To master the art of email, first, you need to become an email marketing ninja. In this blog, youâll find the top 10 email marketing tips thatâll enable you to make the transition and give your competitors the chop. Ka-POW! đ
Like a phoenix from the flames, email marketing has seen a resurgence in recent times. In fact, the number of email users grew to 4 billion in 2020 and is set to rise to 4.6 billion users in 2025. đČ
The âsend and receiveâ daily statistics are following a similar trajectory too, with the current figure of 306.4 billion predicted to soar to 376.4 billion by 2025.
However, taking advantage of this growing market requires a special kind of person. A person with a particular set of skills.
Yep, Iâm talking about an email marketing ninja.
What does it take to be an email marketing ninja? âđ„·
Before I reveal the secrets of becoming an email marketing ninja, you need to know what it takes to be one.
An email marketing ninja adopts a stealthy, strategic, and stand-out approach to cut through other email marketing noise.
It takes organised email marketing management to create the right strategy for your business to succeed. After all, itâs a tough crowd out there.
With billions of emails filling up our inboxes every day, you need a dynamic, proactive and flexible approach towards email marketing. Three ingredients that an email marketing ninja will possess.
Rather than cast the largest net to catch as many leads as possible with generic, lazy, and automated email campaigns. Itâs about understanding the market. More so, the customer.
The beauty of email marketing allows us to be personal and direct. Itâs not about the size of your net but the bait on your hook. An email marketing ninja is precise and effective. They will harness their brains before physically sending anything out.
Sure, it takes some getting used to. But mastering it is easier when you have the right insights to hand â starting with these top 10 email marketing tips.
Top 10 email marketing tips from an email marketing ninja âđ
Letâs get personal
Not only can you communicate directly with your customer, but you can personalise your email marketing too. Personalising emails can really help generate more engagement with your consumer where other forms of content canât.
Interestingly, Experian revealed that personalised promotional mailings have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates than generic mailings.
Using the data available to you will enable you to craft personalised email messages. For example, sending birthday messages, location-specific events or using customers names are just a few ways of personalising your email marketing to improve overall engagement. From nurturing leads to generating sales, personalisation is proven.
Quality improves credibility
From the subject line right down to the call to action, the content must add value. A purposeful and deliberately driven message should appeal directly to your consumer. Too many businesses send automated emails of no interest. Typically, they clog up inboxes, get deleted or annoy the recipient.
This outcome can have a detrimental and negative effect on your business. Do yourself a favour and donât barrage the market with automated emails. Take the email marketing ninja approach and use your time wisely to deliver quality content.
Brand identity
Email marketing is another form of communication that can help maintain brand continuity. Through tone of voice (TOV), logos, imagery, and emojis, you can relate to your target audience. In turn, they can help generate consistency with your brand.
And if that isnât enough to chop away any scepticism, Forbes reported maintaining brand consistency across all platforms increases revenue by up to 23%.
So, while email marketing ninjas wonât identify their identity, they do know the importance of making those around them stand out.
The welcome email
A welcome email should be the first email you ever send to a new customer after they join your mailing list. It is a simple and easy way to welcome them warmly, give thanks and inform them of future correspondence.
You can even ask them to fill out a few questions to help tailor their experience with you. Remember, an email marketing ninja isnât afraid to ask questions if itâs going to enable them to improve themselves and others around them.
Welcome emails are notoriously successful for customer engagement, driving an average 50% open rate. Just make sure that you add sprinkles of personalisation. While thereâs nothing wrong with automated emails, you donât want to make a bad impression by offering an impersonal experience.
Newsletters
Another effective way to maintain customer engagement and build relationships is through monthly or weekly newsletters. 40% of businesses say newsletters are crucial to their content marketing success with 83% of B2B companies using newsletters as part of their content marketing campaigns.
Newsletters can track content that interests your customers most, along with creating list segments to improve response rates. These features inform your content and help you target the consumer more accurately with the next addition.
A true email marketing ninja will utilise this brilliant form of marketing to keep their brand top of mind with the audience. But they will avoid including the word ânewsletterâ in their subject lines, as it decreases their open rates by 18.7%. Remember, the purpose of a newsletter might be to inform, but that doesnât mean you canât create intrigue in the subject line.
Data capture and control
If âcontent is kingâ, then data holds the key to its kingdom. An email marketing ninja knows that data inform their content and creativity, as it provides them with specific information capable of better targeting consumers.
Seeing how US marketers have invested $5 billion in data management in recent years shows the importance and influence of data. Recognise what is your most important data through stable referencing. This approach will help you understand consumer behaviour and purchase habits.
Itâs like buying all the ninja equipment without a trainer there to help you understand how and why. Start with the audience and the rest can be adapted and tested.
The early bird catches the worm
Optinmonster reports that 58% check their emails first thing in the morning.
Catching these users at the right time can help your email marketing from being overlooked. People who check their emails first thing are typically known to be more task orientated.
This means they are more likely to open and engage with your email if it appeals to their needs. To become an email marketing ninja and make your next campaign a success, be sure to schedule your emails at the right times. It takes a few attempts. But after a while, youâll recognise a pattern.
Or if youâre still not 100% sure, use the âSend Time Optimisationâ feature on MailChimp as a starting point, and add 15 minutes to ensure you beat the rush. Youâll notice a difference.
Call to action (CTA)
In email marketing, lots of time is devoted to creating captivating subject lines and killer content with little attention given to the CTA. Ultimately, you want to drive your customer to act, and a CTA should do just that.
Rather than the standard âbuy nowâ, âshop hereâ, try to be more creative and relative to the content on show. If you have a special offer that month, use it in the CTA. For example, âStart my free trialâ, âClaim 50% offâ.
Keep it clear and if possible, use a button CTA rather than a standard link. Campaign Monitor claims a button CTA is 28% more likely to occur click-through rate than a link.
If you want to take your email marketing ninja training one step further, research the psychology of colour in marketing. Itâs a real eye-opener.
Sublime subject lines
The subject line is the first thing you see when you open your inbox to new emails. For this reason, it might just be the most important factor when it comes to content and engagement.
Blog HubSpot states 35% of people open their emails based on subject lines alone. The trend is to keep it concise, compelling, and not too wordy. Anywhere around the 60-character mark or 5-7 words is ideal. maximum of 60 characters for each subject line.
To keep your subject lines short and sweet like a pro email marketing ninja, use numbers, symbols and emojis when possible, depending on your target audience. To try and capture your consumerâs attention, use personalisation such as their name at the very beginning.
You can also use an email subject line tester to help you optimise your subject lines. We recommend MailNinjaâs free subject line tool. Simply copy and paste for instant analysis.
Pass the test, time and time again.
With any email marketing ninja, practice makes perfect. Testing is crucial in the email marketing game. The more data and knowledge you have, the easier it is to optimise and tailor future campaigns. Email marketing is constantly evolving, and you must adapt to your customer and stay ahead of the pack.
A/B testing is a proven route of identifying data by cross-referencing the separate versions of the same content to different audiences/segments. By doing this, you can measure the effectiveness of each content to optimise content in the future.
Are you ready to be an email marketing Ninja? âđ„·
These top-ten email marketing tips should inspire you to become a fully-fledged email marketing ninja and ensure you can improve open rates, clickthrough rates and conversions.
Donât let the vast numbers in the email world fool you. Shouting as loud as you can to drown out everyone else is impossible. It will only create a whole load of noise no one wants to listen to, let alone understand. Be data-centric, quality-driven and stealthy in your approach.
Testing will go a long way to improve your email marketing campaigns. Documenting your research so you have a clear reference point is crucial to help you understand your success and or failure.
Remember, all the tools are there. Targeting your customer has never been easier but the competition has never been more difficult. Stay lowkey, and tap into the ways of an email marketing ninja. Do this, and youâll find success over and over again with your email campaigns.
