How to utilise email marketing and automation for your business

Did you know the average customer receives over 120 emails every day? As a marketer or business owner, this stat may turn you right off from even thinking about adding email marketing to your strategy, but trust us when we say email isn't dead! In fact, it's a highly effective part of any digital marketing strategy.

Email marketing is a great way to build relationships with your database as well as promote your products, services or even sales. Plus, they're also an activity that is relatively low cost to produce with a good ROI - in fact, the average return is US$38 for every $1 spent! So, if you've had to pull back on your marketing budgets recently, email marketing is definitely a tactic you should consider!

Crafting Your Emails

When crafting an email, keep in mind that email marketing works best when it's all about your customer - not about your business! This will help you stand out in inboxes and provide something extra to your user.

Many of us don't even think twice about email subject lines, but there are a few pieces of your email that should have a lot of consideration.

Subject line: This hooks the reader to open your email in the first place. Keep It clear, enticing and even personalised (more about that later!). If it fits with your brand, adding an emoji can be an effective way of standing out from the crowd too.

Graphics: Using eye-catching graphics or even GIFs and animations can entice the user to read on. Make sure your graphics are optimised for all devices too.

Copy: Write your emails like you're chatting to a friend. The users in your email database are there for a reason, so think about personalising the content to them.

Call-to-Action: Let your CTA stand out from the rest of the email. Whether it's a button, discount code or more, make sure all aspects of your email drive to this to maximise your ROI.

Email Marketing Benchmarks

It's often hard to know if your open rates and or click-through rates are up to scratch, and in fact, benchmarks change depending on your industry and email marketing platform.

According to MailChimp statistics, the average open rate for all industries is 21.33%, while the average click-through-rate (CTR) is 2.62% across all industries.

HubSpot put together a bunch of graphs highlighting the open rate, CTR, bounce and unsubscribe rates associated with some of the most popular industries using the platform, which we find handy when measuring the success of your clients.

HubSpot

Based on data from Sendinblue, Australia and New Zealand open rates and CTR averages sit at 36.7% and 4.9% respectively. Since these numbers can change and differ from platform to platform and country to country, the best measure of success for your business will come from internal benchmarking.

By monitoring and analysing your open rates, CTRs, bounce rates and unsubscribe rates, you can gain insights into your audience and what works or doesn't work for your content and messaging.

If you want to compare your data against MailChimp benchmarks, they have a helpful list compiled in late 2019, that can offer some insight here.

HubSpot also has a tool that lets you compare your open rate to others in your industry to give you an idea of how you stack up. This can be found here.

Email Personalisation

The more you can personalise the content in your email to your customers, ultimately, the more effective the campaign will be.

In an ideal world, you wouldn't send the exact same email to 40,000 customers because it's unlikely they'll all have the same interests or preferences. The trick here is to segment your content based on the customer's preferences. For example, what type of product or service are they interested in, or what have you purchased from them in the past?

Grouping your customers and sending different variations of a similar email based on interests should ensure a higher click-through rate and a better return on your investment.

Email Automation

As well as regular manual campaigns, email automation will ensure that you're working smarter, not harder! By investing in the right tools, you can trigger certain emails based on a user's information, website activity or history that drives back to your business goals, such as an increase in purchases.

Good examples of automation that you should consider are:

• Abandoned cart emails
• Happy Birthday emails
• Purchase reminders e.g. it's been a year since you bought these jeans- here are our new styles now available.

Of course, for automation, you need the right tools, such as a CRM integrated with your website, built-in tools with services like Shopify and great cloud services like MailChimp, which offer a cost-effective way to get started with email automation and personalisation.

We have a team of experts in digital solutions and marketing ready to talk to you about what tools would work for your business to ensure your brand is regularly in front of your customers. Let's chat!