Premiere Creative’s Comprehensive Approach To Email Marketing

This may come as a surprise, but email marketing isn’t a new phenomenon. Did you know that the first email marketing campaign was launched in 1978? To put it differently, the roots of email marketing predate the modern Internet. Companies have been using direct electronic messaging to reach target customers for as long as computer networks have existed. Today, email marketing remains one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways for advertisers to reach customers. Whether you’re trying to reach out to a completely new audience of potential customers, hip existing customers to new products/services, or incentivize cart abandoners to come back and complete their purchases, email marketing remains the most effective tool at a marketer’s disposal. Even in 2019 – after decades of existence as a channel for communicating with customers – email marketing remains one of the most important elements for any advertisers marketing strategy.

That said, the world of email marketing is unendingly complicated. There are many laws and guidelines enforced by government agencies specifically designed to protect consumers from spam. There are best practices to consider for email marketing creative. There are countless email marketing service providers – like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and HubSpot – that each have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

If that wasn’t enough, there are also targeting considerations, email list hygiene methodologies, and compliance issues. Failure to take any of the above-mentioned issues into consideration will result in an ineffective and expensive email marketing effort. Navigating the sea of complications that comes with email marketing requires expertise. It requires a partner with experience and up-to-the-minute knowledge of the internet marketing landscape.

At Premiere Creative in Millburn New Jersey, we’ve worked for 26 years to perfect the art and science of email marketing. Our comprehensive suite of email marketing services helps clients exceed their benchmarks. Whether you’ve envisioned a brand awareness play, a direct response sales effort, or a fundraising campaign, our email marketing team has what you need to surpass your goals. For email marketing tips, read on.

If you’d like to talk to us about kicking your email marketing efforts into overdrive ASAP, drop us a line!

Is Email Marketing Right For My Business?

Email marketing is not new or shiny. It’s not the next big thing, nor is it a disruptive force in the world of Internet marketing. It’s a tried and true pillar of the marketing mix that is essential for any ROI oriented digital marketer to master. To put email marketing’s effectiveness into perspective, consider that marketing emails average an open rate of 24% and a conversion rate of 4.29%. The average conversion rate for email marketing is almost 4X higher than the same metric for newer forms of digital media. In other words, email marketing campaigns perform 4x better in terms of click-throughs, conversions, and return on ad spend than Google banners, Facebook vertical video, or any other digital ad unit.

When it comes to driving sales and sign-ups online, email beats social, search, display, video, and direct advertising. Two-thirds of American consumers have made purchases after interacting with an email marketing message. According to a study from 2016, fewer than 20% of new leads driven to sales pages are qualified. A lead has to be nurtured through consistent efficient messaging before it qualifies and converts on an actual sales page. Perhaps email’s greatest selling point is its ability to move leads down-funnel.

Additionally, consider that email marketing is one of the few marketing channels over which advertisers have complete control. Outside of compliance issues and regulations, there is no external entity – like Facebook or Google – that can influence your email marketing strategy. Email marketing allows advertisers to control how, when, and why they’re reaching out to an audience.

Email Marketing Tips and Use Cases

Email marketing is not without its own laundry list of issues and complications. With that being said, most digital marketing undertakings are moved forward and improved with strategic email marketing campaigns. There are many use cases for which email marketing campaigns are perfect.

• Relationship Building: A brand has no greater asset than its relationship with customers. By executing engaging, informative, and entertaining email marketing drops, you can keep customers abreast of promotions, new products, services changes, and the like.
• Brand Awareness: If you’ve recently collected fresh opt-in email addresses, a targeted brand awareness mail drop can keep your products and services top-of-mind when leads are ready to engage
• Lead Generation: Learning more about your potential customers will help sell to them down the line. Entice them to provide you with personal information in exchange for an asset they’d find valuable (i.e. “Tell Us Your Birthday, Get 10% Off Your Next Purchase!”)
• Lead Nurturing: “Moving leads down the sales funnel” may as well be the official definition of “Marketing.” No medium is more equipped for that process than Email. Use email marketing to bring cart abandoners back to the checkout. Try out a drip campaign to keep your brand’s offerings at the top of people’s inboxes. Use a promotion to get subscribers clicking around your store.
• Content Promotion: In case you haven’t seen one of Gary Vee’s ubiquitous LinkedIn videos, allow us to fill you in: content is king! Use email marketing to promote new blog posts. It will help improve your blog’s authority on Google while informing your opted-in subscribers.

It doesn’t matter if you’re running a brand awareness campaign, a direct response campaign, or are trying to get some eyeballs on a new blog post. Email marketing is a fantastic medium for reaching target audiences.

But initiating an email marketing campaign is complicated. The first step is building a subscriber list. Marketers must consider how to collect email addresses, email list hygiene, and email list segmentation. Let’s discuss:

How Do I Create, Manage, & Optimize My Email Marketing Lists?

Having a solid email marketing list is the first step to any successful email marketing initiative. An email list is the collection of email addresses being targeted during an email marketing campaign. As we’ll discuss, most email marketing lists are built during lead generation campaigns.

In a phenomenon known as “database decay,” an email marketing list with a set number of subscribers will degrade by 20% YOY. As people opt-out of your email messaging, move from one company to another, and otherwise change their email addresses, your current email marketing list will slowly but surely weaken over time.

Email marketing is one of the most robust and effective inbound marketing tools at a brand’s disposal. But that’s only the case for brands that are constantly adding fresh contacts to their email marketing lists. There are many ways to build squeaky-clean email marketing lists that are relatively inexpensive and don’t involve buying or renting data.

Here are a few methodologies that work incredibly well for Premiere Creative’s top-rated NJ email marketing agency.

Reduce the Rate of List Decay: Create Incredible Email Marketing Content

If you want people to stay subscribed to your email marketing newsletters, creating engaging content is a must. Invest heavily in quality copy that is short, sweet, humorous, call-to-action (CTA) driven. If your subscribers like your emails, then all is right in the world.

Pump Some Life into Your Email Marketing List

If you suspect that your email marketing list has decayed significantly, mailing out an engaging opt-in message will allow those users who are still engaged to re-commit. Almost as importantly, it will allow you to remove users who are no longer interested in your content. It may seem counterintuitive, but the process of boiling your list down to users who are actually engaged will improve your deliverability.

Create a New Lead Generation Offer

Host new content on your website. Write an eBook or white paper, and ask site visitors to submit email addresses to download. Extend free trials, software demos, and host contests that require users to opt-in. Collecting information from users who’ve expressed interest in your products and services will help you grow an engaged email marketing list.

Promote Contests, eBooks, & Other Content On Social Media

Run paid media campaigns on social platforms. Offering users giveaways in exchange for email addresses and demographic information. Incentivize users to click through to your website and sign up with their email addresses.

Leveraging these 4 methods for building, cleaning, and maintaining your email marketing lists will improve your customer relationships, optimize your deliverability, and prevent your emails from winding up in user promotion or spam folders.

Creating and maintaining clean email marketing lists is a breeze. It’s all about continuously adding to your existing lists as people opt-out. It’s also important to send your users high-quality creative content with great copy and eye-catching rich media assets. And finally, avoiding email data vendors that hock polluted lists is imperative for maintaining the hygiene of your email marketing efforts.

Once you have your lists in place, the next step is navigating the tangled web of direct messaging laws and regulations.

Understanding Email Marketing Laws & Regulations

The United States has a set of laws governing the use of email marketing for commercial purposes. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is meant to protects commercial email recipients from spam marketing. It establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives users the right to opt-out of future messaging, and spells out violations for advertisers who fail to meet the requirements. A lot of CAN-SPAM regulations boil down to common sense and basic decency. Some are slightly less obvious but equally important. There are 7 rules that email marketers must follow.

1) Avoid False or Misleading Header Information

The CAN-SPAM act lays guidelines for sender self-identification. An email marketer’s “From,” “To,” “Reply-to” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must clearly identify the person who is sending the email.

2) Use Accurate & Descriptive Subject Lines

The subject line of a commercial marketing email must accurately describe the content of the email.

3) Labeling the Email as an Ad

Advertisers must disclose “clearly and conspicuously” that their message is an advertisement.

4) Clear Steps for Opting Out of Future Emails

Any email marketing message must contain “clear and conspicuous” steps for opting out of future messaging. The onus is on the advertiser to make the instructions easy for anyone to understand and follow.

5) Make your Company’s Location Known to Email Marketing Recipients

Under CAN-SPAM, advertisers must explicitly state their physical addresses in email marketing creative.

6) Advertisers Must Promptly Honor Opt-Outs

It’s not enough to simply provide email marketing recipients with clear opt-out instructions. Any opt-out mechanism you employ in your email marketing efforts must process opt-outs at least 30 days after the recipient received the message.

7) Managing Third-Party Email Marketing Services

If you’ve hired an email marketing service – such as a digital marketing agency – you still must be on top of CAN-SPAM compliance. An agency’s involvement with your email marketing efforts does not eliminate your responsibility to users.

While CAN-SPAM restrictions are binding and expensive to violate, they are simple to follow and implement. In fact, most email marketing services like MailChimp and Constant Contact will only execute mail drops for creative that is exhaustively combed for CAN-SPAM compliance.

With CAN-SPAM laws and list hygiene methodologies under your belt, it’s finally time to move on to the fun part: drafting unique and effective email marketing creative!

Best Practices for Email Marketing Campaign Creatives

You want your subject line to grab user attention. You want the body copy to be short sweet and amusing. You want the copy to culminate in a beautiful and succinct CTA, and you want the entire email to look visually spectacular. Let’s dive deeper and investigate how to make the most of the most effective digital marketing channel out there.

Reach Your List More Effectively with Targeting & Segmentation

Before building out creative and setting up email drops, it’s important to consider which people you’d like your email marketing campaign(s) to target. Different campaigns serve different functions. Let’s say you’re an eCommerce company. You have two separate marketing goals this week:

1. Driving Customers To Checkout: You’d like to retarget cart abandoners and offer them free shipping if they click a CTA in an email and check out.
2. Discounts For Recent Subscribers: You’d like to award a 10% discount to users who saw one of your blog posts on Facebook, clicked through to your blog, and entered their email address.

These separate marking goals require the content to target users with separate lists. By dividing up your entire list of email marketing prospects based on age, gender, geo-location, place within the sales funnel, and many other factors, you can devise strategic and intelligent email marketing campaigns that inbox effectively and bring about desirable outcomes.

Strong Openings & Closings – Leverage Calls to Action and Subject Lines

When it comes to copy, the most effective email marketing creative opens with a bang and finishes with a clear, compelling, and inspiring call to action. For any email marketing campaign you undertake, write multiple versions with different CTA’s and subject lines, and A/B test them. Doing so will help you hone in on messaging that works best.

Keep Body Copy Short and Sweet

At Premiere Creative, we rarely drop emails with body copy that exceeds 150 words. We opt instead for clear and concise copy that drives results. You want the subject of your body copy to match your subject line and headline. You want to break it up so there’s room for rich media assets between text blocks. And perhaps most importantly, you want it to evoke some sort of emotional response in the recipient. Whether you want to make your readers laugh or pout depends on your brand and the purpose of the campaign. Regardless, copy that is compelling and evocative will win every time.

Drive Email Traffic to a Quality Landing Page

Two-thirds of American consumers have purchased from a company after receiving their email marketing assets. That said, consumers will not take the desired action on your landing page if it’s poorly set up. Most email traffic is now mobile. In other words, most people who hit your landing page from an email will be doing so on their mobile devices. So make sure your landing page is optimized for mobile web. Make sure it is easily navigable, quick loading, and visually stunning.

Master your Email Marketing with Premiere Creative

At Premiere Creative, we’ve worked with countless clients over a broad swath of industries to drive unimaginable success with email. With offices in downtown Millburn, NJ, we’ve worked with a healthy mix of B2B and B2C email clients. As New Jersey’s leading email marketing agency, we’ve helped eCommerce clients drive qualified traffic to their web stores and drastically improve ROI. We are New Jersey’s leading experts in the art and science of email marketing. Looking for new ideas to drive leads and traffic? Try our Klaviyo email marketing automation for eCommerce websites.

If you’re interested in learning more about our approach, give us a call today at (973) 346-8100.