Email marketing campaigns remain the centerpiece of many branding strategies in the small-business sector. Thanks to the massive breadth of research conducted on email advertising, entrepreneurs now have a proverbial universe of available information related to what characterizes a winning campaign. Understanding this information before sending out communications to clients is critical, as ill-advised emails can actually hurt a brand and make it more difficult to engage recipients in the future.
By avoiding the common mistakes of email marketing and ensuring campaigns fit younger generations’ preferences and expectations, small-business owners can capitalize on this highly advantageous form of branding.
Getting campaigns right
Marketo recently listed some of the more dangerous errors companies will make in their email marketing strategies, including a complete lack of oversight with respect to the list of recipients. According to the organization, email lists should never include “role accounts” that are not directing the campaigns to specific individuals, and entrepreneurs should work to send to only individuals who are likely to fit the mold of their target audience.
Canvassing a large, unstructured audience will make analysis a far more difficult endeavor, especially when it comes to identifying behaviors that lead to high bounce rates and poor conversions from campaigns. Should small-business owners want to improve their email marketing performances with each new campaign, they must run a tight ship in this regard.
In that same vein, Marketo noted testing should be highly focused, including as few variables as possible and a large enough sample size to ensure the campaign is vetted before going live. Finally, one of the more common blunders in this arena involves the subject line. The source stated that subject lines should be clear and informative and accurately represent the information included in the body of the email. When it does not, bounce rates and poor conversions are likely to become problematic, while engagement will be hindered substantially.
Targeting younger consumers
More companies are beginning to target millennials given the generation’s larger stature in the consumer market today. Marketing Land recently published a blog post from author Scott Heimes regarding his suggestions to email marketers who want to strike the right chords with millennials. The author argued email ads must be as concise as possible, providing some form of value – such as a coupon or discount code – without droning on. He also noted the younger generation is more interested in being heard and recommended giving them an option to respond to the email regarding their opinions on the campaign.
Heimes also argued emoji use should be considered for subject lines, as millennials have been found to respond well to these types of tactics when compared to older consumers. Small-business owners should remember that technological evolution impacts older consumers’ behaviors as well, and finding the balance between targeting millennials, baby boomers and everyone in between needs to be a priority in the coming years.
