Email Marketing Letters: Working and Failed Strategies

To promote goods and services on the market, marketers use different methods, technologies, and often their combinations in order to attract the target audience, present their products in the most favorable light, and form the largest possible group of regular customers. And almost every strategy includes email marketing. This is a direct channel of communication with potential buyers, clients, which in practice is very often used to inform about various special offers, new products, maintain interest in certain products and the brand as a whole. But here we are not talking about simply sending messages via e-mail. Most of them develop a comprehensive email marketing strategy, which includes several goals and a plan for their implementation.

Today, you can often hear the opinion that this strategy no longer works in practice, that it is gradually losing its relevance and effectiveness. But this opinion is far from the truth. If you analyze the situation that has developed today in the field of email marketing, then on average, every $1 spent brings about $40 in profit. And this is what allows us to confidently state that this method continues to work even in modern conditions. But there is one significant BUT: it is important that the initial strategy is as well thought out, carefully planned, so that it is implemented strictly according to the intended plan. It is also necessary to constantly monitor its effectiveness and, if necessary, make adjustments immediately, getting the maximum result at the end. Only in this case can we talk about the success of email marketing.

As part of today's review, we will dwell in more detail on the purposes and tasks for which this technology should be used. We will give 5 tips, using which every marketer can increase the effectiveness of an email newsletter. We will give a number of techniques for writing letters that are guaranteed to attract the attention of the audience and will contribute to increasing interest, feedback, as well as those that can initially be called a failure. The information provided will help you navigate the specifics of the upcoming work and get a knowledge base that will be useful when developing your own email marketing strategy.

When is it worth using email marketing

Sending out mailings without a pre-thought-out strategy is simply a waste of money and effort for marketers. This is something that absolutely any business should avoid. If you want your channel of interaction with the audience to be profitable, work effectively, and not irritate people, you should approach the implementation of the work as comprehensively as possible.

If you approach this issue professionally and put effort into it, then everyone will benefit: both your business and your customers. People will feel cared for, understand that not a single offer that is potentially interesting to them will pass by even without direct monitoring. And your business will receive income and will be able to get a fairly large audience of regular customers. Developing an email marketing strategy is a process of setting goals and writing down actions that will help achieve them. How this will all look in practice directly depends on the specifics of each company. But in any case, this technique will be useful if:

• You are just starting your business and you literally have nothing yet. Through email marketing, you can get contacts of your target audience and set up your first communication,
• You already have a base, but you plan to scale it, that is, you would like to build on the existing communication.
• You already have an impressive volume of communications and a fairly serious base of regular customers, but now your task will be to pump up metrics.
• You have an impressive customer base, work is carried out in a wide variety of segments, different events are launched. In this case, you need to minimize manual work and automate as many processes as possible.
• Active purchases are underway, but it is important for you to retain customers as long as possible, focusing not on casual buyers, but on regular ones.

Email marketing will be a useful tool at each of these stages. You just need to develop your own strategy that will prove to be the most effective in practice.

Why is email marketing so important for business?

The use of email marketing in practice is designed to solve 3 key tasks that absolutely any business faces, regardless of its specifics or niche. In particular, we are talking about:

1. Significant assistance in planning advertising campaigns in general. Thanks to this technique, marketers will be able to develop a general strategy for promoting the business in advance and provide stakeholders with a clear plan of sequential actions for approval. At this stage, it is planned to send letters containing useful and educational content for the audience, as well as to carry out promotional mailings containing information about promotions and special offers. In the case of content letters, there are no time or content restrictions. They do not include a direct call to sales, but simply maintain audience engagement at a high level. With their help, potential buyers are sent materials that will be useful to them when choosing products, etc. The main task is to understand the interests of the audience and, based on them, subsequently segment the mailing list and, accordingly, prepare more personalized messages. Promotional mailings are what will motivate recipients to perform a particular target action, such as buying a product at a discount, registering in thematic communities, making an appointment, etc. Initially, in this case, a series of letters is created. Most of it will consist of three separate mailings. Initially, an announcement of a particular event is sent approximately 2 weeks before its start. About a week before the event, a second letter is launched, reminding them of the upcoming event. And the last contact via e-mail will be literally 1 or 2 days before the start.
2. Easier goal setting, as well as the ability to evaluate progress. We have already said that any email marketing strategy will include a detailed plan for achieving the key tasks facing the business. That is, you already understand in advance what you want to achieve within the framework of a particular campaign, set time frames. This is what allows you not only to manage e-mailings, but also to make appropriate adjustments to the overall strategy of advertising campaigns. Moreover, you will see which of your letters have caused a positive reaction from the audience, and which, on the contrary, did not meet your expectations. Thanks to this, you will be able to subsequently develop strategies that will give the best results in terms of the ratio of efficiency and material costs.
3. A guarantee that of all the previously developed strategies, you choose the most effective. In this case, we are talking about the fact that with the help of e-mailings, you can see the interest of the audience and offer them those products, terms of cooperation, promotions that will really interest them and will become a guarantee of placing an order. In addition, you can use e-mailings to remind about the products that are in the basket, but the purchase was never made, in order to attract regular customers with an interesting offer. These are all things that will minimize lost sales and stimulate new orders.

All of these solutions are highly beneficial when developing a general advertising campaign strategy. This means that email marketing should not be excluded from consideration if you want to get the most out of your budget.

Effective Email Marketing Practices

These are the advantages and features of email marketing that we talked about above - these are only a part of the strengths that are characteristic of this technology. But in order to ultimately achieve maximum efficiency, to minimize possible mistakes and waste of your advertising budget, we recommend that you take into account a number of recommendations from experts. In particular:

• Take a bet not only on users of personal computers, laptops, but also on those who work via mobile devices. Every day the number of such people increases, and quite significantly. And this means that people should be comfortable reading your newsletter, regardless of what device they use for this. That is, it is important to keep up with the times and adapt all emails for smartphones, tablets. This is what guarantees high open rates and readability of the newsletter. You must understand that if a person, having received your letter, cannot open it as quickly as possible, with a high degree of probability he will simply forget about it. And the first visual impression should be as positive as possible. Otherwise, you will not be able to convey the desired information to the target audience.
• Evaluate not only the overall result, but also each individual message sent. You must understand how each of your actions affects potential clients, whether it causes a backlash, contributes to the emergence of interest, stimulates the performance of a particular target action. It is also important to analyze email newsletter before sending it. Open the letter again, check how attractive it looks, how well it is written. Think about whether you would be interested personally if you received such a message. If any shortcomings or controversial points are revealed, it is better to correct all this in advance in order to have a positive effect on the audience.
• Always segment the database. In such letters, you can focus on the status of the buyer, take into account the history of your relationship. This way, you can count on your information being truly relevant and with a high degree of probability interesting the person.
• Personalize letters. We have already talked about the importance of making email newsletters personalized, that is, ones that take into account the individual preferences and wishes of individual groups of potential clients. Thanks to dynamism, the effect will be created that you are sending your message to a specific person, taking into account their individual characteristics. Statistics show that personalization in email newsletters increases viewing and clickability by an average of 40% compared to classic impersonal letters.
• Add value to each email newsletter. You should approach the implementation of this method more creatively. Do not turn it into a banal newsletter with information about your promotions and special offers. Do not bombard potential clients with direct advertising, because this can cause a negative effect even if it contains truly useful information. Combine informational and promotional content to emphasize your authority, to show that you are not chasing profit, but are focused on truly fruitful and long-term cooperation.

Email marketing will be especially useful for small businesses, for companies that are just entering the market and trying to find their own audience. Despite the fact that today there are a huge number of advertising strategies, it is difficult to single out one that would be a worthy replacement for this technology. But again, we repeat that its implementation must be approached as professionally as possible. Your newsletter should not be exclusively advertising, because the modern audience will clearly not appreciate it.

To avoid the most common mistakes and launch an email marketing strategy that will meet your expectations and prove its effectiveness, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the types of letters that attract the attention of potential buyers and, conversely, with those solutions that repel them.

Types of letters that are guaranteed to attract the attention of the audience

In order to create such a letter for an email newsletter that will attract the attention of the audience, will contribute to the fact that people will open it, read it, perform this or that target action, it is important to focus on the structure and features of your market segment, the interests of people belonging to your target audience. That is, before preparing such material, it is important for you to do some preliminary work. You need to draw up a portrait of the target audience, identify its interests, select a product or service that can interest a certain market segment. But still, initially you should have a basic letter, which will subsequently be subject to additions and changes.

Is it worth using very unusual solutions here? Perhaps, if you are sure that they are able to interest your potential buyers. As practice shows, quite often the greatest effect and success are shown by standard solutions, in particular:

1. Emails with multimedia content. Here, along with the classic text accompaniment, interesting visual effects will be presented. This can be photos, videos, GIF files and other solutions that can be attributed to this category. Due to high visibility, such material is easy to perceive, literally on an intuitive level and contributes to the formation of a fairly high interest. People open and study them with great desire. This technique works in practice also because modern users are tired of too complex, intricate ideas that require a lot of concentration and time to study. It is one thing if a person is looking for expert material for himself and a completely different thing if he receives an advertising mailing. In the latter case, everything should be as simple, logical and instantaneous in perception as possible. This way you can get the maximum effect in the end. Think about what interactive accompaniment will best suit your letter, experiment with the solution. In one case, a simple dynamic color change, adding elements of movement will be enough, and in another, a short video clip may work better.
2. Classic emails. Transform such a mailing, add original pictures to the text accompaniment, links to those pages that will be useful for the audience, will lead to relevant information. This is what will significantly increase your chances of getting a conversion from the person to whom you send such a letter. Do not make too long text publications, because few people will read them. All information should be presented as briefly as possible, but at the same time be capacious, informative. Try to make sure that in 300-500 characters you can put the most important data, clearly show the key advantages of your offer.
3. Make promotional letters so that they visually demonstrate bonuses, discounts that your potential client can use. Add here any attachments that you think will be useful. Alternatively, these could be promo codes, coupons, free samples, etc. Anything that can arouse the interest of the audience and increase its involvement will do. Modern people are so accustomed to discounts that even when making regular purchases, they strive to save money. One word "SALE" will be enough to attract attention and promote a more detailed acquaintance with the offer. Just try to avoid vagueness, additional conditions, small print with explanations that hardly anyone will read. It is important to make sure that a person can literally see at a visual level what you offer him. At the same time, all solutions must be relevant and honest. If you write "50% discount on the entire brand line", then you must provide it for absolutely all items presented in your catalog. Write in the letter “Get 100 bonuses upon registration and use them upon your first purchase”, provide these very bonuses and write them off upon your first order. It is best to rely on quantitative characteristics in such letters. Alternatively, this could be the size of the discount in percentages or the same dollars. This is what will significantly simplify perception and increase the chances of success of the launched advertising.

As you can see, in such a message format there is nothing complicated either in developing an offer or in implementing it. Simplicity is what has always attracted people. Your potential client should not waste his time and effort to study all the materials. Make them easy to perceive, and you will definitely get an excellent result in the end. People will not perceive your mailing as direct advertising and will be happy to follow links, contact your business, place orders, including on a regular basis.

Types of letters that should be avoided

In this section, we will provide those letter formats intended for email newsletters that in practice attract the least attention from the user audience. This is a really bad solution that should be avoided if you want to maintain high open and read rates for your messages. In particular, we are talking about the following aspects:

1. Letters presented in the form of an announcement of products or services. The difficulty here is that such solutions are a classic for any commercial brand. In them, you can talk about the products you supply to the market, what their value is for a particular segment. But the problem is that there are too many of them. Almost every brand sends them out, and with quite serious intensity. All this leads to the fact that the average user literally gets lost in the abundance of such messages, stops responding to them. That is, as a result, we get very low efficiency. We will not recommend that you completely abandon such mailings, but we would like to point out the need to make adjustments to them. In particular, make such messages as personalized as possible, that is, such that they would take into account the interests of a certain segment of the audience. You will increase the likelihood of their opening many times over if you create a letter addressed to a specific person and add materials with individuality to it.
2. Letters for an e-mail newsletter that look like a classic article. In this case, we are talking about materials that are very long, those that will require a lot of time to study. For people who live an extremely active lifestyle, such a mailing is something that will immediately go to the trash bin, they simply will not read it. Most people check their mail very quickly, quickly, running their eyes over the material presented. And if they see a very long text in front of them, then with a high degree of probability they will simply close it despite its high information content and expertise. "Too many letters" is something that should definitely be avoided in email marketing. If your task is to interest a potential client, to show him your expertise in a certain niche, provide short excerpts or excerpts from the material in the mailing. This is what will allow a person to quickly assess the importance of the information presented. If there is interest, the person will definitely go to the official page of your site by the link and in a calm environment, without haste, will study everything that you wanted to tell him. Just do not forget to add hyperlinks to the main sections of your site or the corresponding article in the message itself.
3. Letters containing open advertising of various competitions, contests. Despite the fact that such interactive activities for the most part attract the audience, in an electronic mailing they do not work at all. They do not cause audience involvement, do not give any indicators that could be counted as conversion. And the main problem here is that user trust in such offers will be very low. This is largely due to the general decline in interest in the electronic mailing, but here the opinion also works that a certain interested person will still win, and the rest are just for the crowd. That is, such offers are initially perceived by the audience as a deception, a way to mislead. Therefore, even if you launch a really interesting contest, few potential customers will agree to take part in it. Such solutions are still relevant, though not through email newsletters, but through social networks. Here they are highly effective and attract a huge number of people. Therefore, if you want to launch a contest, just do it not within the framework of email marketing, but in the thematic group of your business in a particular social network. But here we also do not recommend making tasks too complicated, such that they would require a lot of time and effort from the audience to implement. We suggest you get acquainted with the best ideas for interactive with subscribers here.
4. Emails containing educational content. Self-education is a rather specific niche, which does not have as many fans as it may seem at first glance. There are actually very few people who are ready to independently delve into technical complexities, understand new terminology, and analyze practical application using examples. All this also applies to mailings containing instructions for using a particular product. There should be no dry, voluminous material here. This way, you will not be able to improve the consumer experience. A more effective solution in practice is short letters that will contain links to useful materials. This way, a person will choose what interests him and will then be able to study the issue in more detail. In addition, dividing it into separate blocks will allow you to structure the material, making it easier to perceive. This way, you will receive a letter for an electronic mailing list, which is guaranteed to fulfill the informational function that you have assigned to it. In addition, thanks to such a mailing you will receive additional traffic, which will lead to your website page.
5. Letters containing announcements of upcoming events. We are talking about seminars, live broadcasts, webinars, conferences. Such interactive events are launched today through video hosting, social networks, since this is where the target audience is represented. But if you send all this through an email newsletter, you are unlikely to get high open rates and engagement. People will see the topic, and if it interests them, then they will most likely simply go to the appropriate platform to learn more about these events. The fact is that people interested in a particular topic will always know the opinion leaders who are represented in this niche. They will trust them, as well as official brands, more than any mailing list. If your email marketing strategy involves sending such messages, then be sure to add a promo code, a discount coupon, or something similar to the letter. This way you will attract people's attention and motivate them to study your newsletter in more detail.

We hope that you will take these recommendations into account and increase the effectiveness of your email marketing, excluding obviously wrong decisions from it or at least optimizing them for the realities of the modern market.

Let's sum it up

To get such an email marketing strategy that will show itself well in practice, attract an audience to your business, will help to retain people's attention, turn them into regular customers of your business. And this is what will become the key to a constant and quite good income, will have a positive impact on overall engagement and return on investment. The best results in practice are achieved by combining different methods, well-known templates and relevant content, as well as its segmentation and personalization.

In order to carry out preparatory activities within the framework of launching email marketing, collect information about the closest competitors, the target audience, it is necessary to carry out a fairly impressive set of works. In order to minimize your own efforts and time costs, we recommend using automated solutions. In order not to run into restrictions from the system and other blockages, additionally connect mobile proxies of the MobileProxy.Space service. This is the solution that will provide you with stable and secure work on the network, including in multi-threaded mode, will help automate the same type of routine tasks, and will maintain the confidentiality of the connection.

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