Maximize Your Email Campaign with Market Research

Email marketing is still alive and the best way to do it well is with market research. Here are some tools and tips to help you maximize your email campaign.

Email remains one of the most effective channels for marketers to reach customers. In fact, a recent study by McKinsey & Company found that email was 40 times better at attaining new customers than social platforms like Twitter or Facebook. However, to be successful with an email campaign, you have to take a walk in your readers’ shoes and understand what they want and how they will respond to what you send them.

This research on maximizing your email campaigns helps take the guesswork out of your efforts by providing proven methods from real emails that have garnered the attention of subscribers.

Get Personal

With more than 830 billion emails sent and received per day, it can be hard for brands to break through the clutter. Marketers must realize the important of relevancy and make a concerted effort to add personal touches to emails. Personalization should be at the heart of every email you send, from the list to the subject line to the copy within the email.

Gilt Groupe does an excellent job of making subscribers feel like the company is speaking directly to them by sending out over 3,000 variations of its daily email. Each message is tailored toward the subscriber’s purchase, browsing histories, and past click-throughs. This type of information aggregation requires quite a bit of work and customization, but it drives real returns.

It’s no secret that email personalization leads to higher open rates. Turns out personalized copy and product recommendations can generate a 20 percent increase in revenues, according to Experian Marketing Services. Begin with name personalization in subject lines and introductions. First AND last names tend to have the highest open rates. Next, segment your lists based on recipients’ gender, demographics, job, etc. The more levels you can segment, the better! Lastly, work on behavioral targeting and find out how your customers behave on your site.

Support Mobile-Friendly Formats

These days, more than half of all emails are opened on a mobile device. This means marketers must go the extra mile in accommodating mobile users. If you think mobile formatting isn’t important, consider this: Research has found that 70 percent of consumers delete an email on mobile that doesn’t look good, and more than 18 percent will unsubscribe from an email list if their mobile device doesn’t support the format. In general, consumers want a simple, easy way to view content.

Since screen sizes vary from device to device, it’s important to make sure you follow a few rules that work across the board in terms of design:

• Use single-column templates to ensure your content is readable across devices. Stick to a width around 600px.
• Put your call to action at the top of your email and make sure to leave enough space to make it easy to click on.
• Be sure to use strongly contrasting colors and avoid tiny text.
• Steer clear of creating emails that contain all of your content in a single image. If the image doesn’t load, the subscriber might miss your whole message!

A lot goes into creating an email marketing campaign, but correctly deployed email marketing efforts have grabbed the attention of subscribers and helped them convert time and time again.

However, in order for this to be true, your email marketing campaign must stand out and be personalized to truly grab the attention of your subscribers and help them click through to your site.

Pique Subscribers’ Interest with a Unique Subject Line

With all of the messages email users see throughout the day, your message needs to stand out. Something as simple as having a clear, concise, and customized subject line that appeals to your subscribers could increase your open rate tenfold. Here are a few real examples of subject lines with high open rates.

• “Preliminary Floor Plans For South Detroit Neighborhood Members”
• “Your September Website Analytics”
• “Important Travel Information About Your Upcoming Flight”
• “Exclusive Sale for Macy’s Rewards Members!”

Including timely information, implied benefits, and something personal to the reader in a subject line of less than 50 characters are all great ways to encourage subscribers to open an email. However, excessive punctuation, all caps, or fake email replies are just a few misdemeanors that can trigger spam alerts.

You Got Them To Open The Email… Now What?

The subject line draws them in, but the content of the email message makes subscribers stay. One of our favorite examples is how UncommonGoods tells a story about a breakup between a car and a bike in one of its messages through the use of product images, sketches, and copy. It’s lighthearted, fun, and offers a unique way for customers to visualize multiple products they sell.

When it comes to the copy of your email message, a few things are important to note:

• Establish relevancy through personalization. Explain how you know the recipient and why this email message might be of interest to them.
• Write in second person so you orient the copy toward the reader and not yourself. This subtle tactic helps you stay value-oriented.
• Emphasize benefits, rather than features.
• Keep your message brief and to the point.

Banana Republic recently launched an email campaign touting its new men’s shorts collection. Anyone can send an email about shorts, but the copy in this particular message identified what makes these shorts worthwhile by discussing benefits and being brief and to the point. Check it out:

“Quick Change Artist. Surprisingly versatile, our newest shorts are designed to take you from downtime straight to downtown. Just swap the polo for a button-down and add a structured blazer for an instant style upgrade.”

Sending the right message to your subscribers means everything. If the message doesn’t properly grab their attention and keep it by offering something relevant, then your efforts are wasted. Email marketing requires a lot of work, but can offer outstanding ROI if nurtured properly. The only way you can truly maximize your email campaign is to personalize as much as possible, be mobile-ready, and offer unique, beneficial, content for your readers. These tactics will keep them subscribed and will entice them to click through to your landing page.