As the nature of retail changes, some businesses may not have quite as many opportunities for direct, face-to-face interactions with their clientele. As such, businesses require new ways to engage their customers, to build relationships, and to remain top-of-mind.

The upshot of all of this has been a revival in interest for email marketing. Through regular email blasts, it’s possible to cultivate ongoing interest in your brand, your products, or your services. Naturally, accomplishing these goals requires a careful strategy.

What Makes Email Marketing Successful?

When you think about it, email marketing’s advantages are pretty obvious. Even more than social media, email marketing allows you to have direct communication with customers and clients, distributing your message directly to the inbox on their ever-present smartphone or tablet. Because it offers this direct, unmediated connection between brand and customer, email marketing can generate significant results. Statistic after statistic affirms this:

• According to eMarketer, four out of five people in the U.S. use email at least once monthly. (This is an all-time record for email ubiquity.)
• Oberlo reports that nearly nine out of 10 marketers trust email as one of their primary channels for distributing content.
• Oblero also notes that the ROI for email marketing is $42 for every dollar spent.
• HubSpot notes that, within the past year, 78 percent of marketers say they have seen an increase in email engagement.

Steps to Improve Your Email Marketing Strategy

The bottom line is that email marketing, when done right, can help you engage customers, develop trust, and drive both traffic and sales. Of course, the key phrase here is when done right. If you’ve been investing in email marketing but have not yet seen a clear return on your investment, that’s likely because your strategy could use some refinement.

A few tips:

• Make sure you’re sending email blasts at the right frequency. There’s not necessarily a “right” answer to the question of how often you should email; it can vary from one brand to the next. At enCOMPASS, we usually advise our clients to send a couple of emails per month, first a regular update, then an “in case you missed it” reminder. You may want to experiment with different frequencies, but the main thing is to be consistent without overwhelming your readers.
• Practice proper segmentation. Ideally, you’ll have multiple email lists, with content carefully honed for each one. For example, you might have one list for prospects and warm leads, and another for repeat customers. Or, if your business offers multiple services, you may have your list segmented by service line. Proper list segmentation helps you refine your messaging and provide a more personalized approach.
• Get the timing right. Believe it or not, the time of day when you choose to send your emails can have a big impact on whether those emails are actually opened. At enCOMPASS, we use sophisticated tools that help us assess the data to determine the ideal time to send each email to each recipient based on their history of email opens. We call it “send-time optimization”, and it’s very cool!
• Provide real value. Ultimately, if you want your recipients to open and engage with your marketing emails, you will need to give them some reason to do so. This means providing valuable content, which may be important news about your brand, new product announcements, roundups of recent blog and video content, promo codes, coupons, or other special offers.
• Format properly. Make sure you’re using an email marketing platform that is optimized for mobile use, and that you choose a template that makes it easy for readers to browse your message and zero in on the content that’s relevant to them.
• Be mindful of privacy. Finally, in an era where privacy concerns are paramount, you can earn the trust of your email subscribers by including some boilerplate reminders that you will never sell or misuse their contact information. Also make sure you provide an easy way for people to unsubscribe if they decide they are no longer interested in getting your updates.

Develop an Email Strategy with enCOMPASS Agency

If you’re serious about taking your email marketing to the next level, we encourage you to learn more about working with enCOMPASS. We help our clients develop email marketing strategies that are driven by data and shaped by the expertise of our skilled designers and developers. In short, we can produce emails that are strategically honed to generate results, optimized in content, in frequency, in layout, and more.

We would love to tell you more about the unique email marketing approach that we take here at enCOMPASS Agency. Feel free to contact us whenever you’re ready to chat about your own email marketing opportunities.