What really works in email marketing?

The only way to find out what works in email marketing is to keep asking your clients. We asked clients “what really works for you?” at a recent DMA Email Marketing Council client hub workshop. Read on to discover the five top answers. Hopefully, they will give you some tips that you can weave into to your email marketing activity to make your campaigns work harder and ultimately drive improved campaign ROI.

1. Re-engagement campaigns
Re-engagement, or win-back campaigns, can prove hugely rewarding. Think about it, a lapsed or a dormant customer has already been a buyer of your products/services. It is often much easier and cheaper to re-activate this audience than it is to go after new customers. You can implement various strategies to get these customers buying again.

The first thing to do is to make sure that you understand the profile of the target audience segments that you’re looking to reactivate. This will then help you to understand which strategy to pick.

It may be as simple as an incentivised offer, such as a coupon, discount or buy one get one free. Or, if you don’t think that your segment is purely price and value driven, then consider a more empathetic approach. This could be a survey framed in a way to make sure they understand how much you value them and to find out how you can better improve the product offering or service you are providing.

2. Sales, competitions, big brands, value deals, freebies always work with consumers
This sounds like a no-brainer and, in a lot of cases, it is. Where the real benefits start to be realised is when you really understand what the drivers, motivations, wants and needs are of your target segments. Stack it high and sell it cheap might drive the maximum number of sales, but does it drive the best ROI?

3. Teaser lines
We all want to drive engagement with our email programmes, right? While the subject line should never be misleading, or promise something that isn’t then delivered, a teasing subject line can be used to great effect in driving opens. Once open, clearly the creative then needs to deliver and drive engagement beyond the open. Also, a teaser campaign, as differentiated from simply a teaser subject line, can also be effective in doing things such as generating traffic for a new website launch, or driving sign-ups and pre-orders for a new product. Again, before embarking on such a strategy, make sure than your “big reveal” lives up to the hype… don’t tease your customers, and then let them down!

4. Integrate content (eg YouTube videos) into the email
Today’s marketer has an ever-expanding list of direct communication channels to choose from and email is just one. The point above is saying more than simply “include video content in your email because people click on it”.

If your main KPI is to drive engagement and your engagement metric is simply a click, then by all means load your emails with video content, because people do click on it. What I think is the key take-out of this point is that content, particularly in today’s socially connected world is still king. This goes back to basic email marketing principles… don’t send an email unless you have something interesting and engaging to say. In other words, understand what the value exchange is between your customer and your brand when they interact with your comms.

5. A single customer view database has proved the value of data
It has proved that segmentation drives uplift. To the advanced email marketer, this may sound like a given, or something that is so basic as to not be worth mentioning. I think the reality is that many businesses, and not just SMEs, do not have all their data in one place and find it difficult to close the clichéd “campaign loop”. Also, pressures to simply get campaigns out the door can mean that learnings are not necessarily fed back as routinely and acted upon as thoroughly as they should be. Businesses need to understand that in order to gain a competitive advantage, simple segmentation is the first step in a hugely rewarding journey.

This workshop was the latest in a series of client workshops where we ask clients to shed light on the issues, challenges and successes they face on a daily basis. You can find out more about future events by emailing the DMA Email Marketing Council.

Rupert Harrison, senior planning consultant, relationship marketing, Possible Worldwide and chairman of the DMA Email Marketing Council client hub.

@RupertHarrison

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