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When starting email marketing, a common concern is whether your company’s industry is right for it and whether your target audience will respond well to email content. Read on to learn how different industries can affect email marketing success and tips on optimizing your email engagement.
Is Email Marketing Effective?
Email marketing is a very effective digital marketing strategy. In fact, it is the highest ROI (return on investment) digital marketing strategy, with an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.
What makes email generate such a significant return is that it’s cost-effective to create and send email content while also targeting an audience of email subscribers that already know about your company. This leads to consumers who receive email content being more likely to take action, since being on your email list already shows some qualified interest in your brand.
Email is also great for increasing sales volume and consumer purchase intent. Studies have found that 60% of consumers report they have purchased something after receiving a marketing email. On the other hand, only 12.5% of consumers say they would make a purchase after seeing social media content.
Do Email Effectiveness Metrics Vary by Industry?
Email metrics like open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate can vary by industry. This is due to how consumers react to different types of email content. Businesses in different industries will inevitably send different email content, since the needs of consumers who purchase from them can vary greatly.
Which Industry Is Best for Email Marketing?
While email metrics can vary, no single industry is best or worst for email marketing. Studies have shown that over 90% of Americans and around 4 billion people worldwide are active email users.
With so many people using email, it makes it an accessible communication method for businesses in any industry to get in touch with consumers who are interested in what they have to offer.
For example, the average open rate across all industries is 21.33%, excluding Apple MPP opens. The e-commerce industry typically has lower open rates, with an average of around 15%. However, this doesn’t mean e-commerce businesses don’t see success in email marketing.
In 2016, there was a study of e-commerce businesses’ results from email marketing in Q4 (October, November, and December). The e-commerce businesses in the study were able to generate $230 million in combined revenue during these three months due to email marketing alone.
With results like those, it’s tough to say which industry is best or worst for email marketing. All industries can be successful with it, even if industry averages for email metrics don’t look like it. Using best practices for email marketing is an excellent way to ensure success and even exceed industry averages for email marketing metrics.
What Are the Best Practices of Email Marketing?
Best practices for email marketing can be broken down into three main categories: content, design, and frequency. This section will provide best practices for each that can be used by businesses in any industry to boost the success of email marketing campaigns.
Best Practices for Email Marketing Content
One of the most important aspects of email marketing is the content itself. If you’re consistently sending valuable content that is relevant to your subscribers’ needs, you will get good reception and engagement from it. Some best practices for email content are:
- Provide value with each email you send. Subscribers who get value from content will keep reading each new email, leading to high engagement rates and increased consumer loyalty.
- Break up your content into short paragraphs and sentences that are easy to read.
- Do market research to learn about your audience and create content that fits their wants, needs, and interests.
- Keep content brief. Many people open and read emails on the go throughout their day. If your emails are too long, they’ll lose the attention of readers who may get interrupted or simply lack time.
Simply put, having a value-first mindset and putting yourself in the consumer’s place will help you create the best content that is relevant to the needs of your readers.
Best Practices for Email Marketing Design
An effective email design can vary. Some businesses can see success from very minimalistic email designs, while others will see success from designs with lots of imagery and creative detail. The right design for your company will vary, depending on your target audience.
However, you can still follow some best practices for email design to increase engagement. Some email design best practices are:
- Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly. More people than ever use email on mobile devices, so having them display well on mobile is crucial.
- Ensure readability with your design. Make sure your fonts are readable, and the text size shows up well on all devices to create a good reading experience.
- If you choose to include images, make sure they are relevant to the email’s content.
- Use color pops, arrows, bold text, or other design elements to direct attention to specific areas that will increase link clicks and help subscribers follow your call to action.
Implementing these design tips and testing to see what works best for your company will help you create compelling and well-designed emails.
Best Practices for Email Marketing Frequency
Email frequency will also vary depending on your target audience and the type of content you send. However, you can still follow some best practices to get the right email frequency down for your company’s email campaign.
- Be consistent. One of the most important aspects of email frequency is consistency, so your subscribers know how often and when you will send emails.
- Think about the average purchase cycle customers go through and send emails when they are more likely to make a purchasing decision.
- Give subscribers a choice. An effective way to manage frequency is giving subscribers an option to choose what types of emails they’d like to receive and how often.
- Track data to see how engagement rates are impacted when you increase and decrease email frequency.
If you pay attention to your audience and email metrics, you’ll find the right frequency to send email content.
What Is the Best Way to Structure an Email for Marketing?
Depending on the type of email, the structure can vary. The most common structure in email marketing is:
- Engaging subject line
- Opening line or headline that grabs attention
- Body text that flows smoothly from topic to topic
- Good closing paragraph
- Call to action
- Button or link to click to take the next step
Using this email structure will help you create good all-around email content that converts.
How AudiencePoint Can Help with Your Email Marketing Needs
AudiencePoint can help you optimize your email marketing strategy. AudiencePoint’s email insight software provides send time optimization and analyzes subscriber activity to give you actionable ideas for increasing audience engagement. This leads to a streamlined process for creating effective email campaigns.
Contact us to learn more about how AudiencePoint can help you tackle email marketing for your company.