Three Benefits Of Video Content In Your Email Marketing

Videos in email marketing

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It has been a possibility for a long time to include videos within emails for marketing. It takes just a few clicks to insert a video, hosted from a popular video platform like YouTube, into a campaign. The benefits of video have long been known as well. On landing pages they help conversions and can improve order values on product pages.

In addition, they are known as great marketing tools. Those sites with videos embedded on them receive more social shares.

However, still there are few people who regularly use video within their emails.

Why Is Video Under-Utilised?

There are many reasons why video might be under-utilised for marketers. One of the common reasons might simply be because those creating campaigns don’t have the content to share. Yet videos can be created on numerous sites in minutes and for little cost. Therefore, this can’t be something that prevents brands from creating video content.

Another reason could be skill. Video creation is harder than other forms of content. Yet there are courses designed to support video creation and many simple video creation programs are easy to use. Perhaps if marketers know the true value of video within emails, there might be more of a push to overcome these challenges and implement a powerful email marketing campaign that contains video.

What Are The Benefits Of Video In Email Marketing?

There are numerous benefits of embedding a video into your email marketing campaign. So, here are the top benefits you can expect to see when you embed your first video into a campaign.

1. Higher Click-Through Rate

According to surveys with email marketers, the emails that contain video have a 55% increase in click-through rate. In theory, this should lead to more conversions, but research has shown that the increase is less substantial at just 24%. However, that is still a good increase for a business. In addition, those that do purchase after reading an email with video will have higher order values.

This shows that videos can be more convincing than standard text and image email campaigns. The reason why the conversions might be lower is because there is no video at the second stage. If a video is included there as well, the conversions might also increase. Plus, the research couldn’t determine whether a customer came back later to purchase.

2. Increased Time On Email

Another great reason why you should be considering using emails within your campaigns is that they are engaging. Video is one of the most consumed forms of content on the internet. By 2022, experts reckon that 82% of content consumed online will be video.

Video also has sticking power. Those who use emails within their campaigns report that people are taking more time to read and consume email marketing content. This can be important as more time consuming email leads to higher conversion rates and more brand recognition. In addition, when you’ve embedded a video from YouTube, it does mean that those video counts increase which can help your video rank better for related keywords on that platform.

3. More Social Sharing

While your campaign is on email, that doesn’t mean that social media can’t play its part. When you embed video into your email campaign, you should notice that your campaign is shared more on social media. This brings new audiences to see your email and can help to grow your email marketing list.

This has a positive long term impact on your marketing. The more people who are on your list, the greater the revenues in the long term and so you’ll be more successful.

Conclusion

Videos in email marketing are a great way for you to connect with audiences. The benefits they offer all lead to one thing: an email campaign with a better ROI. Considering that email already has the highest ROI digitally, this only makes it more valuable for your business.

Do you use videos in email? Where do you host those videos?

Let us know in the comments below.

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4 Reasons You Need To Avoid Spam Filters

Why do you need to avoid the spam folder?

Spam is prevalent across the world with more than half of all mail being counted as spam.Spam filters are an email marketer’s worst nightmare. Bounces are fairly easy to deal with by removing the bad subscriber from your list. However, you are often left unaware that your important communications are being placed inside spam folders because of a mailbox’s filters.

There are many reasons why this is bad for your business. Here are numerous reasons why you need to avoid Spam filters.

1. It Lowers Your Open Rate

The first, and most obvious, impact of your emails landing in your list’s spam folder is that it will lower your email’s open rate. Too few people check their spam folders. This does have significant consequences for customers, as too many important emails are often mistakenly sent to the spam folder. However, it also lowers your open rate, and that can make it harder for you to communicate important messages.

A lower open rate also damages the reputation of your list and can make it hard to justify your email marketing campaigns. Finally, your email marketing ROI will be much lower if people aren’t reading your emails.

2. It Damages Your Reputation

Your mail being sent to spam folders does mean that your mail’s servers get a bad reputation. Whether this is from the incoming server or the fact that seeing your mail in the spam filter automatically damages your reputation with subscribers is not important, your mail being in the spam folder is damaging to your reputation.

A damaged reputation is a sure way for your subscribers to not buy from you in the future. And some filters share information, so your mail continuously being picked up by spam filters means that your mail is being sent to one folder, and can sometimes mean others in the future will send your mail to spam filters. This is especially true if people use the same servers such as gmail, hotmail, etc..

3. Costs Increase, Revenues Fall

In order for you to avoid spam filters, once you’ve been caught in their trap, you have to spend lots of money to solve the problem. For instance, you might need to invest in new mail servers or new templates for your emails. You might also need to contact consultants who can help you improve your reputation.

At the same time, as less people are reading your emails, fewer people will be visiting your website and your revenue will drop. That means that email marketing, that usually has the best ROI in the digital marketing industry, isn’t offering the returns that you should expect.

4. Your List Will Get Smaller

If you follow best practices, at some point you’ll clean your list. This should be done every two to three months. If someone doesn’t open an email for three months, because your mail has been placed in their spam folder, you will most likely remove them.

For some people, this won’t be a great loss. They no longer want to subscribe to your mail and want to move on. However, some people are probably great leads for your business and losing a section of your list because your mail is sent to the spam folder is a huge loss. In addition, as you lose people on your mailing list, the potential revenue from your email marketing gets lower.

Finally, losing people on a list means you have to find new subscribers. However, their lifespan on your list could be cut short because your mail is caught by their spam filters. It’s an endless cycle that needs to be broken for you to realise the potential revenues from email marketing.

Conclusion

Being caught in an email spam filter is not good news. It is expensive to resolve and can cause significant long term damage to your business’ reputation. So, the best thing to do is to stop your emails from being caught in the spam trap and follow the best practices.

What tips do you have for avoiding the spam filter? Have you resolved this issue?

Let us know in the comments below.

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Everything You Need To Know About Split Testing

What is split testing?

Split testing is one of the most important activities you should be doing with email marketing. It helps you identify what audiences prefer on many different fronts. This can help you to achieve better results, more revenue and greater profits. However, not everyone realises the benefits, or knows how to properly adopt split testing in their campaigns.

In this article, we’ll be looking at why you should be conducting split testing in your email marketing campaigns. We’ll also be giving away some top secrets to help you out.

What Is Split Testing?

Split testing is the process of sending two versions of an email out (or landing page) with one variance on the copies to see which performs better. The difference between the two emails can be very slight, like the colour of a call to action button or one word. Or it can be a massive difference like the time of day, or day of the week.

There are many ways to test the effectiveness of split testing. You might find that customers prefer to read the content of an email with a certain subject line but are less likely to purchase after reading the email. That is why it’s important to set up key metrics for your campaign and determine what you class as better.

In addition, you should try to exhaust one variance at a time. However, if you have a significantly large enough list (i.e. over 100,000) you could test three or four varieties of the difference (i.e. four different coloured call to action buttons). However, to be sure of the results, you should do the test a couple of times.

Why Use Split Testing?

Split testing is essential if you want to improve email marketing revenues. As more ROI is generated from email marketing than any other digital sales channels, you should focus a lot of efforts on this channel. By testing your emails and adopting audience preferences, you’re likely to get better results.

It isn’t just conversions that are important either. You can look at ways to decrease the unsubscribe rates, increase social sharing, and other factors that you deem important. Split testing is also the only real way that you can test what the audience prefers absolutely.

Top Tips For Succeeding With Your Split Testing Campaigns

Split testing isn’t easy. There are many ways that you can get information or strategies wrong. So, here are some of the best kept secrets about ensuring your split campaigns are a success:

Test large populations – Ensure that you have a large enough population to start testing. You should be looking at least a couple of hundred per segment in the testing. The more you have, the higher the accuracy of the results. If you don’t have many on your mailing list, don’t buy more – just repeat the test a few times.

Exhaust options before moving on – One test does not determine the most popular options. Your audience might prefer orange as a call-to-action button in one test, but that doesn’t mean red isn’t more popular on another test. Always ensure that you’re exhausting options before declaring any success.

Randomise the audiences on each segment – When conducting a split test, always ensure that the audience in each segment is randomly selected. Otherwise you could face some bias in the results.

Regularly retest assumptions – Sometimes you might need to retest an assumption because of changes in trends or attitudes. Never be afraid of this.

Don’t tell people you’re testing them – People react differently if they know they’re being testing. All the changes you make should be subtle and the audience should be oblivious to the split testing process.

Conclusion

Split testing is important and you should be constantly doing it. With the right tools and attitude you can improve results of your email marketing campaigns and enjoy higher returns on your investment.

Do you do split testing? What holds you back?

Let us know in the comments below.

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How AI Will Boost Email Marketing In 2019

Artificial Intelligence is one of the big technological developments. New ways to incorporate the technology into marketing are being developed and how email marketing can benefit is going to be specifically interesting. The results from email marketing being influenced by AI can be outstanding, and for little investment can really help to boost your revenues from campaigns.

Here are some of the ways that AI will boost email marketing and how you can incorporate it into your marketing campaigns.

1. Personalisation

Personalisation is a standard way to increase conversions within an email. However, customers are now becoming more aware of how personalisation within large email marketing campaigns can be done. Therefore, just using a name on a campaign is becoming less effective.

Artificial Intelligence is going to change that. It will be able to select certain behaviours that it can target to deliver more relevant content to audiences. This will help to improve open rates and conversions from campaigns. This can all be done automatically and generate a better conversion rate and higher levels of profits for your campaigns.

Some of the behaviours that AI might be able to pick up is consumer trends, behaviours and any common purchases made together. Using this, your business can advertise the relevant products to specific customers.

Another benefit of this is that it can reduce the unsubscribe rate for your mailing list. Therefore, over the long term, your mailing list will become even more valuable.

2. Set Time To Proper Interaction Periods

Artificial Intelligence is one of the best ways you can ensure that your messages are received by the audience when they’re more receptive to reading your emails. When you can tailor messages to be delivered when your audience are more likely to open and read your emails. This will increase the number of sales that are made via campaigns.

The challenge is that different audiences will open emails at different times. Business leaders for instance are more likely to open emails during the working day, while those shopping for kids clothing are often shopping Sunday through to Monday. But this isn’t uniform. Different members of your audience have unique behaviours and artificial intelligence will be able to determine those behaviours to help.

3. Reduce Abandoned Carts

Nearly 70% of all people abandon their carts on your store. There are numerous reasons for this, including too high shipping costs, unexpected taxes, just researching purchases and being interrupted by every day distractions. Some of these can’t be avoided, but that doesn’t mean you’ve lost the sale.

Instead, you can use artificial intelligence to contact those who’ve left an email address to remind them about the purchase. At the same time, it can identify what the likely reason for the missed order was. For instance, if they abandoned on the delivery options, then the system might be able to offer them a deal to get better shipping rates.

This kind of option allows you to claim back some of the abandoned carts. This will increase revenues and help you to achieve better profitability. In addition, it allows you to continue keeping in contact with audiences that need a reminder to visit your store for the latest deals/offers.

4. Target The Right People With Offers

When you have a new offer, you can often end up sending it to your whole mailing list. This can be wasted. When selling shoes for instance, some people will only want one type of shoes. Artificial intelligence will be able to take your deal promotion to the next level by identifying those who are more likely to be interested.

This can have massive implications for your store. Firstly, it reduces the number of emails in campaigns, which reduces campaign costs. In addition, you can be sure that your audience are going to be happy with the relevant communications and not frustrated that you’ve sent them generic emails.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence is going to change the way that you can market to your audience. It will have numerous functions that can help you produce campaigns in little to no time. This will save you countless hours in marketing that can be spent doing work you prefer to be doing and growing your business.

How will you utilise AI in your email marketing campaigns? Do you already use these tactics?

Let us know in the comments below.

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Why Less Is More When It Comes To Designing Your Email Campaigns

Less is always more when it comes to email.

Email campaigns are successful for numerous reasons. One of the main metrics used for showing the success of a campaign is that it has generated conversions. This often forces campaign designers to continuously add items to their campaigns in order to give audiences plenty of choices and maximise conversion opportunities.

However, this isn’t always the best option. In many cases, there are significant challenges for business owners who put too much into their email designs. For one, audiences feel bombarded. Even though the average time for reading an email has increased, the amount of time is still less than 12 seconds. That isn’t a lot of time for you to get the main message across.

Therefore, you need to remember the famous US Navy acronym KISS. KISS is an acronym with many different variations of the words, but they all mean the same thing: keep whatever you’re doing simple as this is always what works best.

Too Much Information Can Confuse Audiences

When you have too much information within an email, you can confuse audiences which can have three significant implications for your email. Firstly, it can mean that readers abandon your campaign quickly without converting. Secondly, it can increase unsubscribe rates as audiences think your campaigns are spam. Or, it might turn active subscribers into inactive subscribers who still receive your emails but never open them.

All of these aspects will lessen key metrics of your email marketing campaigns. This will make it more expensive to conduct email marketing, and make it seem less worthy. However, the issue is not to do with the email marketing system or your audience, but rather your campaigns’ design.

So, here are four ways to ensure you’re not overloading your campaigns with too much content.

1. Keep One Goal In Mind For Your Campaigns

The first things you need to do is to ensure that you’ve got one goal in mind for your campaigns. That one goal should lead to one action that the audience should take. The whole basis of this content should be that one goal and there should be limited mention of anything else than this.

2. Limit Images To One Important One

The next important aspect is to ensure you’re limiting content on an email to one image. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, half of all emails are now opened on a mobile device, so more than one high quality image slows down the rendering of the email and increases the chance of email abandonment.

Another problem is that more than one image can be distracting. You are better placing one image that clearly demonstrates the core message than bombarding the email with lots of images. If you have more than one image to show, then perhaps have the other images on the next step, on the page they have to click through to.

3. Have One Call To Action

When you’re having two calls-to-action on an email you’re going to confuse audiences to what you want them to do. This can mean that some of your audience will not even bother with your call-to-actions and instead abandon the email. Instead, focus all your effort on one click-through action.

4. Too Much Text

Another key issue with email campaigns is that there is too much text content within it. You want audiences to be able to quickly read the content. Research has found that emails with between 50 and 125 words have a higher response rate than those with less or more words in the content.

Conclusion

The key takeaway is clear: less is definitely more when it comes to email marketing. So, look carefully at your campaigns and ensure that you’re not putting in too much into them.

How do you restrict content on your email campaigns? Do you keep emails simple? Does it work?

Let us know in the comments.

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5 Things You Need Less Of To Improve Open Rates

What do you need to lose to improve open rates?

Your email campaign open rate is an important metric. The higher the open rate, the more people that are reading your campaigns and therefore, the greater revenue you can generate. However, there are several elements that can actually prevent you from having high open rates. By reducing some aspects within your campaign, you can actually improve open rates.

A higher open rate will also validate you as a sender. Therefore, if you can maintain high open rates, then your email domain will be whitelisted by email servers and this prevents your email from being sent into spam folders.

So, here are some of the things you can reduce in your email campaigns that can help you improve your open rates.

1. Subject Line Length

The first thing you should look at is the length of your subject lines. While they’ve got to include enough information to personalise, provide value and include an offer, the subject should also be short.

More than half of all emails are now opened on mobile devices and these have fewer spaces for letters. Therefore, if you have a subject line that is more than 41 characters then you’re likely to have part of the subject missing to audiences. This will devalue your subject line and reduce your open rate.

2. Spam Words

There are nearly 500 words that are considered spam by filters embedded in email servers. If you have these spam words inserted into the subject line or throughout the copy of your email, then you will have a hard time avoiding the spam folder in your subscriber’s email accounts. You might even have some hard bounces that will further impact your email server’s reputation.

Note that spam words being exempt from the email subject line isn’t the only requirement here. You must make sure that you limit their use within the copy of the email as many filters will assess the quality of the content now as well as the subject line.

3. Images Within The Copy Of The Email

There are many ways that images embedded within the email can reduce your open rates. Firstly, too many images might get flagged up by email filters. Secondly, images consume more memory than simple text. So when readers are on the move, it can take longer for people to open emails with lots of images.

When you do need to have images within an email, try to reduce the memory they require by using image optimisation tools like RIOT. These free tools will reduce the size of the images and convert them into different formats that make it easier and quicker for subscribers to view.

4. The Number Of People On A Send List

You’re never really looking to increase the number of people opening an email, you’re always looking at increasing the percentage of people who open an email in a campaign. This might seem the same, but they aren’t. There are many different people who reside on your email marketing list. They are all at different parts of the purchasing journey or are interested in different products.

Sending emails that aren’t relevant to people is not going to have them open the mail. Therefore, you need to segment your list so that campaigns are sent to the right people. This might mean you’re sending more emails out, but each campaign is to fewer, but more relevant people.

You should also look at cleansing your list every so often so those that haven’t responded to your campaigns, or have hard or soft bounced are removed from your list.

5. Number Of Emails Sent

If you send out emails too frequently you can put subscribers off from reading your emails. Some industries like coupon sites and job sites that send emails out every day experience very low open rates.

Instead you need to find the right sending frequency for your list. It is different for each industry and even demographic, so you might need to do some A/B testing on this tactic.

Get More Opens Through Smarter Email Campaigning

Your email list is valuable. Don’t waste that by limiting your potential results from campaigns. Ensure you’re leaving the right things out of your email content and subject line that can reduce your campaign’s open rates.

What is your open rate? What will you try to improve your open rate?

Let us know in the comments below.

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How To Manage Your List To Optimize Your Marketing Campaigns

How to manage your email marketing list

Your list is a vital piece of your marketing system. The ROI of email marketing is much higher than other forms of digital marketing. On average, every single email you send is worth roughly $0.10. The same research states that for every $1 you’ll spend, you’ll be getting back about $44 in revenue.

Using these figures, it’s easy to say that a list of 100,000 is worth approximately $10,000. If you send one email per week, that is a total revenue from email of about $520,000. If you want to be performing above expectations, then you want to be spending no more than $11,800 on your email marketing or $227 per email campaign.

Of course these are averages, and different industries have different benchmarks. But one thing that is consistent with all email marketing, is that it is the potential of your list that will determine the ultimate success of your email campaign.

What Do We Mean By the Potential Of The List?

The potential of the list refers to how active your email subscribers are to your email marketing content. Those that are highly engaged and active are worth more money than those that don’t open your emails. By managing your list effectively, you can increase the revenue of your email marketing campaigns.

While managing subscribers is important, so few people actual do it. In fact, most email lists are unsegregated or not even checked for outdated information that raises costs and lowers ROI for campaigns. So here are some of the best tips to help you manage your email list.

1. Remove The Unresponsive Email Subscribers

The first task that should be done on a regular basis is the removal of email subscribers who no longer interact with your content. This is important because those not responding to your emails are only costing you money.

Just removing the contact is the best option. You should send a re-engagement campaign first. This is a series of emails where the person is offered the chance to stay on your email list by clicking on a link in the email. Those that don’t respond to the first two or three emails should be removed from your list.

2. Segregate Email Subscribers

When you have a lot of subscribers, there are going to be different groups nestled within the list. There will be those who are past customers, potential customers and even groups based on purchases (i.e. male clothes, female clothes, etc.). By segregating one large list into lots of smaller lists, you can create campaigns for specific audiences.

Segregation in emails can lead to higher return rates on your campaigns. It can also lower costs of sending campaigns as well as lower unsubscribe rates. One of the main reasons why subscribers leave a list is because they don’t get relevant content, but with segregation you can avoid this.

3. Create Golden Lists

There are going to be subscribers who are reading every email, clicking on every link and perhaps converting on every email. These are the people you want on a golden list. The golden list is a group of email contacts that you give special promotions to, first access information and other luxuries that other people don’t have.

Those on a golden list are more grateful, because they feel special and, therefore, they become bigger brand ambassadors than they already are. This in turn helps you to generate more leads as they share their good fortunes on social media, driving traffic to your website and sign-up pages.

Conclusion

Your email subscription list is a powerful and valuable asset for your business. You can increase the value of your business’ email list by ensuring that you are managing it effectively. Use the tips above to ensure your list is offering you maximum campaign results.

How long do you spend managing your email list? What tips do you have?

Let us know in the comments below.

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7 Tips For Ensuring Better Open Rates On Your Campaigns

Open rates are the main drive for your emails. If you can get more people to open your emails, you’ll have more people who click through to links in those campaigns and this should earn you more revenue.

There are many aspects of your campaigns that help you improve your open rates. Here are some tips that can help you become a success with email marketing.

1. Don’t buy email contacts

The first tip is to ensure that you have a clean email marketing list in the first place. Don’t use contacts that haven’t given you permission and never buy email contacts. While it might seem beneficial to have a large email list, if those people have no relevance, they’re useless.

In addition, GDPR laws clearly state that you need the email owner’s permission to store their data. If you’ve bought the list, you cannot guarantee that.

2. Clean Out Your Email Contact List

One of the things that is holding your email open rate back is your list not being clean. People abandon email subscriptions for many different reasons including: no longer relevant content, marketers being too pushy, and the email address itself being abandoned.

You need to remove these people. They’re costing you money to market to a dead email address and affecting your email open rate.

3. Send Emails Less Regularly

Did you know that 78% of subscribers will unsubscribe to your list if you send too many emails. The truth is, that too many emails can lead to information overload and customers avoid these emails – literally deleting them before opening. That is why certain industries, like coupon and daily deal sites, have very low open rates.

Instead, create campaigns that are ultra-focused and are sent to audiences when they need them. Less is often more when it comes to marketing. You want your content to be powerful, not plentiful.

4. Use An Emoji In Your Subject Line

Your subject line is an important part of your email’s marketing. People judge on whether or not to read an email based solely on your subject line. According to a survey, 55% of brands use emojis in their email subject line and this has increased their open rate.

Emojis attract the attention of your audience because they stand out. Therefore, including them somewhere in your subject line is a good option. Perhaps being a little creative like replacing a word with an emoji can help you.

5. Exclude Certain Words From The Subject Line

There are so many words that can trigger spam filters or audiences automatically consider spam. Therefore, you should avoid words like: percent off, make money, collect, clearance and claim. Even words like discount and sale can be frowned upon.

Donate is also a very unpopular word in subject lines.

6. Personalise Your Email Subject Lines

It is better that you look at personalising your email subject line. Don’t just think that a name will now count as personalisation. Customers are very aware of technology and this won’t make them think you care about them. Instead, look at their behaviours and consider inputting some recent products they’ve looked at or content they’ve read from you.

Personalisation helps to build trust and relationships. With the right strategy you can increase open rates by about 50% with some simple personalisation.

7. Adopt A Gender-Neutral Marketing Philosophy

Women spend more time on their emails than men do, especially when it comes to retail based emails. Which is why you’ve always got to consider their email reading preferences in your campaign. One thing that is true of the female audience is that they prefer gender-neutral subject lines.

Therefore, drop ‘boy shoes’ or ‘women’s fashion’ and concentrate on making your subject lines more genderless.

Conclusion

Your open rate is important. The more people you have open their emails, the more sales you will likely have. Use the tips above to improve your campaign’s performance.

How do you improve your email’s open rate? Have you tried any of the tips above?

Let us know in the comments below.

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Why Your Marketing Needs To Align With Your Content And Goals

Write marketing publications that agree with other content and your goals

Too many companies think that marketing is the publication of content that draws audiences into a brand. While this is a simplified approach, marketing does much more than this in many respects. And that is why numerous campaigns fail. Here are some of the ramifications of marketing without alignment to content or goals.

1. It Confuses Audiences

One of the first problems that you might find with your publication of content without alignment to your content or goals, is that people get confused by your message. The best marketing has one clear message and that is linked to corporate ethics and values. When you market a brand without alignment to content or goals, you risk creating a two-tier set of communications that can contradict with each other.

For instance, you could publish content on your social media channels about hot weather being a great time to buy and use your product. But then you could also have content on your website that links best use of your product in cold weather. This is a mismatch that will confuse audiences into deciding when your product is best used.

Another example is sending out an email that promotes a webinar, but sending them to a landing page that advertises an ebook. Audiences will not know what they’re supposed to be doing. This can lower conversion rates and waste marketing budgets.

2. You Can Promote To The Wrong Audience

When you don’t align your marketing to set goals, ethics, or content on your site, you’re likely to attract the wrong audience. This can be particularly problematic if your content is centred on a certain set of demographics. For instance, you might market to small business leaders but then have content that is more relevant to multi-national companies.

This mismatch harms a commercial reputation and you can see your future marketing endeavours ignored by both sets of audiences. It can also take a lot of effort to improve your reputation once it has been tarnished.

If you do get some of the audience who engage with your marketing to subscribe to further content, then all you’re getting is bad data. These aren’t the people who can benefit from your products and services or they might not be in a position to make a purchase. Further marketing to these people is just expensive and a waste of your precious time.

3. It Makes Work Harder In Your Organisation

Productivity in your business is another key aspect to profitability. The more staff can do in a given time, the higher the revenues and the more profit you can make. However, if they are dealing with miscommunications because marketing has been produced with the wrong focus, they will waste time correcting it.

In addition, staff want to know that there is a singular approach to work. It helps them be more focused and buy-in to brand priorities. This in turn helps you as it improves staff engagement, retention and quality of work.

Just staff leaving your organisation can be a major cost, but staff will leave if they feel the company is not aligning goals with marketing. The cost of replacing staff can be the equivalent of 18 months’ of wages.

Aligning Marketing With Goals And Content Is Easy

The truth is that aligning marketing with your goals and content is fairly easy. It is about writing down what is important to your brand and basing everything on that one philosophy. So, if you want to help customers cut the time they’re spending doing taxes, that is the focus you should have on your marketing. Or if you want to sell customers ingredients to help them turn bland food into spicy creations, you need to sell that benefit.

Focus marketing using content you’ve already generated and the goals that are in the heart and soul of your business. It will give you better results.

How do you align marketing with goals and content? What do you create first?

Let us know in the comments below.

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What Is Happening With Email Marketing In 2019

How email marketing will change in 2019

As technology progresses, so does the way businesses use email marketing to reach customers and prospects to help grow their business. In 2019, there are going to be a lot of changes thanks to continuous advancements. Here are some of those changes that will happen and how you can benefit from them.

1. Personalisation Will Take Centre Stage

Personalisation has been on the agenda for marketing for the past few years. However, 2019 is going to be the year where personalisation really starts to take over. There is no real excuse now for your small business not to use personalisation in campaigns and the results can be outstanding.

Research has found that conversations from click-throughs can be increased by 202% if call-to-actions have personalisation within them. Other surveys have found that order values can be increased by 5% and conversion rates increased by 6%.

All the benefits added together mean that businesses can improve revenues by up to 17% when they integrate personalisation within their campaigns.

2. Predicative Automation Will Help Businesses Win

Everyone knows that data is vital in today’s business environment. It helps you to identify patterns in purchasing behaviour. Using this you can predict when a prospect might be ready to buy. Or alternatively you can predict when someone might need to re-purchase a product.

By using this information, you can send emails at exactly the right time to ensure that you’re the brand the prospect buys from and not a competitor. The technology for this is already available and easy to implement, plus it adds to the personalisation that was mentioned in point one.

There are many ways you can mix predicative automation with personalisation. These include birthdays, special occasions, past purchasing history and other aspects that can create an immersive customer experience.

3. Higher Average Order Value Via Mobile Devices

The average order value (AOV) for mobile devices has historically always been lower compared to desktop. This is generally because consumers are more adverse to buying big ticket items via their mobile devices. However, this can all change and the start of the mobile’s catch up began last year.

According to statistics, in the third quarter of 2018, mobile AOV was just $20 less than desktop AOV, a closer gap than has been recorded before. A significant reason for this is that the consumer experience of the mobile purchasing process is becoming much better.

With more emails being opened on mobile devices, the importance of this is significant. If you can improve your website’s performance on mobile devices, improve product descriptions, add more images, videos and customer testimonials, you can offer a better experience to your subscribers and improve overall revenue without increasing subscribers.

4. Interactive Content Will Be Key

Engagement rates in emails is a significant driver for success. The more that subscribers can engage with an email, the more action they are likely to take on your website and shop. There are many ways that you can increase engagement within your email content. In the past it was limited to just videos within content.

However, now you can insert other aspects such as games, quizzes image carousels and other clickable items that allow the user to interact with your brand without ever leaving the email itself. There are many ways that brands are using this currently, including offering personality quizzes or making bookings without leaving the email.

Interactive content helps to form happy memories in the minds of subscribers and this can help to create regular habits within your subscribers. The main habit is the desire to open your emails. However, be warned, it also forms certain expectations such as the knowledge that your emails will contain interactive content at all times.

But if done right, interactivity within the emails will increase sales and revenues.

2019 Will Be Your Year

When you start to implement the tips above, you’ll find that email marketing can boost the sales in your business. This will help you grow your business and develop new products/services that can help you become a household name.

What do you think is going to be a major email marketing trend this year? Have you used any of the above in your marketing?

Let us know in the comments below.

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