Email Marketing -Why It Makes a Difference

A low cost and effective way to stay in touch with your audience

Email Overview

Emails have been around for 40+years, and trends for best practices in 2020 are blending the old with new technologies. Emails are integral to all business and social communications, transcending across all social networks and internet transactions, as an email address is required to open accounts and send and receive information.

Over half the world’s population uses email in 2019 and this is forecasted to grow to over 4.3billion in 2023 (The Radicati Group 2019). Many users will hold 2 or more accounts, separating business from personal.

Of most concern is the growing amount of spam, and malicious attacks, spread through the email itself, or through hyperlinks which contain the malware.

Despite these concerns, Marketers found emails were still a driving staple, and in Australia, email engagement and conversions based on 2020 stats stand at a rate of 18.7%, which indicates that there is still a strong base by which audiences gain information via emails.

Click through rates (CTR) (audiences who click on an email link} are slightly up from 2019 at an average of 2.8%, more than likely due to personalized content and invested subscribers.

Email Statistics and Legal

According to data compiled by HubSpot 2020, The Ultimate List of Email Stats for 2020, 46% of opens are done through mobile phones, 35% of business professionals check their emails through the mobile, and 73% of millennial’s prefer communication from business comes via emails.

With potential huge ROI from marketing campaigns, it pays to understand and stay within the Australian law

The Spam Act 2003 , covers the parameters around Get Permission, Identify Yourself as the Sender & Make It Easy to Unsubscribe.

Email Marketing — Best Practice 2020

Email marketing today, is exciting and vibrant, and it is wise to adapt email marketing to the mobile first marketing approach.

• Consider your users mobile phone battery life, and design with darker background and white text or vice-versa

• Use PNG images instead of JPEG

• Craft your emails with clean text, smart and easily accessible, catering for users with disabilities such as hard of hearing or vision impairment

• Combine emails with social media accessibility and include the linked media icons

• Focus on peer reviews. Over 90% potential customers read on-line reviews. Create an email marketing campaign which asks for user feedback

• Include the use of video’s, or links to pod-casts in your email marketing, or insert GIFs

Engaging emails through the mobile phone should incorporate the following best practices

• Mobile subject lines are between 25–30 characters, whilst desktop is approximately 60 characters

• Make use of Pre-Header text — the first line of copy in your email, reinforcing and supporting the subject line

• Ensure your email is short and concise and in bullet forms, so your audience can follow the message and understand the Call to Action (CTA)

• Consider images are supporting the text, as some phones do not support imaging.

• Consider your audience is busy, so CTA’s should be front, and center

• Test your emails across multiple devices

• Work with HTML responsive templates, these save time and take the guess work out of the design

> Content Marketing is king — focus on your brand story telling

> Personalise your emails, and target offers to specific groups

> Send seasonal offers to coincide with holidays i.e Christmas, New-year, Easter

> Embed an offer in a welcome email after someone signs up to newsletters or a promotion

> Ensure your Subject lines are compelling for audiences to open the email

> Use time sensitive calls to action, to create a sense of urgency and priority

Creating an Email Campaign through platforms such as MailChimp

Using automated software platforms, email campaigns and newsletters can be managed using mailing lists and templates. Automation can include a simple return email to a subscriber from a posted link, thanking them for signing up, or a way of giving other meaningful content. Campaigns can be personalised for brand awareness. Email marketing enhances the interactions between you and your subscribers. Automation allows you to target groups and market segments, maximizing the ROI of email campaigns. Automation allows audience participation with feedback and comments.

Click the link to view an example of an Email Campaign — Introduction to Digital Marketing

Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

• Not having a clear Vision and Purpose of your email marketing plan, and not including a CTA in the campaign. In planning the campaign it is advisable to have a clear outcome to be achieved, such as signing up to a newsletter, sales, attending an event

• Not having a CTA button which is bright and bold and large enough to click on

• Not understanding your audiences expectations and not keeping to your promises, such as contact frequency, going off-topic

• Unprofessional presentations, spelling and grammar mistakes

• Do not include attachments — these conjure up images of spam and malware

• Disconnect any automated campaign once retired.

• Sending incorrect links