Top Industries That Benefit From Email Marketing

email marketing teams
What industries are doing best with email marketing

Email marketing has been the most effective digital marketing platform for over a decade. For every $1 spent on email marketing, the return on investment is on average $38. However, while all businesses and industries can benefit from marketing via email, some industries will have better results.

The industries which do better aren’t always because their audience use email more. It could be that businesses in those industries are better at utilising email for promoting their businesses. Here are some of those businesses that are performing well, and why they are doing better.

1. The Hospitality Industry

When looking for hotels, travellers like to focus on prices and reviews. Those marketing hotels are using this to their advantage. If a user searches through hotels on a site and then doesn’t make a booking, the company will then send an email listing hotels with their prices and a link to reviews.

One example of a hospitality business that will do this is Airbnb. They use software that can send emails quickly when certain behaviours are triggered. This is when they’ve searched for a place to stay, but not made a booking.

If no booking is forthcoming on the first email, then the company will send another email offering alternatives to those in the first email.

This is a great example of not just email marketing, but also automation. The emails are also perfect, because, according to research, they give the audience exactly what they want: prices and reviews.

2. Retail

Ecommerce and other retailers are bound to be big players of email marketing. Sales can be directly linked to email marketing activity and therefore, organisations can track results. This often offers more justification for email marketing than other industries that cannot directly track sales to emails.

Retailers also benefit from the huge amounts of data they can collect and use in marketing. For instance, previous purchases can be tracked to specific groups of customers and then emails sent that promote related products.

They can also be used to remind customers to make purchases on a regular basis or on a repeat basis. The biggest winners in this industry are the large retailers who have more data available to them. They also have a vast audience to send emails to that allows them to multiply potential revenues from email campaigns.

However, smaller retailers are also seeing the benefits.

3. Wedding Industry

A surprising industry that is doing well with email marketing is the wedding industry. However, the industry has one massive benefit and that is time. Email marketing sales require trust between the company and the audience. Trust requires time to build up and thanks to the average engagement length of 14.5 months, the wedding industry has a lot of time on its side.

Many businesses in the wedding industry start by sending helpful tips. Then, once trust has been gained, they can start to sell products to audiences. Some of the best in the industry don’t sell their own products, but instead rather use their trust to sell products and collect affiliate payments.

Another advantage of this is that most of the work can be automated. Therefore, costs for the email marketing campaigns are limited and campaigns can be continuously improved upon.

4. Luxury Brands

Vivid storytelling and stunning photos are the perfect marketing tools for those selling luxury brands. And email is the perfect tool for projecting those two tools onto audiences.

Luxury brand sellers can send audiences photos of their products in use and display them in the wide environment to promote use and give context to how they will fit into the lifestyle of the audience.

As email marketing is also low cost, the ROI of email marketing for luxury brands is much higher.

Conclusion

Email marketing is great for all industries, but there are a few that are using it to great effect. The examples above can help you to refine your email campaigns for future success. Just because your business isn’t in one of those industries, it doesn’t mean that you can’t perform just as well.

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How To Write The Perfect Welcome Email

welcome email for new subscribers

The welcome email for your subscribers is one of the most important pieces of content you can send. It allows you to sell your brand and reassure new subscribers that they’ve made the right choice in signing up to your list. Starting your relationship off on a positive allows you to generate better results in the long-term.

You should also remember that welcome emails get a much higher open rate compared to other email campaigns.

So, here are some tips to help you write that perfect welcome email.

1. Thank The New Subscriber

They’ve taken the time to fill in some information, confirm their email address and even read your welcome email. That is a lot of effort for some people, you might have already given them something like a discount, free ebook or information, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t thank them for their efforts.

Saying thank you can be very effective. It adds a human touch to mailing campaigns and it helps to build brand loyalty. Subscribers are more receptive to your mailing campaigns if they know you appreciate them signing up.

2. Deliver On Promises

If you did use an incentive to get the new subscriber to join your mailing list, now is the time to deliver. This is an important part of your marketing because if you fulfil your promises now, then you can convince the new subscriber that you’re going to treat them right.

Not delivering on promises can be frustrating for new subscribers and they’re going to unsubscribe. Or worse, they could mention the fact you didn’t deliver on your promises on social media or with their peers which can damage your brand’s reputation online.

3. Set Expectations

An important part of running a mailing list is to set expectations. When you have a new subscriber you should tell them how often you’re going to send emails, what type of emails you’re going to send and even what day you normally send content.

The more information you can give the better you’re setting expectations. If you don’t set expectations, then audiences could be surprised by the number of emails you send and make complaints about you sending spam.

4. Build Brand Identity

Some people don’t read much about the brand before subscribing, especially if you’ve given them a great incentive. So now is the time to tell them who you are and what your brand stands for. One of the best ways to build brand identify is to use images and videos that offer higher engagement rates than just text.

You can also link to content in blogs and on other pages on your email. You should also link to your contact information page, social media channels and any other pages where they might be able to get new information about you.

5. Tell Subscribers To Whitelist Your Mailing Address

Subscribing people to your business’ mailing list is one thing, getting them to receive your content is another. Sometimes your emails will get sent to the spam folder, just because the settings are too strict. However, if you ask new subscribers to whitelist you, you can ensure that they will receive your emails.

In your email, you can offer them instructions on how your email address can be whitelisted. You should also emphasise the benefits of whitelisting your business’ mailing list.

Don’t Forget Your Welcome Email

Your welcome email is an important part of your business’ success with email marketing. However, if you don’t get it right, then you’re going to find it challenging to improve on ROI for email campaigns. So, the more of the above you can implement in your welcome email, the better off you will be.

Do you use a welcome email in your email campaigns? How can you improve it?

Let us know in the comments below.

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7 Reasons Why You Should Clean Your Email List Regularly

cleaning a mailing list
Do regular cleaning of your mailing list

The value of your email list is only as good as its health. One of the most important, regular tasks of any email marketing campaign is to ensure that you perform maintenance on your mailing list. During maintenance, you should be removing any contacts that regularly bounce or aren’t responding to campaigns.

Here are seven reasons to make cleaning your mailing list a regular task.

1. It Saves Costs

The more people you have on your mailing list, the more it will cost you to run it. Normally this is not done on a per subscriber price. For instance, those with 999 subscribers on Fluttermail cost $17 per month, while those with 1001 subscribers cost $29 per month.

Research has found that about half of all subscribers are inactive. Therefore, a simple maintenance task can keep you in lower level pricinhg tiers.

2. It Improves Analysis

There are many reasons why subscribers become inactive. One reason might be because they’ve changed email addresses. If you have emails being sent to an inactive account, then you can’t analyse campaigns accurately because these dead accounts are skewing results.

Removing dead accounts allows you to focus on people who at least semi-regularly open your email campaigns.

3. Gives You Opportunities To Sell

While removing inactive subscribers is important, it shouldn’t be the first thing to do with subscribers who aren’t opening mail. Some people do read subject lines and go straight to your website to make a purchase. Therefore, when identifying those who aren’t responding any more, you should look to create a re-engagement campaign. Research has shown that inactive subscribers are worth about 32% of active subscribers.

This should encourage people to tell you they’re still interested in hearing from you. Those that don’t take any action can then be removed from your list.

4. Find Malicious Emails In Your Subscriber List

It’s important that you find those on your mailing list that are spam or malicious accounts. These email accounts can cause your business real harm. Email addresses within these categories should be removed without question.

Malicious email accounts can often be spotted manually because they don’t have corresponding names with email addresses or weird email addresses (i.e. XtrebleYU@domain.co.uk).

5. You Can Remove Subscribers That Have No Value To You

Sometimes people subscribe to your business’ mailing list who have no value to you. For instance, if you sell only in the US, Canada or another country and you get subscribers from the EU, Russia or another area, then you can remove those subscribers.

Those that aren’t of value to your organisation are just costing you money and skewing your statistics. They’re also getting irrelevant content which won’t help with your reputation.

6. Its Easier To Do It Regularly

When you have thousands of subscribers on your mailing list, if you only check them rarely, then it will take up a lot of your time. Instead, checks done on a regular basis take up less time and allow you to be more responsive to changes.

Regular checks can be scheduled every one to three months. It shouldn’t take any more than a few hours work, but it can save hundreds of dollars a year.

7. It’s Good For Compliance

There are lots of email marketing laws that protect consumers from illicit marketing emails. While subscribers might have signed up, that doesn’t always mean that they want to receive marketing content. They just don’t read the sign-up details properly. In addition, some subscribers might try to unsubscribe from your mailing list, but don’t complete the process.

By regularly scheduling in maintenance for your mailing list, you can remove people who have no interest in your marketing content and comply with legal requirements.

Conclusion

Maintaining your email marketing list is really important. It can help your business to be more effective in marketing, finances and compliance. Therefore, you should always be looking at doing maintenance every one to three months.

When was the last time you completed maintenance on your email list? When do you next plan to do this?

Let us know in the comments below.

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Do This To Get The Best Results Using Split Campaigns

 

Here are some split testing tips for your brand

Here are some split testing tips for your brand

Split campaigns are one of the best ways you can ascertain what your audience prefers in emails. They take one element, create a variant and then offer half an audience one variant and the other half the other variant.

What you can change in a split campaign is limited only by your imagination. For instance, you can change the text in an email, the colour of a call-to-action button, or what time the email is sent. Results from these campaigns can then be analysed and pushed into new campaigns for the future.

So, what can you do to get the best results from split campaigns? Here are some useful tips:

1. Test One Element At A Time

If you’re testing numerous elements of a campaign at the same time, you’ll face significant problems. First, you’re unlikely to have a significant sample size to determine any accurate results. In reality you would want each test segment to be at least 200-300 strong.

Second, you’ll never really know what element made the biggest impact on your split campaign. Not knowing what the deciding factor was in the success of a campaign, means you can’t replicate the success in other campaigns, and you’ll spend more time trying to find the best fit.

2. Continue Split Testing

While you might get the answer you want for one question, there are unlimited combinations when it comes to email marketing campaign design. Therefore, you should always be testing your campaigns to see if a slight adjustment can offer you better returns.

For instance, you might have discovered the best time for your campaigns, but a change in the call-to-action button might improve results more too. Split testing done on a regular basis continuously improves results and offers a better ROI for your marketing.

3. Treat Segments Differently

If you send lots of different emails to your various segments, you need to treat those audiences separately from each other. Male buyers might prefer a different time of day to your female buyers and therefore, you need to find this out.

Segmentation is proven to increase conversions and ROI of online marketing. You need to take your split testing to the same level and ensure you’re not creating generic rules for every audience when you can get better results by optimising content for each segment.

4. Run Tests At Least Three Times For Accurate Results

While it might seem counterproductive to run a test several times, it allows you to collect more information and ensure you’re making the best decisions. You never know when a test was done on a bad day and some of your audience didn’t participate.

By rerunning the test several times you can take the average results from all the tests to find the true preferences of your audience without bias. This may make the process longer, but it will yield long-term success for your email marketing campaigns.

5. Set Goals

It’s important that you set goals for your email marketing campaigns before you start a split campaign. Different campaigns should have different results, so, if you want more sales, you need to look at conversions, but if you want to spread the word about your latest news, you might look at the number of leads.

This can determine whether a campaign has been a success or not and whether a split test has improved the relevant action. For instance, if you have a split test that improves open rates but has no impact on conversions, then the test has not achieved any goals. You might need to look at something new to test.

Conclusion

Your split testing campaigns can be a vital part of your business’ success when it comes to email marketing. But you need to use the right tactics to ensure efficient use of your campaigns. Use the tips above to get the most from your split campaigns and see the best results from email marketing campaigns.

Do you use split campaigns in your email marketing? What tips do you have?

Let us know in the comments below.

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4 Tips To Skyrocket Your Email List Using Email Popups

How can email popups help you grow your mailing list?

When you’re using email marketing to sell your products you need to constantly grow your email list. This can be challenging to do. However, popups can be very effective at adding subscribers to your list.

There are several ways you can use popups to increase your email list, here are some of the best tips to help you out.

1. Offer Something Valuable

When visitors to your website give you their email address, they will want something in return. This can be a free gift, a discount, or perhaps an ebook. What you need to decide upon is what’s valuable for your audience.

You can experiment using split testing of your email popups, by offering different levels of discount or other gifts. When you’re looking for the best offer, you need to assess which gave the best conversion rate.

You might also want to change certain aspects of the popup, such as the colour or the content written into the popup. These can all have an impact on the success of your email popups.

2. Set Popups To React To User Behaviours

One of the most annoying aspects of popups is when they appear just as the visitor lands on the website. It’s one of the causes for high website bounce rates and limiting the amount of time visitors will spend on the website.

There are other behaviours that can be used to trigger popups which are far less intrusive. For instance, you can use exit intent to catch people before they leave your website. Or you can use a popup for when someone reaches the end of your page.

Using these behaviours allows you to create popup content that matches their behaviour, identifying a clear journey. For instance, if someone is leaving your site, you can offer them a discount if they’ll stay. If it’s when they’re reading a blog post and they’ve reached the end, you can offer them an ebook to continue their learning journey.

3. Use Different Popups For Different Pages

This is probably one of the most crucial aspects to consider. Not every page should hold the same popup. Instead, each page should have a different popup that offers a unique gift and displays on different behaviours.

This has the benefit of tailoring the offer to the visitor and their position in the customer purchasing journey. For instance, if the visitor is exiting the website on the cart or checkout page, you can offer them a discount on their purchase. Similarly, if someone has just read a blog post, you can offer them an ebook related to the blog post.

The more popups and offers you have available on your website, the greater the conversion rate for the popups.

4. Limit The Information You’re Asking For

One of the key things that you should do to increase the number of subscribers, is to only ask for essential information. You just need to have the visitors’ email address. You can collect other information later in the selling process.

When you ask for less information, you increase the chance that people will be willing to give you their details. You can ask people to give you more details in follow up emails or when they make purchases from your site.

Conclusion

Your email marketing is only going to be successful when you have a large email list. You can’t buy an email marketing list, it has to be grown using your website. Popups are effective at building an email marketing list but only if you use them in the right way.

The tips above will make your popups more successful and allow you to sell to your audience.

Do you use popups in your list building campaigns? How many different popups do you use?

Let us know in the comments below.

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How To Write An Email That Gets Attention

How to get your subscribers to take notice of your emails

Email marketing is one of the best ways to sell online. For the past decade it has been the digital marketing platform that has offered the best return on investment. However, while it offers good returns, its success is only as good as the emails that are sent.

When writing an email marketing campaign you need to have several elements that combine to psychologically compel your audience to take action.

Here are several ways you can get the attention of your audience with tips to make them more successful.

1. Personalisation

Email marketing success is all about personalisation. A few years ago this meant using mail merge tags to insert the name of the receiver into the email’s subject line and content. This is no longer the case, audiences have gotten wise to mail merges and a name is no longer considered personal.

Instead, you need to look at different ways you can personalise emails. This might include any of the following options:

  • Base emails on behaviours on your website or your customers’ previous purchases.

  • Use birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates that are important to the audience.

  • Use other details from your audience to personalise your emails such as address, telephone numbers, etc.

2. Create A Catchy Subject Line

Before anyone can make a purchase based on your emails, you need to get them to read your content. They aren’t going to do that if you don’t send a great email with a catchy subject line that intrigues the audience.

There are many ways you can create a catchy subject line. Here are some ideas for creating great subject lines:

  • Keep the subject line short.

  • Create some urgency in your subject line.

  • Make the audience curious about what is contained in the email.

  • Give audiences an offer they can’t refuse.

3. Use Images

Images can tell a story in much less space and time than words. Emails that contain images will ensure that audiences take action and don’t get confused about the message contained in the email. Images can also serve as a purchase push. If you’re selling clothes, then images of happy people wearing your clothes can often tell the audiences that they’ll look great while wearing them.

Images are hard to get right in emails though. Here are some tips to help you:

  • Keep the image size small so servers don’t block it.

  • Ensure there’s plenty of lighting in your image to highlight the product/service.

  • Try to minimise distractions in vital images.

4. Use Videos

While images are great, videos are even better and should be used where possible. The rate at which audiences are consuming video online is growing exponentially. Nearly 5 billion videos are watched every day on YouTube and with sites like Instagram, Facebook, Netflix and others now offering streamed video, there is a strong video streaming trend happening.

Videos are compelling to the audience because the human brain can connect to the sounds and moving images better than with static images or just words. Here are some quick video tips:

  • Keep videos short.

  • Upload your video on a website like YouTube and use the video streaming service’s technology to embed it in your email.

  • Ensure there is music added to your video to add emotion.

5. Forget Jargon

When using text or speaking in a video, drop the industry jargon. This should be reserved for the office and when speaking to others in the industry. Instead, use plain English in your emails so you don’t confuse the audience with terminology they won’t understand.

It isn’t just jargon you can improve in your email writing. Here are some other writing tips:

  • Give the reader possession by using words like you, your and you’re.

  • Keep email content down to below 250 words.

  • Tell a story that finishes with them clicking on a call to action.

Conclusion

Email marketing is an effective way to sell online. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. You need to create the right emails to generate interest and grab the attention of the audience. Use the tips above to boost your campaigns’ success and generate sales.

How do you generate interest in your emails? Do you have any more tips than the ones above?

Let us know in the comments below.

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5 Ultimate Tips For Converting Visitors Into Subscribers

Subscription methods

How to get more people to subscribe your business’ email list

Email marketing sells, there is no doubt about that. For the past decade, email marketing has topped the ROI of digital marketing channels. Therefore, small and large businesses should be investing a significant amount into email marketing.

The challenge is, that for you to sell via email you need subscribers, and this can be the most difficult aspect of email marketing. You can’t simply buy contacts for your email list. This is against several regulations across the world and can earn you a significant fine.

Buying email marketing lists is also highly unprofitable with many bought lists containing outdated, inaccurate or just plain made up data. Also, those records that are accurate are often uninterested in your products and will unsubscribe or rate your email server as spam that can affect long-term success.

Therefore, attracting website visitors to subscribe to your mailing list is the key to earning long-term success for your business. So here are five ultimate tips for converting visitors into subscribers.

1. Give The Subscriber Something For Their Information

One of the main things you should be doing for your website visitors is to ensure they are getting something for their contact details. This could be something like an ebook, online guide, free sample of your product, discount or perhaps daily news update.

When visitors think they are getting something for their contact information, they’re happier. It seems like a fair deal. If it’s a discount on products they’re already considering purchasing, it can seem like an even better deal.

2. Optimise Your Call-To-Action

Your call-to-action is the most important aspect of your email marketing subscription process. It needs to be visible on your website and have all the right words so it entices visitors to click on it to complete the process.

For placement, it’s better to locate the call-to-action button somewhere on the left-hand side of the screen. This has a higher chance of being spotted and acted on by visitors to your website.

In addition, you should ensure that your call-to-action is written so that it calls the visitor to act immediately and it should include a verb.

3. Have A Specific Landing Page

The best subscription rates happen when you have a landing page. This landing page should be dedicated to one offer and be geared to getting the visitor to click on the call-to-action to receive a reward for their time.

The biggest advantage of landing pages is that they can be really tailored to specific audiences and SEO keywords. Therefore, the more landing pages you have the higher the traffic to your website and the more subscribers you’ll attract.

4. Social Sharing

Don’t forget to get your visitors to share your landing pages, deals and downloadable content with their social media contacts. Every time your content is shared it creates a link back to your website that encourages others to visit your site and even better, helps improve your SEO.

Social media sharing also helps with trust factors, meaning buyers are more likely to purchase from you than to purchase from a competitor with no online reputation.

5. Pop-Ups

Whether you love them or hate them, there’s a reason why pop-ups or modular subscription pages are heavily used online; they convince people to subscribe to email lists. They can be activated on a number of conditions including: page entry, after so long on a page, or on page exit.

This can be really good for highlighting how useful your expertise is and for offering free content like downloadable guides. However, these methods can be annoying and there is some argument about whether Google penalises websites that use pop-ups for something that isn’t necessary (like cookie notifications).

Conclusion

Email marketing offers the best ROI of all digital channels and that’s why you need to build an email marketing list now. There are many ways you can build an email marketing list, but you should include at least some of the points we’ve mentioned above. This will not only convert more of your visitors into subscribers, but also help your business to grow its revenue organically.

What do you do to encourage visitors to subscribe? What has had the most success for your business?

Let us know in the comments below.

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Why Is Having A Newsletter Subscription Important?

newsletter subscription

Why is a newsletter subscription so important?

A newsletter subscription is one of the most valuable items you can have for your business. Yet despite the benefits of a list, many businesses don’t have one, this can be due to the effort to obtain one, or the fear of regulations such as GDPR.

Yet, with the correct processes in place, a newsletter subscription list can benefit your business significantly. Here are some of the key reasons why you need to have a newsletter subscription.

1. Email Sells

The biggest reason why you should have a newsletter subscription is that it offers a strong ROI. For every dollar you spend on your email marketing campaigns, you’ll get back $32. This return is amazing, and for the past decade and more, email marketing has offered the best return across the digital marketing platforms.

Even if you aren’t actively publishing selling mails, emails sell. They act as a touchpoint in the purchasing journey and when you need between five and twelve touchpoints, every email can help you sell quicker.

2. A Newsletter Subscription Adds Value To Your Business

If you’re considering selling your business at some point or looking for outside investment, the valuation you can place on your business can be higher if you have a strong subscription list. The main reason for this is that investors know that email marketing is lucrative and a strong list is a great way to generate revenue.

Therefore, the more people that are active on your newsletter subscription list, the more valuable that list is and the more valuable your business is. A quick calculation states that even at Fluttermail’s smallest package means a good email list is worth just under $30,000 to your business’ value.

3. You Can Sell Advertising Space On Your Newsletter

The more people you have on a newsletter subscription list, the greater the value of the newsletters you send out. If you aren’t selling products or services or perhaps would like to generate more revenue from your newsletters, you can sell advertising space to businesses.

Even a small advert on your newsletter can be worth $25 to $50 each. For those looking to make this a significant revenue stream, even a small e-newsletter is worth $60,000 to $80,000 a month. With other revenue options such as affiliate marketing, sponsored news and merchandising, an email newsletter can be a significant revenue earner.

4. You Can Inform Subscribers Of Important News

Whether your business is expanding, having a sale, or just got a new product, the newsletter is the perfect place to tell people this news. It will help you draw attention to your business’ news and make the most of it.

Many people have used email newsletters to keep subscribers up-to-date in regards to future developments to create excitement. This is a great way to ensure the first day of an event is a success and the perfect way to launch a new product, new business site or a crowdfunding campaign.

5. Emails Have Higher Levels Of Trust

One of the reasons why emails can do everything we’ve mentioned above is because they build trust with audiences. Newsletters can be used to demonstrate your team’s expert knowledge and why you’re the perfect supplier of the solution.

The more content you send to your audience, within reason, the more trust you will build with them. In fact, newsletters are a great trust builder and they should be sent at the same time every week.

6. Newsletters Can Set-up Expectations

Negative reviews are the biggest threat to your business’ success and one sure way to get a bad review is to fail to live up to expectations. Expectations are set by your marketing campaigns. What can happen is that a lack of information increases the expectations of your customers.

However, email campaigns can help you set realistic expectations. In fact, you’ll be able to under-promise and over-perform, giving you a chance to collect a lot of great reviews that will grow your business.

Conclusion

Email newsletters are a great way to build a business. They generate sales and build trust, giving you everything you need to grow a steady revenue stream for your business. But they are also important to your business’ valuation. Therefore, if you don’t have a newsletter subscription, you should start yours now.

What is keeping you from starting an email newsletter? Are you struggling to grow your subscription list?

Let us know in the comments below.

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GDPR – The Impact On Gathering Information

Is your data privacy ready for GDPR?

In May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect. The legislation replaced the previous data protection law in the European Union (EU). It unified laws that protected the collection and use of personal data across the trading bloc.

It also sets out new rules of how personal data could be collected, used and stored.

While it is an EU law, it does affect organisations worldwide as data is collected whenever anyone lands on a website. So, unless you can block traffic from the EU, you need to be compliant with GDPR.

How Does GDPR Affect You?

For starters, there aren’t many changes in some respects. For instance, information such as names and email addresses already had protection in the EU and across the world. What GDPR does is that it adds regulations for IP addresses, types of cookies, member identifiers and other types of data that can track customers.

If there is any information that can be used to accurately identify a person, then it is regulated. For instance, now cookie IDs and advertising IDs are no longer anonymous data. It is important to realise that any data collected for your business must have a justification. There are six types of justification. These include:

  • Consent
  • Contracts
  • Legal compliance
  • Protecting the interest of the person
  • Public interest
  • Legitimate interest

Accountability Is Key To GDPR

One of the major themes that’s important with GDPR is that of accountability. All businesses should document what personal data they hold and consider what areas are at risk. To make your life easier, and ensure you don’t miss anything, you should perhaps treat all online identifiers as personal data.

You should also look to run an information audit. This will help you monitor what information you’re collecting and how it is used.

You should also look at who is responsible for data in the organisation. There should be someone in your business who handles all the data jobs. This includes assessing how you obtain data, know how it is used and deal with information requests.

In bigger companies, more than one person can handle the workload, but one person should be responsible.

Security Is Key To GDPR Compliance

One of the major issues companies might struggle with in terms of GDPR, is that you have to make sure the data is protected. While this should be a concern already for your business, many businesses over the years have struggled to ensure their systems are secure.

Just in recent weeks, Facebook have faced allegations of a data breech and so have so many others. Major issues are faced by smaller businesses as they often don’t have the funds or technical expertise to protect their data as well as large organisations. Plus smaller businesses find it more challenging to detect data breeches.

Therefore, you need to ensure that you have the right software in place to protect your data.

Third Party Suppliers

In addition, any third party vendors you use that may collect information on your behalf need to be following GDPR regulations. If data about your customers is stolen from them, then it’s you who is responsible. So always check that GDPR regulations are being followed by them.

Most should already have this information as part of their privacy policies and other legal documentation. If they don’t, then you need to press them for more information. If they don’t think they require it, then it’s better if you move suppliers, because you’re responsible, not them.

Conclusion

GDPR is a new piece of legislation that requires you to change the way you handle data whether you trade within the EU or not. The risk of someone in the EU visiting your site is just too high and the ramifications for not following GDPR are just too much of a risk.

So consider, how do you collect, process and store data? How do you share that information? And then work out whether your systems are secure enough and if you have a justification. Be GDPR compliant and keep your business safe.

Are you GDPR safe? Did you realise you’re responsible for third-party vendors holding data for your company?

Let us know in the comments below.

Image from Pixabay.

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Why Do My Email Open Rates Suck?

Do you have good email open rates?

One of the main ‘key performance indicators’ you’ll want to measure is your email open rate. The more people that open your emails, the greater your revenue from any given email.

Each industry, and different businesses, have unique open rates. For instance, e-commerce and coupon sites tend to have lower open rates than legal and accounting businesses. However, this is small comfort if you have a particularly low open rate.

What Is A Low Email Open Rate?

A low email marketing open rate can be considered anything that’s less than 15%. If you have this, you should be looking to make a lot of improvements.

Luckily, there are many potential changes you can make which can help you improve open rates and grow revenues. Here are some quick suggestions for you to try.

1. Create Better Subject Lines

A lot of people will open your marketing emails based on the subject lines. If you don’t have a compelling subject line for the reader, they’re going to read another business’ emails first, or perhaps not even bother with yours.

There are many ways to improve a subject line. You could:

  • Personalise your emails so they are more specific to the reader.
  • Create a compelling offer that has value to the audience.
  • Be controversial.
  • Use humour to make a point.

2. Reduce The Number Of Subscribers Who Receive Your Emails

While you might think this is about culling your email marketing list, it’s anything but. In this point we primarily speak about reducing the number of people who receive specific emails. This is known as segmentation.

Segmentation is about sending emails to only those who should receive the email. Such as those who have expressed an interest in a certain product or service. It’s no good sending an email about boy shoes to a person who has only bought girl shoes.

Segmentation can automatically increase open rates because there are fewer people receiving the emails who have no interest. This helps to reduce costs and unsubscribe rates.

3. Remove Unresponsive Subscribers

Now we’re going to discuss removing subscribers from your list. However, you shouldn’t just remove subscribers. You should look for people who haven’t engaged with an email for three to six months (depends on the frequency of your emails). Also look for those who hard and soft bounce.

These people need to be sent a re-engagement campaign email where you attempt to bring them back to your brand. If they don’t respond, then you remove them. Note that those who hard bounce should be removed immediately after a bounce. These bounces can harm your brand’s reputation.

While it’s unfortunate to lose subscribers, sometimes you’ve got to do it. It helps to reduce costs and gives you a better set of statistics you can rely on.

4. Change Your Email Marketing Strategy

Auto-responders and behavioural triggered emails work much better than traditional emails. Therefore, you want to try and switch your email marketing campaigns so they are more automated and triggered.

There are several benefits to this. Firstly, automated emails and behavioural emails are more aligned to the current needs of the audience. Therefore, they have a greater chance to be engaged with. Your brand is also in their current memory, so you have an advantage.

Secondly, you can reduce your workload. Automated emails are pre-written. You just need to adjust them when you want to change them. This means you can concentrate on other digital marketing campaigns that can draw audiences into subscribing to your mailing list.

5. Change When You Send Emails

Ensure you’re sending emails at the right time. Email open rates are different for particular days of the week and times of the day. If you send emails at the wrong time, then your email could be missed among others.

Check with your past campaigns to determine when emails are being opened and engaged with. Then use those times as a basis.

Conclusion

Your mail marketing campaigns can be a great success and while your email open rates suck now – they don’t have to. Try some of the improvements above and see how your email’s KPIs change. You might see your business succeed.

What is your email open rate? How does that compare with your industry?

Let us know in the comments below.

Image from Pixabay.

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