How Investing in Email Marketing will Grow your Business in 2023

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is, as the name suggests, a way of using direct emails to communicate to your target audience. This can be done through:

-Cold direct emails to previously uncontacted customers (less common now, because it feels spammy).
-Emails to previous customers to get them to buy more, or buy a different product
-Emails to ‘leads’ who have submitted their details, but not made a purchase yet.

Email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes, as it allows them to directly communicate with their target audience and promote their products or services. It’s highly cost-efficient when used correctly and is usually a core component of the lower-funnel channel mix.

That said, the world is more privacy-focused now. Under GDPR in Europe, you need to be careful about who you email – you either need their permission, or have a valid non-marketing reason for emailing them.

How Can Email Marketing Grow Your Business?

When done correctly, email marketing can help businesses grow in a number of ways:

1. Increasing brand awareness: By consistently sending emails to subscribers, businesses can increase their brand awareness and remind customers about their products or services. You can keep yourself ‘top of mind’ which can be especially useful for businesses that have seasonal products or services.
2. Generating leads. For B2B marketing, email can be used to generate leads for businesses. For example, if your business attends an expo or conference, the organisers may be able to include a section about your business in an email to attendees. Within your section you could offer valuable content, such as eBooks, whitepapers, or webinars, in exchange for contact information. This can be an effective way to grab the attention of potential customers and capturing their contact information in your own lead system for further contacts.
3. Improving customer loyalty: By consistently providing valuable content and offers to customers through email marketing, businesses can improve customer loyalty and encourage repeat business. This can be especially important for businesses that rely on repeat customers, such as subscription-based businesses.
4. Increasing sales: Perhaps most importantly, email marketing can help businesses increase their sales. By offering special deals or promotions to subscribers, businesses can encourage customers to make a purchase. Additionally, by segmenting the email list and sending targeted emails to specific groups of subscribers, businesses can increase the chances of making a sale. By using email to encourage cross or up-sales, you can increase your customer lifetime value.

How To Maximise The Effectiveness Of Your Email Marketing Campaigns

To effectively use email marketing to grow a business, it’s important to focus on building a targeted email list, crafting compelling subject lines and email content, and using segmentation and personalisation to reach the right audience at the right time. It’s also important to measure the results of email campaigns and make adjustments as needed to improve the effectiveness of future campaigns.

There are several best practices that businesses can follow to ensure the success of their email marketing efforts:

Email Marketing Set-Up Tips

1. Put together a full customer journey map. A customer journey map is an extremely useful tool for visualising the steps a customer will take in interacting with your business. You can then spot areas where they may need guidance, or extra info, with an automated email. At Growth Division we tend to use Miro to draw our customer journey maps.
2. Use the right CRM and/or email marketing tool. This would be, for example, Hubspot, Salesforce Pardot, Active Campaign or Mailchimp. We discuss the importance of the CRM in this blog about martech stacks. The right tool will help you automatically add contacts as they fill out a form on your site or in your app, it’ll segment them based on behaviour, and will allow you to build automated email workflows so the right segments get the right email communications. They’ll often also email design tools/templates so you don’t need to upload your own HTML.

Email Marketing Privacy Tips

1. Use a double opt-in process: To ensure that only interested parties are added to the email list, it’s a good idea to use a double opt-in process. This means that after someone signs up to receive emails, they will receive an email asking them to confirm their subscription. This helps to ensure that the email list is composed of engaged and interested subscribers, and ensures regulatory compliance..
2. Follow email marketing laws: It’s important to follow email marketing laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States, as well as GDPR, to ensure that the business is not in violation of any regulations. These laws require businesses to include certain information in their emails, such as the physical address of the business, and to allow subscribers to opt out of receiving further emails. Not only could you irritate consumers with emails they didn’t want, you could receive a huge fine if you break privacy laws.

Email Marketing Creative Tips

1. Use an attention-grabbing subject line. It seems obvious, but it’s worth re-iterating: The subject line is often the first thing that a recipient sees when they receive an email, so it’s important to make it stand out. It should be short, punchy and attention-grabbing. It’s only goal is to get the recipient to open the email, so keep that in mind when you write it. However, don’t get to cutesy with it – you’ll irritate your recipients if the subject line promises riches that the email itself doesn’t contain.
2. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. The most important rule of marketing is ‘always be customer-centric’. This applies to email marketing too. You need to constantly remind yourself of what the customer thinks, needs and wants and ensure you’re catering to it. Do they want long rambling emails from businesses selling them things? Or do they want a short, helpful email with an offer, piece of advice or link to a tutorial?

What Email Marketing Trends To Look Out For In 2023

Email marketing has continued to be an extremely useful channel in 2022 and we expect the same to continue in 2023, but with some differences. As technology and consumer behaviour evolve, so do the trends in email marketing. Here are some key trends to watch out for in the coming year:

1. Personalization will be more important than ever. With the increasing amount of competition for attention in the digital space, it’s important for businesses to stand out by making their emails feel more personalized. This can be achieved through the use of segmentation, which allows businesses to send targeted emails to specific groups of subscribers based on their interests and behaviours. Additionally, the use of dynamic content, which adjusts the content of an email based on the recipient’s personal data, can help make emails feel even more personalized.
2. Interactive emails will become more popular. Interactive emails are emails that allow recipients to engage with the content in some way, such as by taking a survey or by clicking on a button to access additional information. These types of emails tend to have higher open and click-through rates, as they give subscribers a reason to interact with the content.
3. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in email marketing will increase. AI can be used to optimize email campaigns in a number of ways, such as by analysing data to determine the best time to send emails or by suggesting subject lines that are more likely to result in opens. Additionally, AI can be used to automate certain tasks, such as responding to customer inquiries or sending abandoned cart emails.
4. Video in emails will become more widespread. Video is a powerful medium for engaging and captivating audiences, and it can be especially effective in email marketing. Including video in emails can increase click-through rates and conversions, and it can also help businesses stand out in an increasingly crowded digital space.
5. The use of chatbots in email marketing will grow. Chatbots are automated messaging systems that can communicate with subscribers in real-time. They can be used to answer questions, provide information, and even make recommendations based on a subscriber’s interests. Including a chatbot in an email campaign can help businesses provide a more personalized and interactive experience for their subscribers.
6. The importance of mobile optimisation will continue to grow. More and more people are accessing the internet and checking their emails on their mobile devices, so it’s important for businesses to ensure that their emails are optimised for mobile viewing. This includes using a responsive design, which automatically adjusts the layout of an email to fit the screen of the device it’s being viewed on, as well as using large, easy-to-read fonts and buttons that are easy to tap on a small screen.
7. The use of emojis in subject lines and email content will continue to rise. Emojis are a fun and eye-catching way to grab attention and add personality to emails. Studies have shown that using emojis in subject lines can increase open rates, so don’t be afraid to get creative and use them in your email marketing efforts. However, don’t go overboard or you’ll slip into ‘irritating business pretending to be my friend’ territory.
8. The importance of data privacy and security will continue to be a top concern. With the increasing amount of data that businesses collect about their customers, it’s important to ensure that this data is protected and that customers feel comfortable sharing it. This includes implementing strong security measures, such as encryption and secure servers, as well as being transparent about how customer data is being used and giving customers the option to opt out of tracking.

Conclusion

In conclusion, email marketing continued to be a valuable tool for businesses in 2023, and by staying on top of the latest trends and incorporating them into their campaigns, businesses can effectively engage and convert their audiences into the next year.

At Growth Division we have expert email marketers who can help you with everything from lead generation, to newsletters, to automations and cross/up-sale campaigns. Get in touch if you want to know more.

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