Email Marketing: A Deep Dive to Engage the Modern Consumer

What if I told you there was an easy-to-use, dynamic way to engage with your audience – and still be able to personalize every single message? Well, there is, and the wondrous tool that is email marketing has come a tremendously long way since its early days. 

What started out as a simple way to send business updates has revolutionized the digital marketing game, becoming a versatile tool for engaging and building relationships with the modern consumer. As email marketing continuously evolves with new features and AI hacks, it can be difficult to keep up with the best way to leverage emails as meaningful messages to your consumers rather than just spammy, click-bait promotions. 

We’ll go over ways to craft compelling email content, best practices for email marketing, and how you can measure your campaigns’ success to inform future strategies. Today’s tech-savvy consumers expect more – and email marketing can help you get there. Let’s dive in. 

Crafting Email Content

In the digital era, email inboxes are always overflowing and inundated with messages about brand updates, promotions, sales announcements, and discounts. Amidst all this noise, it’s crucial to craft compelling content to pique interest and help your emails stand out (and actually get opened). 

The first step to drafting a compelling content strategy for your emails is to master the subject line. After all, what’s the point of creating amazing content if your audience never opens your emails? The subject line is the first impression and should be concise, relevant, and attention-grabbing. Whether you’re trying to spark curiosity, convey value, or incite urgency, a subject line can help increase your email’s open rates, and by extension, click-through rates. 

Tip: Digital marketing is all about experimentation. If you’re not sure which subject lines will resonate with your audience, try A/B testing a few options to see which drive the highest open rates. Many email platforms will allow you to easily test various subject lines and inform you which emails had the highest open rates. We’ll get into tracking these metrics a bit later! 

Once you’ve determined which subject line best connects with your consumers and gets the purpose of your email across, you can determine how your copy and visuals will work together to clearly deliver your message and make your email not just informative, but also valuable to the reader. 

At its core, your email copy should be engaging, concise, and clear. Cut out any unnecessary noise and make sure your audience knows where to go next with a clear call to action. Captivating design and visuals are equally important in email marketing. Images, charts, and videos can increase clicks and wow your customers. Depending on the purpose of your email, you’ll want to try different visuals. Have a flash sale going on? Consider bigger, bolder graphics with a clear discount marked on the page. Sending an educational email about vitamins? Insert infographics and charts to help your reader visualize the data and research. 

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Now that you have a snappy subject line, great content, and beautiful design ready to go, what are some things you can do to make sure your email is read by the most people? This brings us to our next point: email best practices. 

Email Marketing Best Practices: The Basics 

While email marketing is a powerful marketing tool for engaging your audience, it’s important to note some best practices to ensure your campaigns reach a broader audience and lead to more conversions for your brand. 

Before you schedule a campaign, make sure to research the best time and date to send your email. A general rule of thumb to follow is that emails sent between 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Tuesday - Thursday perform better than those outside those frames, but do research based on your industry, audience, and content. 

Another thing to consider is audience segmentation. Segment your email list based on various factors such as demographics, behaviors, and past interactions. This will help you craft more targeted and relevant campaigns, which could lead to higher conversion rates. Within these segmented lists, many email platforms will also allow you to personalize things like names and dates, which will help you further hone in on ways to make your consumers feel special and give them a reason to engage with your content. 

Last, but definitely not least, it’s important to remember the technical aspects of email marketing such as mobile optimization and legal compliance. Make sure your emails are mobile-responsive and that you are sending to recipients with explicit consent. Always provide an option to unsubscribe. 

Measuring Email Success 

So you’ve crafted the perfect email, researched optimal send times, and curated targeted audience lists – now what? After you send an email campaign, it’s crucial to track the effectiveness so you can improve future email sends. Many email marketing platforms, such as Salesforce, Klaviyo, and MailChimp, have dedicated dashboards to track the success of your campaigns and give you detailed breakdowns of metrics you’ll want to track. 

Among these are the following: 

• Open rates - This tells you the percentage of your email recipients that opened your email.

• Click-through rates (CTR) - This measures the percentage of recipients who clicked a link in your email.

• Conversion rates - Whether a purchase, sign up, or other action, the conversion rate will tell you how many recipients took the desired action of your email and is a key metric in measuring campaign success. 

• Bounce rates - This will tell you how many emails were undeliverable. High bounce rates can be problematic for your sender profile and should signify a need to update your list.

• Unsubscribes - This will tell you the total number of people who unsubscribed from your list after receiving an email.

By tracking and analyzing these metrics over time, you can gain a more complete view of your email marketing performance and how you can adjust your strategy to improve these numbers.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a versatile, simple, and effective tool to personalize your messaging and build relationships with the modern consumer. By crafting compelling content, following best practices, and tracking various metrics, you can navigate the world of email marketing to cultivate higher engagement with your business’s community. 

Remember to test subject lines, content, and send times to make sure your email is reaching the most people and driving conversions. Not sure where to begin? Fill out the form to get started.