Email marketing is often viewed as a complex or overcomplicated member of the digital advertising community. While there’s definitely some merit to this statement, it’s also realistic to view this process as something that rests upon a small number of pillars or elements that can either make or break a campaign.With the help of a recent piece from Cynthia Price over at Business 2 Community, now is the perfect time to highlight these three elements – automation, mobile design, and calls to action – and discover how best to succeed on each of these unique fronts. This way, the next time you fire up an email campaign, you’ll have all the knowledge you need to knock the members of your contact list off their feet with stellar inbox content.
Automation
At first glance, automation might not seem like that big of a deal when it comes to email marketing. Sure, it can save you a few minutes here and there throughout the day, but does it really have the power to make or break your campaign? According to Price, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” With the ability to boost click rates by 119 percent, automation is vital to the success of your brand in the inbox.So how does an organization make the most of this tool? As the HubSpot Blog’s Erik Devaney explains, it all starts with keeping things simple and building off of a strong foundation. Appealing though it make be to dive headfirst into the world of automation, you’re much better off taking things slow and building up this system over a longer period of time. This way, you and your team of email marketing experts can test new strategies and automation techniques in a measured and efficient manner, all without feeling overwhelmed or confused by the advent of this approach.
Mobile Design
The next facet up on the list – mobile design – is fairly straightforward. Simply put, without a responsive design that adapts to the needs of on-the-go viewers, your brand is missing out on a massive boost in exposure from the 57 percent of consumers who won’t recommend a business to others based on the lack of a strong take on mobile email marketing.A winning design for the mobile inbox requires a few key aspects in order to really attract the attention of the average contact list. In his look at this process, D.J. Waldow of Entrepreneur magazine suggests placing a preference on templates that shape and mold your content to fit the smaller screens of tablets and smartphones. Additionally, cutting down on the images, and thereby dropping load times significantly, can help keep these viewers focused on your message and not succumbing to increasingly shorter attention spans.Above all of this, Waldow notes that it’s imperative for your calls to action (CTAs) to take center stage on these devices. Navigating mobile platforms can be tricky at times, so do your viewers a favor and make this button or link big, bold, and easily accessible when they are out and about on their mobile devices.
Calls to Action
Speaking of CTAs, this portion of the email marketing process stands as Price’s final element that can make or break your campaign. While we’ve talked about mobile CTAs in the previous section, it’s also important to give your desktop variations a little love as well. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when a healthy portion of your audience turns away from a CTA that’s stored deep within a clunky or cluttered email offering.As Web Marketing Today’s Pamela Neely explains, a CTA that’s short, sweet, and to the point is a powerful asset in the inbox. Instead of showing off your verbal skills with longwinded prose, just jump straight to the point and tell these viewers why they should listen to what you have to say. You can also pick up some bonus points on this front if you incorporate a section that tells these viewers the best way to convert, all while keeping things short and built around a sense of urgency.If you’re able take a CTA and instill it with these tactics, as well as putting the rest of what you’ve learned here to good use, then there’s nothing that can stand in the way of your brand as it masters each of the three elements that can make or break an email marketing campaign. From here, all that’s left to do now is to get to work on turning this newfound knowledge into an actionable approach to the inbox.
