Email marketing continues to be one of the most effective marketing channels you can utilize for your business. It offers the ability to reach thousands of audience members relatively quickly, and can often funnel them along in the sales process (or close leads by itself). Don’t believe me? In 2013, marketers sent over 838 billion emails alone. To put that number in perspective, that’s like, 11.5 times the amount of Bill Gates’ net worth; it’s staggering. And since 91% of consumers check their email on a daily basis, it’s a channel that shouldn’t be forgotten about.
At Stratus Interactive, we use email marketing on a regular basis—from monthly blog recaps to entire campaigns built around the platform. Recently, we helped a client of ours, CorpU, complete a coordinated email marketing campaign for one of their new platforms, Connected Learning.
As CorpU had just been featured in a bi-monthly publication, eLearning Magazine, the company wanted an email campaign to help drive conversions down to the close while utilizing the magazine, emails, landing pages, and downloadable content. The goal was to provide users with spoon-fed incentives to make the content easy to engage with, and engage they did. The campaign was certainly successful, in large part due to following best practices of winning email marketing campaigns.
In following email marketing best practices, we decided to provide a consistent theme across all aspects of this campaign. The goal was for the articles and ads in eLearning Magazine to portray a similar palette and design as the users drove down to the bottom-of-the-funnel offers in the emails and landing pages. After all, the point is for users to click-through to the offer on the other side, so persuading them using bold fonts, bright colors, and ample whitespace can push them in the direction you need them to go.
This means, all vital content should be above the fold, and the CTA needs to clearly separate itself from the rest of the page to improve its click-through ranking. If they can’t see the CTA, chances are, they won’t click it—right?
Compelling copy is also another big feature in successful email marketing campaigns. The best subject lines are short, sweet, and persuasive. It helps to ask yourself, would I care? If you’re bored, chances are your readers are too. Urgency is also key, as it gives them a reason the need to act now, rather than later. It also facilitates the tie between landing page and email, with quality conversions abound if you can successfully implement the two together, which was our driving factor behind all aspects of the pages.
Because of our focus on best practices, CorpU’s email campaign went through with very successful results, including click through and open rates. If you’re able to follow strict guidelines and practices, the results will come.
Need to know more about email marketing? Contact us today to learn more, or see if we can help push you in the right direction.