Especially if you’re already familiar with leveraging insights and have previous marketing experience, increasing email engagement isn’t as complicated as fledgling brands often think. The latter primarily means communication.

Even if you’re completely new to email marketing, you still have ample opportunity to grow your brand by continuously analyzing campaign performance and getting feedback. In short, that’s all there is to success.

But the key is to get people to actually open your email. Believe it or not, this is more difficult than the actual offer or message content.

It has started

To understand the scope of the task at hand, we first need to understand the recipient’s online habits. When do they check for new messages? What devices are they using? What do they expect from email offers? What is one message too many? mosquito? Could your message be deleted or marked as spam? What does that depend on?

Some of the answers can be answered through stats:

• More than 52% of people access their inbox on mobile devices, and the percentage is on the rise and expected to keep rising
• 70% of mobile recipients read emails at least one more time
• 65% of the re-read messages result in a click
• One-third of all clicks are performed on mobile devices
• Most subscriptions take place on mobile devices

As you can see, optimizing email campaigns for mobile devices is imperative. This means you’ll want to go easy with images, use proper formatting and mind the recommended word count, especially when it comes to subject lines.

As regards the “one message too many,” use common sense. Newsletters are generally being sent either weekly, bi-monthly or monthly, so pick one option and stick to it! As for various offers, don’t be too aggressive in your online marketing efforts. Announcing a sale prior to it actually taking place is recommended, but don’t do it five times in a row and especially not every day leading up to the sale. Because statistics show that the best time to send email is around 10am and 1pm when most people check their inboxes. Need I say your message should be at the top? People get too many offers and not enough time (and of course not is not).

With that in mind, we want your brand to be recognized by your loyal customers. Don’t be the one to send unsolicited offers. Simply put, this means you need to do your audience research. Send offers to your audience only. Targeting, segmentation and personalization are the keys to the long-term success of your email marketing. This is the only way your message gets the attention it deserves instead of being deleted or marked as spam.

inform!

There is nothing wrong with asking people for feedback. But on the contrary! This is the most efficient way to show your audience that your brand cares about people, not just sales. With social media sites becoming the new virtual meeting place today, it makes sense to promote your offer there as well.

You can expect the best results with cross-promotion. Of course, use your social media profiles for their intended purpose (e.g. Twitter for text messages and discussions, Facebook for sharing offers, Pinterest for images, etc.).

Email Marketing Tips

Frankly speaking, we’re sick and tired of the multitude of useful hints and tips everyone seems to be an expert on nowadays. Email marketing best practices fall under common sense, as we’ve summarized below. To do email marketing mojo right, mind the following:

• Optimize your emails for mobile devices
• Make your website responsive (especially the landing page and the page linked in your email)
• Write literate and concise subject lines, text and copy hook
• Subject lines should not be more than 30 characters in length
• Pre-header text should not be more than 50 characters in length (40 to 50 chars are recommended)
• Include contact information and unsubscribe button to all emails you send
• Feature a large call to action button that stands out from the rest of the text
• For the rest, refer to insights. Insights, coupled with feedback, are the key to every successful strategy.

Finally, mind your brand identity at all times. Regardless of the type of offer, your communication style and business proposition should always be consistent. You can target different audiences in different ways, but stick to one style.

Let’s back up these tips with stats:

• Targeted email campaigns generate more than 75% of the total email revenue
• Transactional emails generate 6 times more revenue than other message types
• Transactional emails get 8 times more clicks than other email types
• Automated email campaigns have 50% conversion rates
• 77% of marketers use email to send personalized content to subscribers
• 67% of marketers use big data to personalize email campaigns
• 66% of marketers personalize email campaigns
• 64% of marketers use mobile-optimized designs for email campaigns

Conclusion

Email marketing is cheap, fun and holds an immense potential to multiply your customer base. Leaving complicated stats and calculations aside, in order for your campaigns to be successful, you need to be nice-mannered, communicate with your clients actively, and cross-promote your offer so that more people will get to see it.

Experimenting with various approaches is fine, but when you find a style that works — stick to it.

Last but not least — reward loyalty. Always devise special offers for people who’ve made your brand what it is. Your company will surely become a famous name.