With over 144 billion emails sent in a day and every day, email marketing rules the business communication. But, what is it that you have been doing till now and what is there that needs to be done. There’s a cutthroat competition among all email marketers today, which is pursued by marketing messages, competitive subject lines, and scores of attention-seeking emails.
So, in such a clutter of emails, how does the signal separate itself from the noise?
Things we used to practice for about years ago doesn’t really workout well in today’s competitive world. The key to a stand-out message is critical to find. Here are the 6 inbox-tested email marketing strategies that have been proved successful in getting clicked by the customers.
1.Personalized messages annoy rather than engaging customers
No more “Dear ( NAME)” practice!
According to a study done by Temple University Fox School of Business professor, personalized email advertisements are far more likely to repel customers than endear them. But, it has also been found in a study done on 10 million marketing emails sent to 6, 00, 000 customers, that personal information can be used in a certain way to drive customers closer.
Personal messages seem more of a spammer to the customers. This is a matter of trust and building relationship. Does a recipient know you? If no, he would obviously take the familiarity in an odd way. Intimacy too soon is not acceptable in real life and it appears in the same way with emails.
Faking familiarity with your potential customers may turn the readers off. However, not all kinds of personalization are off-limits. Sending email that acknowledges a subscriber’s individuality can pay off big time. It’s just a matter of doing it correctly, if you are to use personalized emails, do it in a meaningful way.
2.The subject line mystery
Crafting a subject line holds a great mystery behind it. Exactly how many characters are to be used in a subject line. Here, you really need to avoid one area: 60 to 70 characters subject line. Marketing excerpts refer this to as a “dead zone” of subject length.
According to a research done Adestra, in which 900 million emails were tracked, there is no open rate or CTR at 60-to-70 characters length of subject line.
On the contrary, subject line of 70 characters and up is tested to be the most effective in engaging readers and clicking through the content. And subject lines with 49 characters and below have well open rate.
In fact, Adestra also found that subject lines with fewer than 10 characters had an open rate of 58%.
The trend of short subject line came in vogue with the President Barack Obama’s email fund raising. These subject lines saw incredible engagements with subjects like “Hey”.
But, the question here is which subject line do you want–one that boost clicks or the one that opens? You must go for the one’s with more click through rate so, keep it short for opens.
3. Email sending Prime Time
8:00 p.m to midnight is the prime time for sending an email. Well, we often create our quality mails during the business hours, but the one’s with most open rate are not sent t from 9 to 5. The top strategy is to send mails at night.
This time block not only get better open rates(22%) but also get click through and sales. But, it has also been found that this time block of 8:00 p.m to midnight is least used. This is the key factor that late night emails outperform the rest.
Here, you need to determine your customers’ behaviors. Try to send your mails between 8:00 and midnight, so that when other marketers deploy their mails, your mail stand a greater chance to get noticed.
However, you need to test, test and test your customer’s behaviors to find out how your customer ticks and when he/she opens email.
4. 47% of all emails are opened on mobile phones
According to numbers provided by email marketing firm litmus, mobile opens accounts for 47 percent of all email opens. Where your email is being read matters a lot. You need to create design responsive emails to ensure that your email looks great no matter whee it’s being read.
To make it readable on mobiles, covert your email to a one column template for an easy mobile fix. You can also follow iOS guidelines of buttons at least 44 pixels wide by 44 pixels tall. Make call to action obvious to tap on smartphones. Keep the size of tappable elements a little larger than others.
5.Weekends are the best time to send mails
Weekends are known to outperform the weekdays when it comes to email open and Click trough rates. Plus, the number of emails sent on the weekends is low as compared to weekdays, just the number for evening mails. However, the statistics about margins, open and sales rates are not substantial, but in email marketing, every little bit counts.
6.Include Coupons, Bundle Deals and Other Incentives
Big e-commerce companies often use this strategy while doing email marketing. They doesn’t just highlight items customers could buy, but entices the sale in multiple ways. They include discount codes, coupons and buy-two-get-one-free-type offers. You can use different words to sell people of varying mindsets.
Since, all these strategies are backed by science and studies, it’s all about experimenting. And, you are likely to get different results if you are doing your own experiments.