The dawn of social media platforms led many to predict the death of Electronic mail(E-mail). A lot of brands now place a premium on Facebook likes or Twitter followers over their number of qualified e-mail leads.
While the importance of social media cannot be underestimated, building a well-segmented e-mail list and e-mail marketing strategy is crucial to the success of any online advertising campaign. As many brands are starting to learn, fans on Facebook or followers on Twitter are not necessarily potential customers.
According to the Accenture Outlook report (Who are millennials and what do they want?); less than 28% of millennials will make a purchase due to a social media recommendation.
Email is thriving largely due to the channel’s familiarity and universality; with smartphones, real-time email usage is also at its peak. While social media platforms are very good for building brand awareness, conversion and activation rates are much higher for well-segmented e-mail campaigns.
Here are some tips for achieving success with e-mail campaigns;
1. Build an Acquisition Strategy. A lot of brands try to circumvent the process by purchasing e-mail lists. Nothing is more annoying for a potential customer than receiving e-mails they did not subscribe to. A better approach is to build an email acquisition strategy over time with clearly defined segments and goals for each segment. Unverified lists lead to low engagement rates and high bounce rates which could lead to being blacklisted.
2. Send personalized E-mails This re-emphasizes the need to use only verified e-mail lists; this way the receivers can more easily connect with the content contained in the e-mail. Your website visitors, email, and mobile subscribers, and those who have connected with you on social media will appreciate your messages even more if they’re personalized. For example, you can create a unique email containing personalized recommendations based on each subscriber’s browsing behavior on your website. Adding personalized recommendations into marketing emails can increase sales conversion rates by 15-25%, and click-through rates by 25-35%.
3. Optimize for Mobile Taking into consideration that more than 60% of internet traffic in Nigeria comes from mobile devices, it is extremely important to optimize e-mail content for mobile. If your initial welcome email is perfectly optimized for mobile, subscribers will know they’re in for a pleasant mobile experience for the duration of their time spent with your brand. E-mail subscription forms should also be optimized for mobile. At Webcoupers, we help our clients build winning email acquisition and content strategies.
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