4 Tips to Take Your Email Marketing to the Next Level

Email marketing is here to stay. During the last three years, email opens have grown an amazing 180%, so there’s nowhere to go but up. This is a fact you should use to your advantage.

However, the average consumer is more than capable of detecting a regular marketing trick such as a limited edition or a time-expiring offer, so you need to put in some more effort into your packaging.

According to DMA (Designated Market Area) data from 2015, every dollar you invest into your email marketing campaign comes back multiplied by 44, which is a very high ROI number, but every single cent should be spent wisely – and here’s how.

Enable Interaction

I think it’s safe to say that average consumers are very bored with the classical picture plus link recipe for emails – chances are that they won’t give it more than a glance, and you should be called crazy if you believe your investment will pay off, not optimistic. So – make your emails interactive.

Animation is the future of emails and Gmail has even added animated emoticons to their list of options. So, your email campaign team should count at least one graphic designer, because something needs to be moving.

However, this is fairly easy to exaggerate, so you shouldn’t be surprised if you end up with everything moving that even you won’t know where to click – you should try to keep it moderate and tasteful and thus use animations only to accent and emphasize innovations in services or offers.

Make It Friendly and Personal

It’s people you’re trying to communicate with, not machines. A lack of a personal approach is the sole reason that dragged the popularity of email marketing down, and this isn’t something we should allow to happen again – this type of marketing is cheap and effective, which is why all our efforts should be focused on keeping it up and functioning properly.

That’s why it’s quite important to make them as personalized as possible, but without crossing that thin line and using jargon as a way to make new customers. So – it’s not like talking to a potential business partner and it’s not like talking to an acquaintance you met on the street – it’s somewhere in between these two.

The increment in automation is expected but parts that should be accelerated are mechanical – you should give enough time for creative bits to boil for a while, until you are completely satisfied with the final result.

Mobile, Head to Toe

Did you know that 75% of Gmail users access their accounts via smartphone, and that there are still websites that aren’t mobile friendly? This is a waste of everyone’s time, really – if a potential customer actually clicks on your links and ends up reloading your page, you can be certain that they won’t try to access your website ever again.

Those twenty something percent of websites should make this transition as soon as possible, because it may be a determining factor of their future success – using email marketing and not allowing it to function properly is quite senseless and a real misuse of any budget.

Style Support

This isn’t only about the style of your email, but it’s also about platform you plan on using for sending them out. The whole email community is putting a lot of pressure on Google to improve their app, because a lot of marketing traffic is going exactly through them and they promise that it’s a “work in progress”, so we can only hope that 2017 will come with some good news about this.

And, when it comes to your style support, I’d like to once again mention that graphic designer, because you will desperately need him or her if you’d like to conduct a successful email advertising campaign. We’re all familiar with how aesthetics are a significant advertising method, which is why you shouldn’t underestimate their powers, nor let them be created by amateurs.
One last piece of advice (even though I’m sure you heard it at least a million times by now) – try to come up with a fresh approach to what you’re trying to sell, because sticking to already familiar methods won’t get you over the average numbers. Take your time, develop it slowly and don’t be afraid to use controversy to your advantage.

from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/aleksandarilic/4-tips-to-take-your-email-marketing-to-the-next-level/