Email Marketing is one of the most organic ways to engage your customer base, offer them free and paid products, send out promotional material and build a trusting relationship. But has email marketing died? Is there still a place for it in digital marketing? Of course, there is. Email marketing has not died, it has simply begun its evolution.
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Myth #1: Consumers hate receiving Emails
There is a common misconception that people hate to receive marketing emails in their inbox. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact marketing research shows that people read most of their emails and have no problems receiving them. So long as they are useful, specific to their needs, relevant, and engaging.
Myth #2: Email Marketing has a bad reputation for being Spam
Most if not all email marketing campaigns have been opted in by users. Therefore they gave permission to receive emails. If a user decides to give their email address chances are, you have something of interest that they want. Even so, email marketing has developed a bad reputation for being more of a ‘spammy’ form of marketing. While this can be true for some companies, it doesn’t have to be for yours. Ensure your email marketing campaigns are useful and offer quality to your users and they will never feel like it is spam.
Myth #3: GDPR has killed Email Marketing
At the end of May 2018, Europe rolled out its new GDPR mandate. The General Data Protection Regulation is designed to protect European Citizen’s sensitive data online and this includes email addresses. Which means that businesses can only send emails to European citizens who’ve decided to opt-in and receive them. This isn’t a deterrent to email marketing, it simply means that you need express permission from your users before sending them emails. No more buying lists, as this can cost you substantial amounts of money in fines for violating users’ privacy.
How GDPR affects Email Marketing
We’ve just addressed the myth that GDPR will kill email marketing, but the question still remains, how will it affect email marketing going into the future? It required marketers to ensure they are designing their email campaigns with an opt-in feature by way of a lead magnet. Companies must have the express permission of users before sending them emails.
Failure to comply with the measures of GDPR will result in fines upwards to 20 million euros or 4% of your annual global turnover. No need to panic. Again this does not translate to the death of email marketing.
In fact, 59% of B2B marketers swear by Email marketing as the leading marketing channel for generating sales conversions and revenue. The key is to be more creative and innovative when creating your opt-in lead magnets and email campaigns.
If you’ve noticed that your email marketing campaigns have become sluggish then perhaps it is time to evolve your strategy. You may want to try these new tricks.
Building Your Email List with an Opt-In
In the past, have you relied on purchasing Email list that your competition has exhausted with spammy emails? If so, it is time to abandon this method, especially since it goes directly against GDPR rules. You need to get creative and work on building your Email List the organic way by way of the Opt-in method.
Small bloggers have been using this tactic for quite some time to build quality email lists. You can do the same. The best way to build your opt-in list is by offering your users a quality free product or content.
Great lead magnets can be made by offering freebies like webinars, infographics, checklists, e-books, new software solutions, and so much more. Get creative, and create quality freebies that your audience can’t live without.
There are two types of Opt-in formats that you can utilise.
- The Single Opt-in: Users are taken to a landing page that outlines the benefit of the freebie they are going to receive. They supply their email and are informed they will be subscribing to your mailing list where they will receive more exciting offers. Once they enter in their information they receive the freebie right away. This method builds your list quickly.
- The Double Opt-in: After supplying their email for their freebie, users then receive an email requesting that they confirm their subscription to your Mailing List in order to receive their free product. Once confirmation is received they get a separate email with their freebie. This method ensures that you build your mailing list with quality users. It also helps you measure user responsiveness and engagement with your brand.
Opt-in is the future of Email Marketing and building quality lists while abiding by new privacy laws within GDPR.
Email Segmentation
As aforementioned, consumers do not have issues with receiving emails, as long as they are relevant, add value, and feed into their specific needs. A great way to ensure that your email campaigns are specific to your company’s brand message is through email segmentation.
Email Segmentation encompasses segmenting or dividing up your email lists into smaller segments based on specified criteria. Many marketers use this method to personalise emails, making them more user-specific and relevant, based on demographics, geographical location, interests and consumer behaviour like purchase history, etc.
Want proof this works? Research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association in the United States says that “segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue.”
Email Autoresponders & Automation
An email autoresponder is a form of automation that sends an email or sequence of emails that are automatically dispatched to your subscriber list. The responder is sent after being triggered by a certain event, such as when consumers sign up for your email newsletter, abandon their shopping cart, download an e-book or purchase a product, to name a few.
Email Automation helps nurture your leads, turn them into conversions and frees up your time to focus on other important tasks for your business. Combined with email segmentation, email automation is an extremely powerful tool to employ in your email marketing strategy.
Retargeting
Retargeting is a digital marketing strategy that works by embedding cookies from your website to your visitor’s browsers. Once they leave and visit other websites with retargeting ads on, your website’s ad will display, constantly keeping your brand at the forefront of their minds.
Seventy per cent of website visitors is more likely to convert on your website when retarded by ads. This sounds great from digital marketing aspects but the great news is that you can use this same strategy in your email marketing campaigns. When customers open your promotional emails or any other email you send, you can retarget them.
Using your Email Lists with Social Media
There is no denying the powerful impact social media networks have on digital marketing. Titans in the industry like Facebook can really help your email marketing strategy evolve. You can take your email lists and upload them to Facebook using the Custom Audience. Follow up by using the Look-a-Like Audience tool to advertise across Facebook to users with similar interests and characteristics as your current customers. This broadens the reach of your brand and gets more potential customers to your website and on your lists.
Emails are here to Stay
Sure companies are always on the lookout for the next big thing in digital marketing, and constantly switching tactics to keep up with emerging trends. However, while this can be effective, email marketing has proven that it is a more cost-effective, multi-channel approach you can use to continually engage your users in a real way, provide quality content and solutions to them and help boosts your conversions and revenue. Email is not going anywhere anytime soon. It is still one of the best ways to can grow your reach and build lasting relationships with your customers while boosting your brand’s credibility and reputation.
