“Why should I invest in email marketing, it just didn’t work for me. ROI was too low and responses were negligible.” This is how irate marketers react. What did they get wrong about email marketing? Don’t worry, we have got some modern email marketing challenges covered for you!
So, you think email marketing genuinely doesn’t work? Pull out the statistics and get back to the challenges that you’ve faced in the email marketing campaigns you’ve launched. There is a science behind everything and you cannot ignore or simply shun this fact.
The most trusted form of communication is email marketing as 77% of customers choose email over other online channels. 80% of marketers believe that email is the strongest performing media buy, which is ahead of search engine and display marketing.
Let us get back to the basics and ponder over the email marketing challenges you’ve faced up till now:
1. Increasing customer engagement rate:
Why would customers respond or engage in the email that you’ve sent, if it doesn’t interest them? If you send your product list to new customers without knowing their tastes why would they respond? The customers would engage only if the content and offerings are relevant to them. You wish to draw a specific response from the consumers then, give them what they are looking out for.
For this, you need to know your target audience well. Thus, the most vital challenge when you increase customer engagement rate is to define the persona of your target audience and what they are looking for. Once you acquire this knowledge, plan how to engage them personally.
Then you need to use the customer data to draw them towards a sale by sending relevant emails that too at the right time. These emails should catch the attention of the audience and appeal to their interest.
Let your customer know clearly what you are going to include in the email. Are you going to talk about the benefits you are going to offer or discounts, or mention the product features? Segment the email list based on their demographics, psychographics, profession, and preferences. Then you can send separate emails prepared for each of these groups.
2. Customer acquisition:
Acquiring customers is not going to be easy, many marketers think that it’s easy to have people click on the subscribe for email or newsletter button. In fact, it takes immense efforts to motivate people to engage.
You have to identify the ideal customers and build your customer acquisition plan. Its crucial to keep acquiring new customers for your brand to grow. The main aim of acquiring customers is to constantly be in touch with them, so that they keep coming back for a purchase thus, developing a long-lasting relationship. According to Marketing Metrics, when a customer has made a purchase earlier from your company then there are around 60% chances that the customer will make at least one more purchase. But, if a new visitor comes to your site, the chances of his becoming a paying customer are only 20% at the most.
When customers visit your site keep the sign in button visible. Keep a tab somewhere on the top where it is visible to everyone. Let them have the choice to sign in.
3. Improve customer retention:
Most customers get in touch with you when they buy some of your product or service and then subscribe to your email service. Once the purchase is done and the product is delivered, they would not want to open emails that you send. After a couple of months, they either unsubscribe or simply remain passive by not opening your emails. Then what could you do in such a scenario because then you wouldn’t get the desired results from your email campaign?
Your profit growth depends upon how you can retain your customers. Keeping on attracting new customers practically doesn’t make any profit sense if you cannot retain them. Once you retain customers, they will advise other people to buy your products and services- may turn into brand evangelists. While losing customers will have a negative impact on your brand.
The challenge is to keep your customers interested in the email marketing campaigns that you launch by creating unique and customized content.
When the subscribers sign-in, ask them specific questions as to what they would like to get through the emails. Would they like to be mailed the new offerings, discounts, market or company information, etc. once you know what the customer expects, the possibility of them not responding is narrowed down.
4. Email personalization:
Marketing is all about providing personalized service to customers and in email marketing it’s about sending unique tailormade emails to customers. Otherwise, customers would choose to ignore your emails and the email campaign would fall flat.
Personalized emails lead to high engagement rates. The challenge is to be able to scale up the level of personalization with every new email marketing campaign. If you can do this, your customer growth rate will keep on increasing. You would have a strong customer base who would prefer only your brand and also gradually new customers will be added to your list.
Apart from sending emails that mention customer names in the subject line and the copy, try to understand what interests the customer. Go through the click rates, open rates, and different responses. This will be a great guide to the customer mindset. You can also send an email on customers’ birthday, anniversary, etc.
5. Improving brand awareness:
Are emails the perfect way of increasing brand awareness? Yes, they are, as your customer is continuously in touch with your brand through emails. But, how can you create awareness about your brand through emails? The brand is not just about what you offer, it’s about the image that customers have about your company in their mind. Do customers relate and identify with your brand? If they do, then they will surely engage with your brand.
Emails are sent on a regular basis to customers and they have a certain language, tone and an impression they make on the customer. Once you define your brand and identify what kind of customers base you want to target, the emails should coincide with this definition.
6. Generating interest/curiosity in emails:
Most of the time the challenge is to emotionally connect with the customers, generate curiosity and interest. Customers will positively engage with your brand if the email campaign in its entirety appeals them. When the content is not only relevant but, catches the interest of customers, they are bound to participate and look forward to keep connecting with you. If you manage to do this, most of the challenges with email marketing can be overcome.
Create a series of emails to build curiosity and every email should be in the form of a story. All the emails will be related to each other and will build curiosity as the final emailer is sent.
Juvlon will assist you through all these email challenges so get in touch with our team now.