Following to my FinTech Growth hacking checklist in previous posts and keeping in mind your requests, the next topic is: Email newsletter marketing. The best practises for 2021. Which is super important for fintech startup digital marketing activities.
COVID-19 changed all: your effective email marketing strategy in 2019/2020 does not work anymore.
Direct sales offers inboxes are marked as spam, and forever left unopened. In March 2019, spam messages accounted for 56% of global email traffic (Statista).
The challenge now is to develop email campaigns that get affective again.
1. Jewellery accuracy in targeting for email marketing
Create email marketing campaigns that truly connect with each readers’ interest. Divide your email list into precisely targeted groups – the Annual Email Optimizer Report (Lyris) found numerous benefits of email list segmentation including increased open rates, greater email relevance, and lower opt-out or unsubscribe rates.
Segment your recipients based on age, gender, location, etc. This helps you to be sure that you’re sending the right communication to the right people.
For example UBER uses geographically segmented email, but in Switzerland you need additionally consider languages and in cross-country campaign time zones.
2. Customise your message
Usually tweets and Instagram ads speak directly to a specific reader, and your Email marketing campaigns should be appropriately sharpened.
Imagine your audience = email recipients, use data from Google Analytics such as interests, affinity category. GA —> (left menu) Audience —> Interests —> Overview
Imagine, what are they looking for when browsing for products and services? How does your audience define good customer service? What incentives them to visit a website and subscribe?
Customise every detail in your emails, follow-ups, and reminders.
For example, Millennial audience would like to obtain informative concise messages with appealing images ( infographics, which they can also easily share).
3. Win a competition for an audience’s attention
Almost all current consumers are multi-taskers – they scroll news feeds while watching video, and check for work-related emails in between. The competition for attention is greater than ever.
Use your fantasy, formulate creative ways to grab attention, and hold it until you’ve delivered your message. Use witty headlines, visually-appealing images, and straightforward emails – avoid clickbait.
Simulate a sense of urgency, tapping on today’s culture of “FOMO” (fear of missing out): “You’re missing out on amazing rewards”, or “[URGENT] You’ve got 1 DAY to read this…”.
Be creative, use humour: “We Like Being Used”, while OpenTable had “Licking your phone never tasted so good” as the header of one of its email campaigns.
4. Clear call-to-action for email newsletter
Every email should have a clear objective, which you can achieve with a right call-to-action. Visit your website or subscribe to your newsletter? Or to like your Facebook Page or make a purchase in your online store?
Guide them to these purposes with an effective CTA.
For example, offer your visitors value at low or no cost, in exchange for a click. But avoid asking for too much too soon.
For instance (according to Marketing experiments), by changing “Find your solution” to “Learn More”, the clickthrough rate on one email rose by 77%.
Using “Subscribe & Save” instead of “View Subscription Options” led to 181% clickthrough rate increase for another campaign.
5. Limit your email blasts
Did you know that an average office worker gets 121 emails per day?(DMR Business Statistics, 2020) I guess you don’t want your message to be sent to the spam due to too aggressive campaign for your subscribers.
People have signed up for your updates and newsletters because they”re interested in your brand, products or services, they want to stay connected. Remember you can’t just bombard them with emails.
Consider limiting your messages once a week.
6. Craft catchy subject lines or headlines
A subject line in email is super important – readers easily ignore or delete your email with a boring or suspicious headline.
MailChimp published an email marketing study, and found that short, topic-relative subject lines best attract readers.
Include words that reflect urgency, ask a question or challenge. To craft direct and catchy headlines customised to your readers don’t forget to use your pre-segmented email list.
7. Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly
The Mobile Economy study predicts 1.4 billion people will start using the mobile internet for the first time, bringing the total number of mobile internet subscribers globally to 5 billion by 2025 (over 60% of the population).
Keep in mind users browse the web, scroll through social media and check their emails via their handheld devices. Thus you need to be sure that your email promo are mobile-optimised.
To design a mobile-friendly digital asset, keep in mind the length of texts, banners, video. Check whether your images display on smartphones, and downloading time: whether it is too slow.
8. Write professional emails
Imagine, you perceive a business email with typos and grammar errors? Such things definitely badly reflect on the sender.
Always check everything in your email marketing campaign. Don’t hurry, plan out and draft an outline, write a copy and proofread it several times, and be consistent with your brand.
9. Build an inclusive community with email marketing strategy
Keep in mind, people digitally meet others, join groups, and essentially build a world that is as real as their offline sphere.
Use it in your email marketing campaign by engaging your readers into an inclusive community. Share personal updates about your life that don’t necessarily relate to your usual promotions – perhaps a photo of your work routine or a photo of your desktop with cat?
Don’t abuse such elements, but a few such visuals along these lines help you to make your audience feel at home.