Email marketing can be challenging, especially since there are over 320 billion emails sent and received every day.  Can you take your email marketing ideas and turn them into eye-catching ROIs? These 5 strategies, influenced by 2022 industry trends, will help you outperform your KPIs and gain exposure. Some marketers have a common misconception of email marketing, believing that it is less effective than new platforms. Although staying on top of new trends will infinitely grow your brand, email marketing still hits number 1 for most companies for exposure and conversions. As you can see from the graph below, billions of emails are sent and received every single day and the growth is steadily increasing every year. Find more statistics at Statista   Although a massive amount of emails are sent every day, we need to take a look at the open rates. In 2020, the average open rate across all industries was 21.3%. Every industry is different, for example, open rates in the web design industry differ from those in the health care industry. Looking below, open rates in Europe differ from those in North America. There are many data sets to depict the best day of the week to send your emails, the best time, and the engagement rate within 24 hours of sending an email. Start with creating an email marketing campaign to establish a standard with your audience. This will act as your initial variable to potentially increase transactions. From there, you can create an eyecatching email to start converting.

Email marketing has a return on investment (ROI) of $36 for every $1 spent.

60 percent of consumers say they’ve made a purchase as the result of a marketing email they received. Contrast that with the 12.5 percent of consumers who say they’d consider using the ‘buy’ button on social media, and it’s not much of a contest. Remember that trends start with someone! When you invent an idea that you haven't seen before, give it a try. Incorporate one of the 5 tips below, plus your idea, and let analytics gather the rest.  

Tips

With these five tips, you'll learn how to better tweak your email strategies for better business marketing.

  1. Utilizing Artificial Intelligence According to the Marketing AI Institute, AI can actually help you improve the words you use in your tailored emails-at scale. Here's how.

• Write email subject lines all by itself - AI tools use natural language generation (NLG) to write email subject lines even better than humans can. They do so by learning your brand voice through data you use to teach it, then draft subject lines that increase opens and earn higher revenue.
• Personalize copy down to the individual - AI-powered deep learning technology creates copy that resonates with any audience, segment, or individual. This type of technology can also offer personalized email content recommendations on an individual level, increasing engagement and conversions.

With the power of AI and access to large data, it is possible to analyze trillions of data sets in a matter of seconds and derive substantial results. Bringing growth to your marketing campaigns by saving time and cost incurred over the duration of the campaign. 2. Permission / Data privacy Nothing is more irritating - or distrustful - than receiving an email from a company you've never heard of.   People tend to mistrust these kinds of emails, and send them straight to the spam folder. Every person on a business's email list should have, in some way, signed up to receive emails.  You shouldn’t get more than one complaint per week or 1 complaint about every 750 emails you send. We hear news of massive information leaks almost every day, even from recognized companies. It's important to be transparent about how you got the email and clearly state how you can benefit the consumer. All in all, this tip will help to avoid unopened emails and create a chance for the reader to engage with your brand rather than sending it to the trash. 3. Subject Line If a subject line is too long, there is potential it will get cut off and lose the interest of the reader. Especially for mobile readers! For mobile devices, the subject line character length is even shorter than desktop. This is why more than 85% of subject lines are shorter than 90 characters! The easiest way for readers to react and respond to an email that has been sent out is if they can understand it - both the subject line and content.  So using industry-heavy jargon or vague sentences can leave a reader confused and without knowledge of your product or service. The best way to write an email is using simple sentences, such as if you are speaking aloud to another person. Draw them in and inspire them to inquire more information or even click a link. 4. User-Generated Content For a business to market effectively with email, there must be strategic content.  A simple email with no direction is not going to draw in readers-it simply leads your email to the trash folder. Before starting an email, make sure you have a goal or a point you want to get across to your readers.  Incorporating User-generated content means including your customer reviews about specific products, ratings, or even photos of your clients using the products. Consumers will absorb these reviews and pictures as a great first impression of a product or service. Make sure to keep a consistent focus on your business's message or CTA when incorporating organic content.  If you don't have a goal in your email, it will only be wasting your readers' time as well as your own. 5. Segmentation & Engagement Emails are not a one size fits all! Segmentation is the division of email subscribers into smaller segments based on set criteria. Over the years, segmentation has been used as a personalization strategy to deliver more relevant email marketing to subscribers based on their geographic location, purchase history, web behavior, weather and other demographics. According to Engine Mailer,  micro-segmentation can be done based on several characteristics such as:

• Location (house location, office location, locations frequented, etc)
• Buying habits and personal favorites (preferable email reading and buying time)
• Age group, gender, profession

A good way to get a response or feedback from your readers is to ask for it.  Ask a question or pose a situation in your email, and ask your readers to respond to it.  This will be a lot easier if the email is specifically targeted towards them. Go on to tell them how they can do this, whether it be on your business's website or Facebook page.  Not only will your readers start engaging more directly with your business, but you'll also get to learn what your readers are thinking and how they feel about your business segmentation strategies.

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Constructing a strategic email marketing campaign can be time-consuming, but if you build a strong list of contacts and target them with content specific to their needs, you will likely see an increase in sales leads for your small business. For additional information on email marketing campaigns as well as other social media, marketing, and web design needs check out the WVQ Media website.