One of the most effective ways to find new customers and convert existing leads into clients is through email marketing. The medium might not be as flashy as social, nor get as much press as video marketing, but it’s startlingly effective. In fact, as Brafton reported, email is 40 times more effective than social platforms like Facebook for attracting new customers.
However, you still have to optimally run an email campaign to reap those benefits, and that means performing a balancing act when you market in customers’ inboxes. On one hand, you’re reaching people directly and in a way they can’t ignore as easily as web ads or social promotions. On the other, you run the risk of sending graymail to people who will eventually regret receiving it.
Speed is of the essence
According to a new study by Econsultancy, one of the most important attributes of a successful email strategy appears to be speed. The research looked specifically at email technology, but there are some conclusions marketers using any kind of email software or partners can take away.
Apparently 42 percent of companies that use slow email systems experience lower-than-average conversion rates, while 44 percent of businesses with fast delivery systems have higher-than-average conversion rates. Ultimately, email sends need to be quick and responsive. But how can this be accomplished without investing in expensive and customized email software?
Segmentation
If you divide your customers into demographic and behavioral groups, you don’t have to make a unique email for every single person. Instead, you can divide prospects and customers into groups based on their purchase histories, positions in an existing sales pipeline and even how they discovered your company in the first place.
44 percent of businesses with fast email delivery systems have higher-than-average conversion rates.
Scheduling
If you build a calendar for your email messages, you better prepare the messages you’re sending. Waiting until you have a blog post or video you want to send to seal the deal won’t just confuse recipients – it will make your sends erratic and inconsistent.
Content
Perhaps most importantly, you should have content that is unique to the emails themselves. Reusing older posts and recent content is a great way to share some information in a marketing email, but you don’t want to duplicate what prospects see in their inboxes. Make sure to create extra content just for this purpose so you can quickly initiate sends when your schedule calls for it.
If you do decide to partner with a marketing company or invest in email automation, you can absolutely reach a wider audience and convert many of your leads into customers. However, even without that capability, speedy email marketing that contains unique responsive content marketing materials is where you should start.
