HOW DO YOU DRIVE ENGAGEMENT ON YOUR MARKETING EMAILS?
Email marketing. We’re sure you’ve heard of it, and many of you will have had a go, some with success, some maybe less so…
What seems one of the true dark arts to many is the million-pound question - how do you get people to engage with your carefully constructed email content? A recent blog from HubSpot 10 Ways to Get More People Reading & Clicking. - which covered exactly that.
In this post, we’ll dive into our favourite takeaways from HubSpot’s recommendations, and get some insight from our very own Andrew Goodman, Marketing Manager and our in-house email expert.
But first things first…
WHAT IS EMAIL MARKETING?
Email marketing is a powerful type of direct marketing that can be used by businesses of any size to promote products and services, as well as raise that all-important brand awareness. It involves pushing emails to a specific group of people, or audience, with the aim of taking a specific action, like signing up for your webinar, making a purchase using your latest discount or signing up for a trial.
WHAT IS EMAIL ENGAGEMENT?
To quote HubSpot, “email engagement is the measurement of interactions your emails receive”.
To measure these interactions, email marketers use specific engagement metrics, link open rate, click-through rate, subscribes and unsubscribes, and conversion rate.
It’s vital to track your email campaign’s engagement as it’s the key set of metrics that tell you if you’re barking up the right tree so to speak.
Anyone can send an email to a list of existing or potential customers. But getting that list to engage with your content is where the skill lies. It requires a deep understanding of what your audience is wanting to hear from you, how and when they want to receive content and ensuring your email stands out in a busy inbox.
Our top 3 email marketing engagement tips
But if your emails aren’t getting the engagement you want (or need), what should you do? Here are our top 3 ways to increase your engagement rate.
1. Optimized email subject lines
Getting the right subject line for your email is vital. In fact, it’s so important that a whopping 47% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line.
2. Make your email mobile-responsive
“85% of people check their emails on mobile. So if your emails aren’t responsive for mobile, you’re doing more than missing a trick; you’re throwing all the effort you’ve gone to craft your emails down the pan.”
According to MailChimp, ensuring your emails are mobile-responsive can increase your click rates by 15%.
Some examples of best practices for mobile responsive design are:
Utilise a single-column layout - This makes reading your content easier for your audience.
Avoid using hyperlinks or cluttering an email with multiple hyperlinks. This ensures users’ usability so they won’t accidentally click the wrong links: use a big, tappable button instead.
Ensure your CTA’S are front and center - Placing your call to actions near the top of an email -make it the most mobile friendly.
Example source from: FreshBooks
3. Test, Test, and test some more
At Think Bambu, we are strong advocates for A/B testing in any form of digital marketing, and email is no different.
The more you test what you’re sending to your audiences, the better picture you can build of what they engage with.
What can you test?
Subject lines
CTA’s
Images
Tone
Different newsletter layouts
Personalisation / Depersonalisation
Times emails are sent
The sky’s the limit to what you can test.
So, interested in trying email?
If you’d like to see if email marketing can work for your audience, or if you’re already trying it and it’s not working, get in touch today. Andrew and the rest of the team guide your email marketing strategy, campaign creation, monitoring, optimisation and measurement activity to help you reach the right people at the right time, provide more value to your audience, generate traffic to your website, and increase leads and sales.