Inbox Overload: Can Email Still Work?

We are all familiar with waking up in the morning and checking our phones, then spending the next 5 minutes scrolling through emails, keeping the lucky few and deleting the rest.

With so much clutter in our inbox, it’s hardly surprising that businesses are asking the question- is email still a powerful element in the marketing toolbox…?

Our daily battle with email deletion implies that most emails we get are spam and we aren’t interested. But looking at statistical trends, email usage is expected to grow at an average of 2-3% by 2023*. Shocker!

And not just that, we (in the UK) have one of the highest internet penetration rates and also one of the biggest collections of email users in the world. And there’s more; 99% of email users check their inbox every day, 46% of those check it 2-3 times! Yikes!

So we are clearly interested in email as a channel of communication, but here’s what’s not surprising; 59% think that most email marketing they get is irrelevant**.

The data says that as consumers we accept email, but to be one of the lucky few that get saved in the inbox, it’s clear it needs to stand out, be relevant, be personalised, be timely.

So email can still be a powerful marketing tool, and keep all its benefits like being low cost, instant, accessible to wide audiences etc, but how do marketers now stop someone from hitting the delete button on their brand?

The data says that as consumers we accept email, but to be one of the lucky few that get saved in the inbox, it’s clear it needs to stand out, be relevant, be personalised, be timely.

So email can still be a powerful marketing tool, and keep all its benefits like being low cost, instant, accessible to wide audiences etc, but how do marketers now stop someone from hitting the delete button on their brand?

ight sound basic, but to send personalised messages, you need to know all about your audience and their behaviours, demographics etc. Segmenting your audiences into groups will help define your strategy- and even better if you can put a value on each group to help prioritise.

You can plan your subject lines, content, timing and frequency around each group to help make your email relevant, and the smaller the group and more relevant the campaign, the better the results.

Now you know your audiences, how do you talk to them to make your email stand out? Think about previous learnings, or do some research on what your different segments might find interesting to get them engaged. Some things we’ve found that help to improve open and click-through rates:

>Give us a click: The subject line you choose needs to make the reader want to open your email to find out more, a tricky task we know! But if you have segmented your audience and know what they want, then just keep your subject line descriptive and to the point and you’ll be off to a good start. Always test multiple variations of subject lines too to add to your learnings for your next campaign.

>All about above the fold: On that note, if you get past the subject line barrier and someone opens your email, make sure the top of the email is engaging- no one is scrolling down your email if they aren’t a fan when they open it!

>Short and snappy is good: We don’t have loads of time to check our emails, and now the majority are checked on the go on a device, the copy needs to be punchy and to the point. Test it yourself, if you did a 2-second scan of your email, did you get all the info you needed in that short time?

>Add some character: People don’t want boring, and there is a reason they are subscribed to your emails. Think about your tone of voice, and maybe tailor it to your different audience segments if you can. Give your brand some personality!

>Don’t overload: Don’t make your email too heavy with images etc that might take ages to load. You haven’t got long!

>Make it relevant: I know we are boring you now, but always make sure your content is relevant and personalised to your selected segment. You don’t want them ignoring you, or even worse, unsubscribing!

Gone are the days of sending a weekly newsletter to your whole base at 9am on a Friday… When you send your emails and how many you send is your call (or email!). You might decide to change this up based on your audience segments, but some things to remember:

>Don’t stress about numbers: Only send something when you have something valuable to say.

>You’re in a relationship: Time your emails around trigger points/data you have on your customer and don’t treat everyone the same. Think about loyalty and x-sell and the relevant time to push these in your customer cycle.

>Don’t bombard them, but don’t be a stranger: Both are likely to get you unsubscribed!

One of the best things about email (and lots of other digital marketing channels) is the ability to test and see results very quickly. What we like and what our audiences like are often two different things, so our advice would always be to test, test and test!

Finding out what subject lines, images, content, call-to-actions etc work best for each of your segments is invaluable to improving results. Start with an A/B test and then take the winner and test it against something else! Don’t forget to make sure your sample sizes are big enough to give you robust results and don’t test more than one thing at a time, otherwise, you won’t know what worked (or didn’t!).

On testing, it’s always good to test your email on different ESP’s before you send, to reassure you that it’s rendering correctly and looks good wherever it’s being read.

With Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) cracking down on inbox irrelevance, there’s now an even bigger problem before you start thinking about email opens, which is avoiding the spam folder! This can be a complex thing to solve, but generally, if you stick to some key rules, you should be fine:

>Keep it clean: Don’t buy dodgy audience lists and make sure you have permission to contact everyone on your base.

>Inbox irrelevance is a thing: So make sure your content is relevant to your audience!

>Let them free: Always provide an unsubscribe link.

>Say hello: Often a good idea to have a welcome email once someone has signed up to your list. If you leave it too long before contacting them you may see high bounce rates, spam complaints and unsubs (which will impact deliverability).

>Use an ESP: An Email Service Provider, will take the hassle out of the technical aspect of getting good deliverability rates and are more likely to get you in the inbox.

To understand how well your email campaign has done, you need to measure the results and use them to analyse and compare performance. Never the glamorous bit, but certainly exciting!

>Key Metrics: Whatever ESP you use you will be able to track Opens, Clicks, Unsubs, Bounce rate, Deliverability and some more.

>Other Free Tools: Use Google Analytics and UTM codes in your emails so you can track what people do on your website once they’ve clicked off your email.

>Take your time: Analyse each audience segment, as they might have performed differently. The more you break down the data, the more insights you will get.

>The bigger picture: Look at wider industry trends to see if other factors outside your control might have impacted your results.

>Let’s get visual: Make things visual, use Google Analytics or other tools to bring your results to life and make them easily digestible.

>Improved results: Use all of your data and learnings to make your next campaign even better!

To do all of the things we have mentioned above, a key thing to making them happen is by embracing a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. It’s important to have so you can:

>Keep data tidy and secure: Have all your data in one place (and often use them across other channels like social).

>Break down your audiences: Organise your data properly. Segmenting your audience lists is invaluable, and will allow your messaging to be more relevant and tailored (which is important for all the reasons we’ve already mentioned).

>Analyse who your customers are: Trend your data and see the type of people who are signing up to your website, which will help you understand you target audience when marketing.

>Make it actionable: Use your data and trend information to create timely, relevant and personalised emails.

>Start a 1 to 1 conversation: Set up automated email sends (triggered by different touchpoints). For the individual, not the masses.

Out of all the digital marketing channels we use, email is one of the cheapest and (if you get it right) provides instant visits to your website. So, should it still be a player in the marketing mix?

In short, the answer is yes, but with lots of caveats…gone are the days of “one size fits all” and if marketers want to get results from email, they need to have a targeted and personalised eCRM strategy with the system and expertise to support it.

Sources Used
*Statistica
**Data & Marketing Association (DMA)