From text messages, social ads, phone calls, in-person meetings and a host of many others marketing tactics, customers are constantly being pulled in different directions by brands vying for their attention.
With this in mind, companies shouldn’t expect uninterrupted consideration for their e-mail marketing campaigns — especially when they’re competing with a slew of on and offline distractions. Email marketing software such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers an opportunity to get noticed even amid all these distractions, by offering ways to personalize your content and automate some of the most critical steps of the process.
Along with the right technology, Canadian companies should also ensure they try the following email marketing tips:
Consider The Messages Available For The Medium
Many companies use email to get their message across, but not all email messages are alike. In fact, according to the Email Marketing & Marketing Automation Excellence 2017 Report, the most commonly-used form of message is a newsletter, deployed by 58 per cent of those surveyed. This creates a massive opportunity for email marketing software to make a real difference. Promotional or sales-related messages are probably already in your arsenal, but you should consider exploring any of the following:
New subscriber welcome: A subscriber welcome message is the digital equivalent of welcoming someone into your store or office. Think about how you can use email marketing software to make the welcome message as specific as possible, since it represents something new in their inbox and may get more attention than messages from your company that follow. How can you welcome them while also driving more activity?
Follow-up for ‘fence sitters’: Many people will come to your site and leave, or even go through the early phases of purchasing, only to abandon the transaction or shopping cart. Most companies never figure out why. Email marketing tools can be a gentle way to show you noticed their presence, appreciated the visit and that you’re interested in helping them. The content could focus on why they failed to convert, or it could use information you’ve culled from CRM solutions like Sales Cloud to make a specific product and/or service offer.
Reactivation emails: Sometimes people go quiet. Very quiet. These are customers who are not only failing to respond to an email’s call to action (CTA) but who aren’t even opening the message. Marketing automation lets you treat these individuals as a group, where you can develop specific content that will spark their interest in continuing to be a part of your database — and hopefully do more business with you.
Make Your CTAs Subject-Line Worthy
Subject lines are obviously a way of telling someone what the message is about, but if they’re seen as simply an update or informational, customers may assume they can safely put it aside and come back to it when they’re less busy. An email marketing strategy should be built around creating a sense of urgency in your target audience. That means the call to action (CTA) — which might normally be at the end of a blog post, for instance — should be easily understood from the moment it lands in the recipient’s inbox.
Sometimes short CTAs with a colon can work well. For instance, “Recommended for You,” followed by a product or service offering that’s just been released, can be based around a customer’s purchase history. “Join Us On [X Date]” provides a succinct invitation to a webinar or event you’re holding. When you’re trying to reactivate subscribers or get data from them, a simple “Please respond” may be best.
The subject line in your email marketing campaign should not be a form of “hello.” It should be the reason for reaching out -- what would come immediately after greeting them on the phone or in person. That’s why a CTA works best.
Offer A Way To Avoid The ‘TL/DR’ Trap
‘TL/DR’ stands for “too long/didn’t read” and is one of the most common excuses for failing to get through everything from a simple email to an entire report.
Media companies have gotten around this problem by often inserting a short summary near the top of the message that makes it not only easy to quickly digest the key point of the email but nudges them to dive in deeper. Your summary should tease the fact you have a new product, for example, or even that you’ve added a feature people have been asking about for some time. If you show you’re willing to save people time, they’re often surprisingly willing to give you just a little bit more.
Help Customers Chart Their Buyer Journey
Usually it’s just marketers and sales teams that discuss the “buyer journey” — the steps someone takes from being aware of a product or service to actually making a purchase. Customers may sometimes feel like they’re stumbling around in making their decision, perhaps starting with seeing something on social media to blindly looking on a web site and so on.
Marketing automation is not only efficient for companies but can be a way to provide a more thoughtful experience for prospective customers. An email marketing campaign can be the underpinning for a more holistic marketing effort where a prospect gets a message after first reaching out on social media, then a new message after the first phone conversation with a sales rep, followed by an additional message after their purchase to explain support options. That way, instead of feeling like an interruption in their workday, email becomes a sign that your company is diligent at keeping customers satisfied on every step of their journey.
Make Every Message A Resource Centre
Of course you want to keep email messages as short as possible given the ever-shrinking attention span, but you also need to recognize that email may become the key way a customer stays connected to your brand. That means it should contain all the links necessary to make them more successful with your products and services.
Some of these links could be in the header or footer of your message, but they should probably include at least some of the following:
DIY assets: Use marketing automation software to segment messages with one-click access to the white papers, ebooks or videos that could help them make use of your products or learn about the ones they haven’t purchased yet.
Digital touchpoints: Make it easy to find your brand on all the social channels on which you operate.
Contacts: Don’t assume anyone is willing to go online and look around for your address, relevant email addresses or phone numbers. All these should be available at-a-glance, no matter what template you use.
Email marketing best practices are always evolving, but there’s one that doesn’t change: always recognize customers have a choice to ignore what you’re sending, so make sure your use of Marketing Cloud gives them a reason to believe your message stands out amid all the distractions.
Great marketing is about putting your customer at the centre of every experience and interaction with a company. Drive your marketing with the world’s smartest CRM. Learn about Salesforce for marketing in our free ebook “The Marketer’s Field Guide.”
