Let’s talk about email marketing again: we have devoted several articles on our blog to email marketing strategies and activities, as it is still considered the main tool for creating and consolidating relationships with your users and customers.
The opportunity to address this topic again comes to us from the recent benchmarking report published by GetResponse just on email marketing in Italy. A really reassuring picture emerges for marketers and strategists: the relationship between Italians and email is really rosy. But let’s go into more detail.
Email marketing: Italians really like it but…
Despite the significant volumes of emails received daily, Italians still read a lot of the communications they receive from companies and commercial entities: in fact, Italy is ranked in the top ten countries with the best email open rate, including commercial emails, with a percentage of 28.54 percent compared to a world average of 19.6 percent.
In a global context in which interest in content conveyed through email marketing activities is growing less and less, as witnessed by the drop recorded on average in the number of clicks and CTRs, in Italy the picture is certainly rosier even if we must not forget how it is the value of the content itself that plays a decisive role.
Italians still like to read emails and newsletters as long as the content conveyed has real value: personalization activities and email marketing automation strategies thus become strategic in achieving this goal.
Again referring to the report published by GetResponse, Italians are more likely to be won over by emails that feature personalized objects, i.e., often containing name, emoji rather than terms such as “events” (an open rate of 56.61% is recorded in this case), “pdf” (53.35%), “convenient” (53.14%), “invitation” (48.70%), “newsletter” (42.92%).
Automation, as anticipated, would play a crucial role: beyond the possibility of selecting the best day and time to send, which also varies depending on the target industry, sending automated emails when certain events occur (think, for example, of a workflow with lead nurturing purposes), rather than using autoresponders positively influence open and click rates, especially if they are part of a well-diluted activity strategy over time.
CDP and email marketing: the advantage of evolved and dynamic profiling
If the success of an email marketing strategy is increasingly linked to personalization it quickly becomes clear that it is necessary to start with a careful strategy of profiling and segmentation of one’s contacts.
The advice, therefore, is to move beyond the concept of a list as a unicum of addresses to which one can send one’s communications indiscriminately, in order to opt for an effective clustering of one’s contact database on the basis of multiple criteria, from biographical data to behavioral data to real-time activity on the site.
In this context, the use of a Customer Data Platform such as Blendee offers the possibility of an integrated solution for both advanced and dynamic profiling and segmentation and the management of the actual email marketing activity. The main pluses derive from the possibility of collecting data from multiple channels and sources, both on-line and off-line, and normalising them at the level of a single customer view.
Data on behavior inherent in email marketing activities ( e.g., opened/not opened the newsletter) can thus be supplemented with master or behavioral or contextual data from the same contact (e.g., has purchased a particular product, is viewing a particular page…).
CDP and email marketing: expanding horizons with triggered emails
By addressing the topic related to evolved and dynamic profiling, we can open up the boundaries of email marketing as we traditionally know it and introduce the triggered email.
With this wording we go to consider all those highly personalized emails that are sent on a one-to-one basis when a particular event occurs.
Surely you have happened to receive a follow up email after a purchase with the proposal of products related to the recently purchased one, rather than the one related to the abandoned cart: in both cases it is triggered email.
The events that can function as “triggers,” if we want to translate from English, are indeed many (from a missed purchase, to filling out a form, to displaying a piece of content/product) so the possibilities of engaging one’s users with personalized content absolutely should not be underestimated, as the report commented on above also reminds us.
Email marketing automation: how to enhance even the most traditional newsletters
Triggered emails aside, an effective email marketing automation strategy cannot disregard more traditional newsletters.
So here are some useful tips to make them even more effective, starting with their very basic elements:
- subject line: it is undoubtedly one of the pivotal elements. We advise you to write it coincidental, but at the same time catchy enough to stimulate the opening of the message. Often, the rules of persuasion (social proof, scarcity, curiosity…) are used to devise it;
- sender: it is good to always make the sender clear and invite the user, once he or she opens the first email, to add it to the address book. This will be important for winning the spam challenge;
- preview: is the portion of text that is displayed before opening the email accompanying the subject line. It can be used to elaborate on the subject message itself and provide the user with some more information;
- body of the email: it is important to capture the user’s attention right away in order for them to be stimulated to continue reading. We therefore recommend that you personalize the text with the name, immediately providing a clear reason to read further. It is useful from time to time to include hooks so that the reading is overall smooth. Usually address the reader using the second person singular, and except on particularly formal occasions, adopt a friendly, colloquial tone;
- CTA: is the key element, it must be clear, engaging to push the user to action.
It is always advisable to close the email with a signature, preferably a personal one, and maybe even include a postscript, which always generates a lot of curiosity.
Email marketing is absolutely a channel that cannot be missed in the marketing strategies of brands and companies since there is evidence, at least in Italy, of a constant interest in the content conveyed through this channel, but it is appropriate to make the most of it, giving value to what is conveyed.
