18 Simple Strategies to Create Email Marketing Campaigns That Stand Out

In today’s world, companies of all sizes are tightening their belts and paying close attention to how and where they spend their money. As a result, it’s becoming more important to stand out from the competition, and email marketing is one of the most effective ways to improve client engagement, new sales, and customer retention. According to Litmus, it’s one of the top 3 channels of more than ¾ of all marketers.

However, creating effective email marketing campaigns that stand out from the crowd doesn’t have to mean a ton of work or reinventing your strategy. Instead, simple shifts to your emails can help drive significant impact in the long run.

Whether you’re planning months ahead or simply looking for ideas you can put into place now for quick results, we’ve compiled some of the simplest ways you can adapt and adopt new approaches to your email marketing campaigns. Read along to learn more about how your business can stand out from the competition.

Integrate Dynamic Content & Personalization

People often buy from companies they like and trust. One of the most effective ways to build that trust is by personalizing all your outreach to clients, including email campaigns. Data from Hubspot supports this, showing that “the most effective strategies for email marketing campaigns are subscriber segmentation (78%), message personalization (72%), and email automation campaigns (71%).”

If you’re wondering how to customize your email campaigns, here are a few easy strategies:

• Use tokens, or fields like “First Name,” so that one of the first things people see in their inbox is their first name.
• Send out celebratory birthday emails (or if relevant, birthday savings).
• Use the customer’s anniversary date with their company or yours to send out a note of acknowledgement.
• Create onboarding emails based on the problems your customers want to solve when they sign on with you.
• Send subscription reminder emails so that your customers know when their subscription is coming up for renewal with an opportunity to call to talk to your success team to continue to make the most of new features.

Looking for more ways to personalize? Track the products each person purchases or views, customer service calls, or other interactions with your company and send follow up email campaigns.

Regular Check-ins

In many cases, we see that clients are reluctant to hop into the inboxes of their prospects or current clients. One of the simplest ways to stand out from the competition is to increase follow-up frequency. When your audience hears from you regularly with valuable content, they’re more likely to think of you first.

But how often should you send email campaigns? The answer is complex and depends largely on your customer journey. Because ideal frequency varies greatly depending on your business and client base, there’s no hard and fast rule on email cadence. With that in mind, here are a few ideas to increase email marketing frequency, turn prospects into qualified leads, and upsell or cross-sell them:

• After a webinar series, send follow-up emails thanking them for attending and sending out thoughtfully curated content.
• Send a weekly or monthly email round up of content from your blog or social media. If you publish a lot, curate the content based on different audience segments’ interests.
• Share pertinent information and upcoming events or deadlines your audience needs to know about.

The bottom line is that there are some easy ways to supplement your existing email marketing strategy by increasing the frequency of emails and stay top of mind with your audience.

Test Design Layouts, Templates, Subject Lines, and Preview Text

Testing remains one of the best strategies for improving the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. In addition to giving valuable data about what resonates with your audiences, leveraging data from QA, A/B, and spam testing can be a powerful opportunity to stand out.

According to Hubspot, “Only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.” As a result, this strategy presents endless opportunities to stand out from the competition.

But how do you test these variables? Understanding which design layouts, templates, subject lines, and preview text are likely to yield the best ROI, is as simple as choosing one at a time to test. Litmus shares that it’s possible to “Enjoy up to a 28% higher return when you put testing to work for your email program.”

Here are a few ideas to do this quickly and efficiently:

• Consider A/B testing two different subject lines and preview text for each email to learn what resonates best with your audience.
• Test different content types, including videos, tutorials, and roundups to see what generates the best open rates.
• Play with different ways to make emails easier to adjust, whether that means adding in pops of color or converting some paragraphs to bullet points to give people at-a-glance access to key data.

In addition to providing valuable data that can improve ROI, you can use this information to update your templates every 90 days or so. Some ideas for updating might include adjusting the color based on what performs best, tweaking logo placement or size, updating footer text, or adjusting the width of your content.

Additionally, don’t forget to consider accessibility. Pay attention to how your colors, font choices, and font size display on mobile and desktop devices. You content should be easy to digest even if people are visually impaired or color blind.

Pay Attention to Trends, Real-Time Stats, and the News Cycle

Relevant content matters and a wide variety of factors drive relevance. As a result, by paying attention to what’s going on in your business and the world at large, you can engage your audience by sharing relevant content in your email campaigns.

• Use automation to track which links people click in their emails and follow up with similar content they might find valuable or interesting.
• If news breaks that could be relevant to your audience, create or share content to help them navigate the repercussions from the news.
• If you discover that other organizations have trending content that’s related to yours, share your article with your audience.
• Watch your blog traffic and use email campaigns to share trending content even if it’s older if it’s still relevant.

Looking for an example of how to use email marketing to drive traffic to relevant content?

Perhaps your organization has published good content about GDPR, CAN-SPAM, or even best data security practices. By keeping that information up to date, you’re prepared when breaking news brings the topic front and center. Whether there’s a data breach, an update to the law, or even a viral video on social media, you can leverage this increased interest by sharing this content in your email campaigns. What’s more, even when there’s no breaking news, if you notice increased traffic to the blog, you can ensure that it gets in front of a wider, potentially interested audience.

Ask For Feedback & Suggestions Throughout the Buyer’s Journey

Your email marketing strategy doesn’t always have to be about marketing. In addition to delivering engaging content, you can use your email campaign software to gather valuable data about your audience and how they perceive your brand. Here are a few simple ideas you can try:

• Map your customer journey and pay attention to where people drop off. Focus on updating emails in that segment.
• Request feedback on recent experiences with your company, whether the sales team or customer service, to help you uncover opportunities to improve.
• Gather data from prospects as well as current customers about what’s going on in their businesses to identify trends and potential opportunities.

Leverage Your Email Marketing Campaigns to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Making small shifts in your email marketing strategy today helps you stay ahead of the curve. And because many of the ideas we’ve shared today don’t represent bold moves, it’s possible to dive in without involving every department in your organization in the decision-making process.

Failing to make the most of your email marketing is likely to yield more risks in your business strategy. According to Litmus, “37% of brands are increasing their email budget, and just 1.3% are making cuts.” Even if you choose not to increase your email marketing spend, there are ways you can leverage your campaign strategy and platform to stay top of mind in your industry/niche.

If you’re ready to level up your email marketing strategy, connect with our skilled team of campaign execution experts today.

The post 18 Simple Strategies to Create Email Marketing Campaigns That Stand Out appeared first on DemandGen.