Email marketing is an extremely powerful form of direct marketing.  It is one of the quickest and most effective ways to generate new business.  Allowing you to bypass the traditional ‘gatekeeper’, you can now get your message delivered straight to the inbox of key decision-makers.  With more than 70%* of people accessing email on their mobile devices it is more successful than ever, with direct access to individual’s day and night.

Knowing more about how to increase engagement of those you are looking to target is a vital factor to consider before initiating your campaign. In this article we provide you with some top tips to improve your own marketing in the glazing and construction industry.

Open rates can differ depending on various factors, including the amount you have sent within a certain time frame (i.e. if you sent an email every day the likely hood is the open rates would decrease over time), the subject line and preview text and the content you provide within your email series. We found an average open rate of 19.92% across all databases.

What do I do if my open rates are below average?

• Use exciting, relevant and tempting subject lines and preview text to entice the receiver to open your email
• Use split testing – In split testing you set up two (or more) variations of the one campaign and send them to a small percentage of your total recipients. Half of the test group is sent Version A, while the other half gets Version B for example. The result, measured by the most opens or clicks, determines the winning version. This is then sent to the remaining subscribers. Elements you may want to test include, subject Line, call to actions/content, sender name, personalisation.
• Use benchmarks to understand the best day and times to send to your prospective audience

Looking at the CTR is important in understanding what type of content in your email resonates most with your audiences. This could be elements such as images, written content, CTAs (call to actions). When you know this, you can amend and improve your next email based on the elements that work the best.  We found an average CTR of 2.9% across all databases.

What do I do if my CTR isn’t where I would like it to be?

• Make sure you keep an eye on what content is and isn’t working using heatmaps and link monitoring. This will give you an idea of where people gravitate to
• Make sure you use this insight to optimise your next email.
• Focus on your CTA. The CTA should be centred on your overall goal and the rest of the email should lead to this as the final action.
• Stay away from “Click here” and use power words like; Find, Join, More

Like CTR it measures how engaging your content actually is. However as this is only aligned to those who opened your email, this is a primary measure of understanding your audience, and how interesting your content is to that audience. We found an average CTOR of 14.4% across all databases.

I want more from my CTOR, what do I need to do?

• You’ve done the hard part by getting the receiver to open the email, make it as easy as possible for your prospect to understand exactly what you are expecting them to do and the key points of your email. This includes using easy to read chunks, putting the most important information first and using engaging images and links.
• Create a personalised experience for your audience. This way you can present the right content for their interests, previous business dealings, demographics etc.
• Design for action – engaging and benefit-focused copy, images that are visually appealing and positively present your product/service, an experience that is easily digestible and memorable.

We have built these results over a 12 month period and whilst they can provide you with some indication on where and how your email campaigns can be improved, you can also gain a lot by comparing your own email marketing metrics over the same period of time.

Your results can show you the overall health of your own email marketing strategy and allow you to compare your activity to those of your competitors and the industry as a whole.

Be sure to always benchmark your performance, measure your success and you will find that email marketing will help you to convert more business.

We will:

• Remove the hassle of benchmarking
• Think about how you want to use email marketing and channel this into a structured campaign
• Design, create and send the email for you
• Deliver leads directly into your inbox
• Provide thorough results that ensure continuous optimisation.

With a deliverability rate of 98% and many years of industry experience, we can get the results you need.

For more information call us on 01934 808293 or complete our enquiry form and we will come back to you.

*Source: www.campaignmonitor.com