If you’re debating whether to keep email marketing/newsletters as part of your strategy this year, or to put the budget and energy towards social media, read on.
The average open rate for newsletters across all industries is 22.86%, and the average click through rate is 3.71%. Compare that to the average engagement rate across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter of only 0.58% — and you see why we believe emails are one of the most effective channels!
Still need convincing? According to MarketingSherpa, 60% of consumers subscribe to a brand’s newsletter to get promotional messages and deals, compared to only 20% that follow brands on social media.
The bottom line is that newsletters are often more cost effective and have better return-on-investment than social media campaigns. People think that you can reach millions of people for free on social media – and sure, you can, but only if they come looking for your brand or they are already following you. Even then, social networks don’t show all of your content to all of your fans all of the time. Their algorithms restrict your content and most often you will need to spend some money on advertising before you start to see results.
5 Tips for email marketing success:
Send your mailers based on when your audience will open them.
According to Wordstream, Thursday mornings between 8 and 9am is the most effective time to send an email and get the best open rate, but test different days and times to see what works for your audience.
Keep subject lines short and punchy, and personalise them.
Subject lines with 6 -10 words consistently have the best open rates and personalisation increases this open rate exponentially.
Make sure your newsletter design is mobile friendly, on brand and eye-catching.
Most people used the default mail app on their phone to check their email (iOS Apple Mail, Android or Samsung Mail), another third used Gmail, either the app or the online version. In total, about 67% of consumers check their email on their phone. This should tell you that if you want your email to be well received – make sure it is mobile friendly!
Find out the ROI of your specific email marketing campaigns.
Analyse your data, and make sure that the money you are spending on newsletters is working for you.
Keep an eye on the numbers.
If your database is shrinking, figure out why and address the issue. The top 3 reasons people unsubscribe are:
– They receive too many emails from a brand.
– They no longer find the information relevant (now that they are married, had their baby, stopped eating that type of food, etc.).
– They don’t recognise the brand and don’t remember signing up to receive the mailers.
To summarise, email marketing campaigns are easy to set up, there are many free or inexpensive tools to use to design and send them (including Mailchimp, MailBlaze and CreateSend), and the results are proven to be highly effective. So, what are you waiting for?
(Surefire ways to grow your email newsletter subscribers
