Today’s customers are busy, savvy and frustrated. But why? They’ve taken on too much and are looking for ways to improve their own efficiency, old email marketing tricks no longer have an impact and they’re tired of receiving pitch after pitch that doesn’t add value.
However, email marketing is just as important (and effective) now as it has ever been, especially when it’s integrated with marketing automation.
And if you’re going to learn about the intersection of email and marketing automation from anyone, Mathew Sweezey of Salesforce is the person to listen to. In his session at Content Marketing World, Mathew covered some of the top values that exist within email marketing today.
Value #1: Email is a Mobile Strategy
In 2015, mobile search took over desktop search. In fact, a recent study from Marketing Land found that 68% of all emails are opened on a mobile device. That means, email is very much a mobile strategy.
Value #2: Email Can Be Hyper Targeted
How does media affect relationships between businesses and consumers? If we can understand that, then we can make marketing best practices made for this era, for this time.
The vast majority of people looking for answers online batch their research. They’ll go online and download a lot of things at once and then read them when they have time. This is the new buyer behavior. Once marketers understand this principle, they can start to optimize for great content conversions.
According to Sweezey, the average page views on a website are 1.7. Why? Because Google has trained users to go back to Google if they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for at that moment.
If we understand what people are asking, we can implement stage-based marketing.
Value #3: Email Can Be Quickly Created
On average it takes marketers 2-5 weeks to create a piece of content. So, if you were to create a piece of content for each segment, it would take you roughly 1.5 years to create just one piece of content.
This is not possible, or scalable.
Instead, consider that anything that includes a URL is a piece of content that you can send via email. Below is an example of a simple email that you can quickly create and send with a URL included.
Value #4: Increase Email Value By Writing Like A Human
These emails should be authentic in a way that builds trust with the recipient. If they expect an email to be from a person, then it needs to look like it’s from a person.
Our job isn’t to be pretty. It’s to be effective.”
According to Sweezey, believe it or not, rich text is authentic. Have you ever hand created a full HTML and CSS email and sent it to a single person? Probably not. So do you really think you’re fooling your audience with an HTML email?
Mathew and his team works with one of the largest banks in the United States and found that when they send rich text versions of emails instead of HTML, their engagement increased 4x.
Value #5: Email Can Shorten the Sales Cycle
Research has found that companies who use lead nurturing close deals over 30% faster than those who don’t.
The key to creating nurture programs is to move prospects to the next stage, by getting them to ask the next question. Secondary CTAs in email communications are a great way to get them thinking about the next thing they want to know.
Value #6: Email is the Key to Omni-Channel
In today’s world, personalization is key to marketing success. In order to achieve this, Sweezey shared that the MINIMUM connected systems to accomplish this include:
- CRM
- Marketing Automation
- Website
- Product
Top Considerations for Adding Value with Email
To be honest, the tips above only scratch the surface of Sweezey’s awesome insights into more effective email marketing. In all, brands should absorb and evaluate the following and see how their email marketing measures up:
- Email is the center of the entire marketing life cycle
- Email is best when human
- HTML isn’t best in class email anymore
- Email programs scale businesses efforts
- Social media + email drives engagement
- Best in class brands use email automation for both internal, external and partners.
