Email Marketing Evolution
There's been a constant debate about how email marketing should go, it was the next evolution from direct mailer. The fact that email takes about 30-40% of online activity, means it will not go away soon. But with today's social media being another channel of communications, means it could evolve the way we interact.
I believe email marketer should combine both email marketing with social media power, they could proof to be even more effective. If you combine the impression of your email database with social media - such as Twitter and Facebook, you'll gain more impression which is more powerful. Such as below:
But before you jump into combining your email marketing with social media, I believe you need to cover the basic:
- Are you still using one single image as the base of your email marketing? This approach is still being used until today, however it increase the chance of being spammed or sending the email into junk. The best way is to keep between 30% image and combination of text to reduce the spam rate probability, a lot of the email marketing system these days will carry a test tool to show what it takes to deliver your email marketing.
- Time, re-look into your industry and when would be the best time for your readers to open your email.
- Tracking link, if you are selling something, better track it.
- Data integration, best to have your email marketing data sync to your sales or other CRM system to ensure it is two-way flow. This will avoid any duplicates and ensuring all info is updated.
- Segmentation, don't generalize your customers, each will be interested in one thing only and you should focus on that.
- Less is more, never try to deliver more than 3 things or best to be simple.
- Ensure you have something to deliver, plan your email marketing delivery in advance and how you can superceed or follow-up from that.
- Clean list, try to gather a double opt-in data at all times. It is a way to ensure that your customer are interested in you and have given you permission for you to send information.
- Optimize, optimize and optimize - there are always items to improve, your subject line, layout, conduct A/B testing to try and obtain which is the best way of delivery.
- Growth, ensure your database grows constantly. The more "qualified" audience the better and ensure they are interacting with you.
- Select your provider, there are many good ones out there:
- MailChimp has to be on top of my list and I've used them for over a year. It's affordable and has rich third party integration which is useful.
- Campaign Monitor also has good features on social media, although not much on third party integration.
- Constant Contact, is also a good one in the market.
Here's some reference material to jump start your email marketing:
