Determining how often it’s appropriate to connect with customers through email can feel a lot like the questions you ponder following a successful first date. How soon is too soon to follow up? If he or she doesn’t respond or engage with me immediately after, is that a bad sign? How many messages can I send in a row without coming off as annoying?
Even successful business owners and experienced marketing teams can feel uncertain when it comes to gauging email timing. If you contact customers too frequently, they’re more likely to unsubscribe from or ignore your content. Or worse, they might be scared away from supporting your brand entirely. To make things more complicated, if you don’t contact them enough, you may be missing out on a sale or engagement. So, where’s the sweet spot?
The key to successful email marketing is finding your brand’s ideal balance of relevant content and timely communication. The perfect communication balance will not only increase email-related clicks and web traffic but can significantly boost conversions. And since every business wants to grow, optimizing your email strategy is a great way to maximize your digital marketing efforts.
Standout Email Marketing in 2020
Finding the perfect balance of communication isn’t the only key to nailing marketing emails. Nearly 105 billion promotional emails are sent each day, and standing out has never been more challenging. Utilize these tips to ensure that you craft an effective email that won’t instantly end up in your customers’ trash folders.
Know Your Audience
Every digital marketer knows that without a thorough understanding of your consumer base, even the best marketing campaign can fail. Tools like generational marketing and heat mapping can help effectively isolate and analyze the needs of specific demographics. Research shows that targeted, segmented emails receive a 100 percent higher click-through rate than non-segmented ones, so step up your personalization efforts!
Offer Multiple Subscription Options
Consumers report receiving an average of 16 unsolicited spam emails per day. The open rate of these emails is obviously quite low. Consider giving your customers the option of selecting how often they would like to receive email communications, such as weekly or monthly. By offering consumers a say, you can feel more confident that your emails will be welcomed and read.
Trust Your Engagement Metrics
Sending emails that no one reads isn’t the best way to grow your consumer base or increase your ROI. Instead, tailor your email content around what effectively engages your following. Consult your engagement metrics to see when, where, and how to best optimize your content.
Refuse to Send Mediocre Content
It can be tempting to focus all your efforts on other areas of your marketing strategy, especially if your brand doesn’t rely heavily on email marketing. However, blasting out anything less than high-quality content is a mistake no brand can afford to make. If consumers can tell you’ve put little effort into your emails, how can you expect to see a return?
The Perfect Formula for Sending Email Blasts
Okay, you caught us—there is no perfect formula for email. Although timing is everything when it comes to nailing email marketing, there is no one golden time or frequency to connect with all consumers. Every brand has a unique target audience, so your posts, blogs, and emails should be crafted especially for your niche. Research shows that 86 percent of professionals prefer to use email when communicating about business. However, only 28 percent of consumers would like to receive more than one promotional email (from a single company) per week.
Whether your marketing relies solely on email blasts or they reflect only a portion of your digital strategy, it’s vital to make every email count. Composing a winning email requires more than typing words that form a convincing read. Before you send your next message into customers’ inboxes, ask yourself these questions.
- What is the goal of this email?
- Is my offer, product, or service clearly explained?
- Am I just repeating what my competitors are saying, or am I offering something new?
- If (I were a consumer and) this email appeared in my inbox, would I want to read it?
If your email has been crafted keeping our four composition tips in mind, and the answer to each of these questions is a resounding “yes,” you’re ready to send your email. But keep in mind that not all generations and consumer bases check their email at the same time. And, just because your email is opened, that doesn’t mean that the reader will immediately interact with the content it presents. So while there’s no perfect day or time to send your content, common sense and in-depth knowledge of your consumer base will go a long way in boosting your email conversions.
Find Your Email Marketing Sweet Spot With Snap
Email marketing is a vital part of an integrated marketing strategy and should be handled with care. Whether you lack the time or resources to compose high-level email content or you’d just rather be handling other aspects of your business instead, you can trust your email marketing services to the experts at Snap. Check out our the rest of our blog to learn more about breathing new life into your marketing efforts, and send us a message to see how Snap can help maximize your email campaigns.