Think about your email inbox and the number of messages you get daily. Now, think about your customers. Odds are, they’re getting just as many promotional email offers and marketing messages.
So, what can you do to make sure your customers open your emails and take your email marketing to new heights?
Email marketing is a diverse and potentially lucrative marketing opportunity. But, like most elements of a successful business, you need to put the work in the right way if you’re ever going to see any money out of it.
That’s why having a strong understanding of email marketing is so important. This understanding includes what it is, how it works, and what you can do to improve your chances of succeeding. That’s the key to improving your profitability through the power of email marketing.
This article will walk you through five creative email marketing strategies that you can use to improve your outreach. You can create a truly effective email marketing campaign by implementing the strategies listed below.
Is email marketing worth it?
As marketing has moved into new eras with more advanced methods, is email marketing even worth your time? Has it become archaic in the time of SEO, Google Ads, social media marketing, and augmented reality?
Email marketing is still extremely relevant in 2023 and beyond. That’s why it’s still so widely used. More than 79% of marketers list it as one of their top three most successful marketing initiatives.
Email marketing revenue is estimated to reach almost 11 billion by the end of 2023. (Statista, 2021)
It has a higher open rate and click-through rate than social media advertising. Email marketing is also highly customizable, and addresses customers on a platform that just about everyone uses. Whether you use Gmail, Yahoo, or another email service provider, we all still use and manage our email daily.
Email marketing is also highly trackable, which is clutch when trying to run a successful marketing campaign. You need to know what’s working and what isn’t if you’re going to make the necessary adjustments to ultimately succeed.
So, to summarize, yes, email marketing is absolutely worth it. Those who sleep on this valuable resource could find themselves woefully left behind by top competitors.
5 Creative Email Marketing Strategies to Try
We’ve hopefully convinced you that email marketing is effective and worth your time. That means we can dive into some of the most effective email marketing strategies that can give you an added boost.
1. Use personalization
Email personalization is the process of adding personal elements specific to a recipient into the messages they receive. A personalized email can go a long way. This tactic allows your customers to feel that the email they receive is specifically for them.
That can be as simple as including the customer’s name in your email subject line and email body, but it can also get more involved. For example, the emails generated for a certain customer could automatically compile based on that customer’s purchase and browsing history.
Segmentation is essential for personalization, especially if you have a large or varied audience. The messaging that might appeal to one segment could be completely irrelevant or off-putting for another. Quality email marketing tools should be able to segment your mailing list. They can also run different campaigns for each segment and personalize every email that goes out automatically.
As Shane Barker says: “Personalization isn’t just about addressing your customer by their name. It’s about understanding their interests, behaviors, and needs. In essence, it’s about making your email marketing so tailored that each message feels like a handwritten letter to the recipient. That’s the art of mastering personalization.”
2. Use interactive media to add personality
In email marketing, where attention spans wane and inboxes overflow, injecting a touch of light-hearted humor can be a real game-changer.
Even in the most complex or niche industries, a well-crafted subject line and email copy that connects with a feature of your product, software, or service can breathe life into your communication.
By strategically infusing humor, you captivate your audience, increasing open rates, click-through rates, and ultimately, conversions.
Here’s how Nlyte turns the colocation data center talk into a funny story, transforming their email campaigns into delightful experiences that leave an impact.
Why is this so impactful? Because it feels more conversational. People don’t want to feel like they’re getting messaging from an email marketing platform. A conversational tone and elements of fun can make it feel like a conversation with a friend. That’s the kind of engagement you should go for.
If you’re witty and entertaining enough, people might start to look forward to your emails.
It’s time to unlock the incredible potential of interactive media and personality yourself and witness the remarkable results it can deliver!
3. Use emerging technology
You can strengthen your email marketing game and leave a lasting impact by embracing emerging tech and incorporating it into your emails.
Use digital business cards in your emails, as they offer a unique blend of professionalism and creativity to your email marketing strategy.
Digital business cards serve as an interactive signature that combines your contact details with a snapshot of your brand’s identity. A digital business card provides an email subscriber with an immediate, visually appealing, and clickable path. They can use it to learn more about your offerings or contact you.
You could also embrace the power of virtual reality and augmented reality. Hype a free VR tool on your website or landing page. Then use that as a call to action to get customers to click through.
Try embedding valuable content like videos and animation tech into your emails to create a more impressive and visually appealing experience. While once these features might have required professional editing or artists, they can now be more accessible with AI systems and user-friendly apps.
Just keep your eyes peeled for new tech as it sprouts up. Advancements are always coming. When you’re one of the first in your industry to embrace progress, you can give yourself a head start.
4. Test your visual elements
There are many types of emails, from re-engagement emails to cart emails or even a drip campaign. But these all have one thing in common: they must be visually appealing.
You should be aiming to capture the attention of your audience. One of the best ways to do that is with graphics, images, and fonts that appeal to them. But you’ll need to be selective and test options to understand what your audience likes and expects.
When it comes to mastering successful email marketing campaigns, one often overlooked element is a visually appealing and professional email signature. Incorporating a well-crafted signature not only adds a touch of professionalism but also enhances brand recognition.
Elevate your email marketing game by exploring a variety of beautiful email signature templates available online. These templates offer a range of designs that can perfectly align with your brand’s identity, leaving a lasting impression on your recipients.
Then there’s the imagery. It should catch the eye but also appeal to your customer’s pain points. This consideration will help draw them in and show visually how your company can help ease their troubles.
Of course, to test out which visuals work the best, you’ll need to test them out. A/B testing can be a powerful tool. Take a segment of your email list and design two marketing emails for them. These emails present the same information, but they’re visually different.
Half of your segment receives one email, and the other half gets the second. Once those emails go out, analyze your results. By seeing which email had the higher success rate, you’ll be able to learn more about audience preferences and shift your approach going forward.
5. Run a contest
One of the biggest initial hurdles in email marketing is getting the customer to open your email in the first place. By running a giveaway or a contest, you can entice your recipients to open your email with the opportunity to get something for nothing.
The key to this is coming up with an appealing prize that doesn’t substantially eat into your profits. Something like a free gift can be great if it’s not expensive to produce, acquire, and ship.
If you’re running a contest, you can send multiple emails through each stage as part of an email series. As your recipients open your emails, they can come to enjoy your personalization, imagery, humor, and advanced tech features that we’ve already discussed.
Once you have them hooked, you’ll be able to get them to open all future promotional email campaigns without having to give anything away.
Conclusion
The benefits of email marketing are obvious. After all this time, it’s still super effective. You just need to know how to create a winning campaign to capture the attention of anyone who gives you their email address. That should significantly lower your unsubscribe rate and bounce rate.
By employing these five strategies, you can turn email marketing into a lead generation and sales powerhouse.
