Recently Litir has had the pleasure of traveling across the U.K. and Ireland to meet small business owners from a variety of industries. More often than not they have all asked one question: Is email dead? In today's post we'll take a look at why email is most certainly not dead and indeed how it can bring new life to your business.
Photo by Tandem X Visuals on Unsplash
How many unread emails are you carrying around, right now? In 2020 a survey reported that 40% of average consumers had at least 50 unread emails in their inbox.
We've already talked about the jargon that you may encounter down the email marketing rabbit hole, as well as some tools that you can deploy to make noise in your subscribers inbox. Join us as we look at strategy in the email marketing sphere as an industry and what key takeaways you can find from the data.
Statistics:
So, you want to evaluate email as a communications channel for your business. Let's look at the data. According to HubSpot:
77% of marketers surveyed have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months
63% of businesses let users engagement influence their sending pattern
41% of users view emails on mobile devices while 39% view on desktop
Read on for a deeper dive into how the above can shape your email strategy with regards to engagement and design.
Engagement:
What can you do about users who subscribe to your list and then don't engage with your content? Simple! Figure out what they want to see and give it to them. Eh, maybe not so simple after all...or is it? Let's say there's an ballet shoe brand. Learn how segmentation and A/B testing as part of an overall engagement strategy can help them find customers.
Photo by Nihal Demirci Erenay on Unsplash
The ballet shoe brand have a pretty 'healthy' list of 5,000 users with an average open rate of 23%. That means they have about 1,100 users that regularly interact with their emails. They want to find out why the other nearly 4k, don't. In our previous post on email jargon we talked a bit about segmentation:
Segments are the ways we break those subscribers into different groups based on their behavior, which we learn over time. Segments can be done by demographic, past purchase behavior, engagement with previous emails etc.
The ballet shoe brand could look at the patterns of engagement, or interaction, from users out side of their 'warmest' leads. You can set segments for last order date, last email open date, and beyond. These segments allow you to 'niche' out users for specific communications. For example there may be users who only order around a holiday or popular dance competition. With segmentation the ballet shoe company can find those users and send them specific, personalized communications with incentives to convert. After all, 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month. When you experiment with messaging to measure the results on performance, this is called:
"A/B testing" [where] you can tweak personalization, copy, or even the use of emoji to see how two sets of users respond to your messaging. And armed with that data, you can start to shape the beat for your future email marketing.
Keeping track of user engagement with the use of segmentation and A/B testing among other means, ensures that you are keeping a 'healthy' list for future conversion. And a healthy list is far from 'dead'.
Design and Usability:
In 2023, 56% of marketers leverage 'mobile-friendly' emails in their marketing strategies. This means that their emails are formatted to suit mobile phone screens. 46% of smartphone users 'prefer' to receive marketing communications from businesses via email. Don't isolate almost 50% of your prospective clients or customer with a clunky "UX" (user design) and less than idea usability.
Photo by Maxim Ilyahov on Unsplash
Consumers spend an average of 10 seconds considering a brand email before moving along. They are brutal and unforgiving when it comes to the experience of interacting with your brand. Expectations are high (and they should be!) but how can you as a small business guarantee that you don't lose out on customers via email? Simple: Click, Check and Repeat.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Let's say that you are working on an email for the ballet shoe brand to your 'less' engaged users, who haven't opened an email in 60 days. How do you get that email into shape to convert? Firstly you're going to make sure that the content in that email is something they might engage with. You might not go for a 'sales' angle with this email, but lead with perhaps a blog post from a famous dancer who has done an interview for your brand about why they wear your shoes. Next, your subject line is going to refer to the topic in the email, not selling them something. Finally, your email is going to be short and sweet to the point with perhaps the dancers photo, a button for the blog post and perhaps a reference to a new style of shoe or ongoing sale on the site. Then you're going to Click, Check and Repeat. Email it yourself. Open it on your desktop and click every link. Then, switch to your mobile and click every link. Go have a cup of coffee, take a stretch break and come back then check those links again.
Be aware that your email is going to look and feel different on various devices. Look at user data like your Google Analytics and see where the users skew as far as device use. Are they heavy on mobile devices like phones or tablets? Make the font larger, the colors cleaner and the buttons for 'Call to Action' (CTA) points crystal clear. Your user shouldn't have to guess what you want them to do when an email lands in their inbox. Make it easy for them!
Summary:
No, email is not dead! In fact it is alive and well. When you deploy segmentation and efficient design focused on usability your email marketing will reinforce for customers why they can trust your brand.
Get In Touch
Do you use email in your marketing bundle? We'd love to hear why or why not. Get in touch! Send us an email: liz@litirmarketing.com
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