UPDATED: 30 APRIL 2020
Almost every customer, employee, and business owner is staying indoors in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This makes email marketing an even more practical tool for reaching out to those people now. But are you doing email marketing right, and are you incorporating the best practices into your email marketing strategies for 2020?
While the pandemic is still out there doing its thing, that shouldn’t stop you from thinking for the long-term. If you start preparing as early as now for when the pandemic has finally died down, you’ll definitely be able to bounce back from this crisis.
And we’re here to help arm you with some must-know email marketing goodies. Let’s start with this question—what are the things you should have in your checklist when crafting your email marketing strategy for 2020?
Stay Up-to-Date with What’s “In”
Email marketing is still deemed as one of the most-used channels today. It’s considered one of the best ways to reach your target audience, both B2B and B2C alike.
But while it is the most used, this doesn’t mean that one tried-and-true strategy is enough to last you a lifetime. Email marketing is a versatile digital marketing tool due to its ability to reach many different platforms.
It can accommodate areas such as your social media channels. It can effectively reach your mobile-using audience down to your specific target customers. However, there are some things you must keep in mind when diving into these channels.
Keep an Eye for Any Major Changes in Your Social Media Channels
The Facebook Ad Policy changes implemented late 2019 led to a sort of Ad-mageddon scenario for many a digital marketer on the platform. To summarize, the policy led to the sudden cancellations or more prominent rejections of eCommerce brands’ Facebook ads.
So before launching your ad campaigns, review your chosen platform’s ad policy guidelines. This will avoid, or at least minimize, the downtime of your ads when they should be generating ad revenue.
Mobile-Friendly Design is the New Standard
This 2020, the number of mobile phone users make up about 45% of the world’s population. That’s 3.5 billion people—talk about opportunity, am I right?
But to really win prospects over, you’ll need to make sure your marketing emails are optimized for mobile devices. This means making sure your emails display and work properly on a mobile device.
Why does this matter in the first place? Well, did you know that if your email were to so much as not display correctly on a mobile device, the user would delete your email in 3 seconds?
Personalization Wins Customers’ Hearts
Nothing engages customers more than messages made exactly for them. Generic emails blasted to random contacts just won’t cut it anymore. But where do you align your email personalization, where do you start?
The answer—email segmentation. Segmentation has always been one of the best practices for email marketing. You segment your email lists and focus on making content relevant to each list. This is a more sustainable practice in the long-term compared to just sending whatever you want to potentially uninterested parties.
In fact, personalization is just one of the major 2020 benchmarks you need to consider if you want to stay ahead of the eCommerce game.
Bring Out the Best in Your Email Marketing with These Best Practices
Email marketing is always evolving and adapting to the changing times. It is not obligated to stay the same, so make good use of this marketing tool’s versatility and evolve your email marketing by incorporating these best practices to your 2020 strategies.
Invest in a Live Chat Service
Email marketing is all about establishing communication with your customers. And live chat service will only help enhance the customer experience.
It can compliment as a follow-up service if ever a customer of yours were to follow the link on a Welcome Email you sent them. Making your brand feel more accessible to your customers has many benefits.
That’s not all. It can also reduce eCommerce costs by already presenting a solution to your customers the moment they need it. Another benefit is that it can increase conversion rates. How? Going back to the Welcome Email example, a live call with your team might just be the small gentle push your customers would need to convert.
Prune Your Email Lists
The size of your email lists doesn’t really matter—it’s the quality of each contact that’s in your lists. And this couldn’t be any more true.
A not-so-well-maintained list can contain inactive subscribers. They can damage the deliverability of your emails as well as your engagement statistics.
That’s not all, this will cost you money. Imagine maintaining a full list of, let’s say, 1,000 subscribers and 500 of those subscribers are inactive. You’re still paying to maintain the full list of 1,000.
Pruning your email lists will help make sure that every contact you have in your lists are genuine and active contacts you can really engage with.
Optimize Your Newsletters
Sending newsletters is one thing, but making your newsletter stand out is another. Your newsletters are the gateways to your other pieces of content.
So for your gateways to really bring in the traffic, you need to know how to do it right. One general tip you should keep in mind—well-made newsletters don’t use over-the-top graphics or long intricate copies.
Invest More on Customer Retention
More doesn’t always mean merrier. In fact, you would just be spending more on customer acquisition compared to customer retention.
Retaining lifelong customers gives a lot of practical benefits, one of which is improved Average Order Value (AOV). That’s not all, loyal customers generally spend more compared to new customers.
Upgrade your Email Marketing with Automation
You got all the segments down and the emails geared towards each list. You got the send schedules, the timings, and triggers set.
Why not automate the whole system?
With email marketing automation, you can bring your email marketing operations to maximum gear. Efficiently boost your email marketing revenue with less time spent on tedious work.
A/B Test Your Emails
A/B testing is not an option—it’s a MUST. If you want to really bring out the best of your emails, you need to test which ones perform better than the rest. From the obvious aspects like subject lines and content to things like send timing and CTA styles.
There is no such thing as a perfect email. A high-performing email is always born from the many A/B tests it has gone through.
Stay Aligned with Current Events
With the pandemic going on, businesses need to be considerate of what they put in their marketing emails. Remember, email marketing is all about establishing communication with your customers especially now with COVID-19 plaguing 2020 .
Keep in touch with your customers who need critical updates about your business operations. Update them with what your brand is doing in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Review all your scheduled campaigns and update your emails accordingly so they are more crisis-sensitive. This way,you can avoid any unnecessary damages to your brand image.
So far, 2020 is a hectic time to be alive, but we can persevere! As long as we stay calm and plan accordingly, eCommerce businesses can bounce back from this crisis. A lot can happen in a year, you should always stay a couple steps ahead so you can stay above the competition.
But if you’re still having trouble making it through all this with your email marketing, please don’t hesitate to hit us up! Just schedule a free strategy meeting with us and let’s foolproof your email strategies!
