By Tricia Allenson
It’s no surprise that 97% of businesses are currently using e-mail to turn subscribers and readers into buyers. If you’re in the 3% who haven’t gotten on board yet, maybe it’s because you’re skeptical and want to see some proof that this particular marketing technique is effective before getting going in 2019. There’s nothing like hard numbers to win over a skeptic, and we’re ready to win you over today.
From the time they wake up in the morning until they go to sleep after dark, most US consumers will interact with an average of 11 brands through their e-mail inboxes. Compare this to exposure on Facebook (approximately 9 brands) or Twitter (falling further to 8), you have a much stronger chance of interacting with your base via an e-mail marketing campaign. Of course, you won’t be alone in utilizing this resource. On a global basis, we send 205.6 billion e-mails every day. 13.64% of those are spam messages (though it certainly feels like more!), and when we narrow in to business e-mails received the number falls to about 88 billion daily. That’s a lot of noise for you and your brand to cut through, but well worth it! 76% of subscribers will make purchases after reading your marketing material.
It’s Not All Good News
Like any marketing technique, there’s a careful line to walk between informative and annoying.
66% of consumers will unsubscribe to e-mails when they don’t feel the message is relevant, and 72% will delete e-mails for the same reason. Another 69% will delete messages from marketers sight-unseen if they feel they are getting too many e-mails from them. No one likes cluttered inboxes, after all! One way to mitigate this effect is to utilize an e-mail marketing automation software. This will save you both time and money by sending a mass e-mail to connect with customers while not overwhelming their e-mail.
So how to stand out a little more and avoid some of these pitfalls? The number one way to stand above the rest is to understand how consumers interact with their inboxes.
Battle of the Sexes
Did you know that men and women use and experience e-mail differently from one another? Both are equally likely to use desktops, but when it comes to using smartphones men are 5% more likely to be checking e-mail than women. They switch positions when considering tablets, with women becoming the more likely culprit.
When it comes to the content of those e-mails, men tend to respond better to more formal e-mails when compared to women; that being said, women are much more likely to pay attention to marketing messages. Regardless of gender, more than 50% of e-mail users agree that humor is welcomed. So keep those joke books close while tapping out your drafts! But don’t tailor too much to gender or you might alienate your audience: 74% of women prefer gender neutral marketing messages than messages intended for men or women specifically.
Keep things open, keep things funny, keep your name in the good graces of both men and women who may read your marketing campaign!
Taking Things Personally
Consumers like to be reminded that you value them as individuals and not just as a number on a spreadsheet. Even as you’re sending out mass e-mails, you can still keep things personal—in fact, you can’t afford not to. Personalized e-mails deliver 6 times higher transaction rates, and marketers can see an average increase of 20% in sales.
The number one threat to your e-mail marketing campaign is being mistaken for spam. Blech! Luckily, it isn’t too hard to avoid being categorized in this way. For instance, include the consumer’s name in the subject line. That alone will win you a 26% greater chance to having your e-mail opened. Take it a step further and personalize product recommendations. This will put you above 61% of other e-mail marketing campaigns.
In fact, your e-mail marketing campaign will live and die on your subject line. E-mails containing a short compelling subject line will be opened 60-87% of the time, whereas more spammy phrase—Last Minute Gifts Available Now, Give a Gift Certificate This Holiday, Shop Early and Save!—will often see open rates tanking at 1-14%. Avoid spam vocabulary such as “percent off,” “make money,” or “claim” and you’ll reach more readers.
CTR and You
The main purpose of e-mail marketing is to improve your business’s click through rate (CTR). The more people who visit your website (and if you don’t have a website, we should be having a completely different conversation!), the more revenue you will generate. Personalized e-mails improve CTR at an average of 14%. Meanwhile, if you include a button to share on social media, you’ll see a massive CTR increase at 158%.
Marketing by Device
We read and take in information differently when we read it on paper compared to reading on a screen. As it turns out, what kind of screen also plays a role. These days, most of us check our e-mails via our smartphones. In fact, 74% of us do! We open a whopping 54% of our e-mails on our mobile devices. Breaking it down by provider, we see that 68% of all opens for both Gmail and Yahoo occur via a pocket-sized screen.
If your message isn’t rendered well on that small screen, 70% of consumers will immediately delete it. We like convenience in our busy lives, and don’t have time to squint at indecipherable, tiny type. And it’s well worth catering to smartphone users as 23% of users who open an e-mail on their phones will open it again later.
So, what?
Now that you’ve evaluated who you’re trying to reach and how you plan on doing so, what impact can you expect to see on your business? Perhaps the most enticing thing about e-mail marketing is the rate of return for a relatively cheap marketing method. For every $1 spent, you can expect to see $38 in revenue. Not too shabby! And that could be a little bit of a lowball. 1% of companies report a return of interest (ROI) of more than $76. The ROI of email marketing rolls in at 28.5%, a significant amount when compared to direct mail’s 7%.
Trends to Watch
New year, new goals, new horizons! We all want to invest our time and resources into marketing techniques that can grow our business into the new year in order to be ahead of the curve. What’s up and coming in the world of e-mail marketing?
First, like in most fields this day, 53% of experts expect to see a huge increase in automation. Using automated services free up time and energy for other endeavors. After reading this far, it’ll probably come as little surprise, too, that 76% expect to see an increase in personalization—because it works! Finally 85% believe that an increase in integration with other marketing channels is coming down the turnpike. This might be traditional mail campaigns, social media marketing, or more. With so many platforms available to us, it’s good to present a unified brand that’s easily recognizable and unified over multiple sites and approaches.
What are you waiting for? Get out there and get your e-mail marketing campaign rolling for a profitable and personalized new year. Not sure where to begin? Contact Limelight Marketing Systems today. We’re ready to make you look good.
