2016 is fast approaching. After the excesses of Christmas and New Year, many people start to think about changing their lifestyles, improving their diet and, generally, getting more fit and healthy. But it’s not only our bodies we can work on in the new year. It’s the perfect time to get your email marketing more fit and healthy. Here are some tips to help get your email marketing on top form for the year ahead:
Lose Weight
The vow to lose weight is one that many of us will make at the start of 2016 and, while you’re trimming your waistline, you can also ‘trim’ your email marketing efforts. With more and more people checking their email on mobile devices, many companies are abandoning bulky, data heavy emails in favour of cleaner responsive designs that look good on both small and large screens.
Fitbit send particularly good responsive emails:
Desktop
Mobile
The content of this email doesn’t change between the desktop and mobile versions. The layout is just adapted to make it more logical for smaller mobile devices. Also, this email is not packed with images and information. Just enough is given to tell the customer what they need to know. This doesn’t make the email less powerful; it just makes it more user friendly for the consumer.
Get ‘Personal’ Training
Marketing emails are more powerful if they’re personalised. In fact, a study by Aberdeen Group has shown that personalised emails improve click through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. So, if you’re not making your emails relevant to your customers, you’ll certainly need some ‘personal’ training in the New Year.
Personalising your emails can be as simple as just putting your subscriber’s name in the subject line and body. If you do this, like in this example from Garnier, it will make it seem like you are only talking to your subscriber (a not a large group of people), making them feel more valued, and your company seem more trustworthy:
However, personalisation can go much further than this. You can send your subscribers an email on their birthday, or you can send recommendations based on their previous purchases. It’s only limited by your imagination.
Slim Down Your Mailing List
Even the best marketing email won’t yield results if the people on your mailing list aren’t taking notice of it, and a mailing list containing a lot of inactive subscribers could severely damage your reputation. The New Year provides the perfect opportunity to ‘slim down’ your mailing list. Take the time to remove any completely inactive subscribers from your list. You could also try to encourage them to reconnect with you with a re-engagement email. This example, from Chain Reaction Cycles, encourages customers to reconnect by clearly explaining the benefits of subscription and by offering a discount off their next shop:
However, after sending a re-engagement email, if your subscribers still don’t open or click through the email, then it’s time to remove them from your list permanently.
Break Out of Old Habits
The New Year is the perfect time to look back on your email marketing efforts from the past year. Was there anything that worked particularly well? Or do you have any old habits that you’re sticking to, but that aren’t improving the ‘health’ of your email marketing? Doing this will help you to see where your biggest achievements lie, and help make sure you have another year of successful email marketing!
