2

The next part of this blog series deals with putting your customer first.

It’s an important area to focus on and will help not just your email marketing but also your social media and content writing.