Six Ways To Improve Your Email Marketing in 2020

Before the COVID-19 pandemic changed 2020 forever, many business and companies were proceeding with marketing and advertising as usual. The same old emails sent to the same subscribers repeatedly, hoping to convert them into customers.

With the retail and food industries dramatically impacted by quarantine and social distancing measures, and traditional office environments relocated to homes, the landscapes of business and personal life are changed forever, with as-yet-unknown permanent impacts. Some businesses are thriving right now. Many technology companies are full steam ahead as many employees and students shelter at home. Some businesses are prepared for an influx once quarantine measures are lifted. In all cases, business has changed because of COVID-19.

For businesses that are looking towards the future, now can be an opportune time to reflect on your digital marketing strategies and how you want to improve moving forward. Email marketing is still one of the best digital marketing methods with the highest ROI (return on investment), since it’s a low-cost form of communication with a potentially high conversion rate.

But that high ROI is only going to happen with companies that embrace new technology and the latest best practices of digital marketing. From personalization and customization, to buyer’s journey workflows that guide leads into converting to customers, to simply thinking about your emails as if you were on the receiving end. Would you open, read, and click the link in one of the emails that you are sending out?

Here are six ways to improve your email marketing strategy in 2020, as we look towards the future of digital marketing after COVID-19:

Segmentation

“Spray and pray” should not be a part of your digital marketing strategy anywhere, especially when it comes to email marketing. With the power of CRMs and data analytics, marketing emails should be refined and hyper-focused to small segments of your contact database that are most likely to respond to your campaign. By segmenting your contacts into groupings based on buying patterns, buyer’s journey, and content reviewed, you’re increasing the likelihood that the recipient of your email campaign will find the content valuable. And that leads to a higher conversion rate.

Personalization

Retail has made a concerted effort in the past few years to provide a customized response to customers in the buyer’s journey. Emails with your name in the subject line, newsletters with topics you’re interested in, and online shopping cart reminders with personalized suggestions provide the guidance of a retail associate from the comfort of your couch. Outside the world of retail, customers are expecting the same level of attention and service. Meet your leads and customers where they are and make them feel heard, not pandered to, while they are buying.

Workflows

One of the most effective ways to build personalization and customization into your email marketing strategy is through workflows. Services like HubSpot (our personal fave) have Workflow creation tools built in, so that you can connect your CMS to your CRM, build actions between emails, social media, and landing pages, and even assign internal tasks based on lead actions. Developing in depth and responsive workflows ensure that your lead’s and customer’s needs are met, whether you have 100 contacts in the workflow or 10,000.

Short and sweet

Emails are not landing pages. There, we said it. As a recipient of emails ourselves, we’re guilty of only reading above the fold and scanning everything below it if an email doesn’t capture our attention. That’s assuming it even enticed us to open the email in the first place. You have only a split second to convince a reader to open your email through the language of the subject line, preview text, and email sender. Then the body of your email should be concise and on topic. Share your campaign and your CTA. You’re competing with every other email in the recipient’s inbox. Few readers will take the time to read through a lengthy email.

Provide value

The other key component of having your emails opened and read, instead of deleted immediately, is in conveying and providing value. Sending marketing email blasts that say “BUY OUR PRODUCT” will only get you flagged as a spammer. So will sending marketing emails to contacts that you bought instead of those that opted in (seriously, never buy contact lists).

While keeping your marketing emails short and sweet, your campaigns should provide value to the recipients. Are you sharing news of a sale on products that a lead has looked at in the past? Are you sharing a white paper by a new subject matter expert? Is there a new service or product that you are offering? Whatever your campaign is for, the content and CTA must be shared in a way that the recipient thinks they are benefitting. That will convince recipients that your email has value.

Re-engagement campaigns

To bring everything back full circle, you’ll want to make sure that your contacts and your database are always fresh. According to HubSpot’s research team, nearly 25% of the contacts in your database will become defunct year over year.​ Email inboxes reach capacity, people get new emails or switch companies, and sometimes, customers and leads simply lose interest.

That’s where a re-engagement campaign comes into play to ensure your database is only full of reliable contacts. You can use workflows to create campaigns that engage with leads that haven’t opened any of your marketing emails within 90 days (for example) or logged on to your product (another example). By sending these contacts an “Are you still interested?” email, they can review their subscription status, change the topics they want to receive emails about, or unsubscribe entirely. Either way, you’ve become front of mind and reminded them about your brand, or you’ve lost a contact that wasn’t of any use to you anyway. And that’s a win-win for everyone.

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Some people have argued that it’s morally wrong to do marketing efforts during a global pandemic. While we’re hardly going around doing business as usual, we do think that there’s a lot that can be done to make businesses stronger on the other side of this. Improving your marketing, learning more about new tools and strategies, and getting ahead on content are big projects that can be done by marketers during slower periods to be ready when the situation surrounded the pandemic starts to improve.

If you’re looking for more ways to improve your email marketing strategy, either during the COVID-19 quarantine or afterwards, Four Tens provides CMO Consultations and Digital Marketing Services. We’d be happy to look at what you’re doing now, and how we think you can make moves to improve.