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BEST EMAIL MARKETING PRACTICES FOR SINGAPORE FIRMS 1

Best Email Marketing Practices For Singapore Firms

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Page 1: Best Email Marketing Practices For Singapore Firms

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BEST EMAIL MARKETING

PRACTICES FOR SINGAPORE FIRMS

Page 2: Best Email Marketing Practices For Singapore Firms

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Marketing in SingaporeTABLE OF CONTENTS

WHY IS EMAIL MARKETING IMPORTANT1

HOW TO DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE2

HOW TO CREATE COMPELLING SUBJECT LINES3

WHAT KIND OF CONTENT TO DEVELOP4

WHICH MEASUREMENT METRICS TO USE5

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Marketing in Singapore

Email marketing has been around for 44 years since Ray Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971 on the ARPANET. Today email marketing still remains one of the strongest cross marketing channels. Nonetheless, ever since the late 1990’s we began to see the abuse of email marketing which resulted in the introduction of the Spam Control Act (Cap. 311A) in June 2007.

Even with the introduction of the legislation, some 122,500,453,020 emails are still being sent every hour. Therefore, it is imperative for marketers to adopt email best practices to ensure that their emails are being seen in an increasingly crowded mailbox.

Before going into best practices, here are some 2015 email marketing figures posted by HubSpot:

WHY IS EMAIL MARKETING IMPORTANTEmail marketing is still the most effective cross-marketing channels. To ensure their emails to be seen, marketers need to adopt best practices

2015 EMAIL MARKETING FIGURESFigures59% of B2B marketers say email is the most effective channel for generating revenue.Click through rate (CTR) is higher when using the recipients first name in the subject line over no use of the first name.Your most recent subscribers are the most likely to click through.

"Secrets" is the most clicked lead nurturing subject line word.

"Click Here" gets the highest % of clicks over "Go" and "Submit."

"Posts" and "Jobs" are the most clicked subject line words.

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Marketing in Singapore

Defining your audience is the first crucial step in determining whether your emails get opened or deleted. You need to consider who are your audiences and what is your goal for emailing them.

To start off, establish a clear understanding of your audience by developing a target persona. A target persona will include their job title, gender, hobbies etc but more importantly, it should also include their problems and ways they are responding to it. To illustrate with an example:

-> An IT manager-> too broad

-> An IT manager who works in a small company -> slightly better as the we now manage to narrow down the segmentation.

-> An IT manager working in a small company looking for solutions that can resolve their networking issues -> much better as we now can identify the job title and a defined need.

Once you have developed the target persona, think about why are you sending them emails? Below are some ideas:• Inform your audiences the latest products

and get them to make a purchase.

• Provide your audiences with industry knowledge in order to build a relationship with them.

• Share with your audiences a recent customer testimonial to reinforce your brand awareness

• Collect feedback from your audiences so you can improve their experience.

The above are some ideas and you can probably come up with more depending on your goal.

HOW TO DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCEEstablishing a target persona is critical in order to ensure your emails are delivered correctly. Determining the goal for sending emails to your audiences is the next step.

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Marketing in Singapore

Finding ways to grab your audiences’ attention is increasingly getting more and more difficult. The average attention span had shrunk to 8 seconds which is 1 second more than a goldfish. Most of them had developed an anti-headline defence and turn off when we detect an email subject line is trying to sell us something.

According to Marketing Sherpa’s 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, subject line remains the most widely tested in A/B testing as it is the easiest to test and the results can be profound. In addition, 33% of email recipients actually opened their emails based on subject line alone according to Convince & Convert. This shows the importance of creating compelling subject lines.

HOW TO CREATE COMPELLING SUBJECT LINES

33%OF EMAIL RECIPIENTS OPENED EMAILS BASED ON SUBJECT LINE ALONE

Subject lines are the most important because it determines whether the emails get opened or deleted. It is also the easiest to test and the results can be profound.

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Marketing in SingaporeHOW TO CREATE COMPELLING SUBJECT LINESTo get your audiences to open your emails, a compelling subject line is critical. There are 3 subject line formulas that you can apply.

The question subject line The ‘How to’ subject line The number subject line

Questions make a subject line compelling because it requires audiences to think how the subject applies to them.

Good questions tend to resonate with audiences and their experiences making them curious enough to open and find out more about the subject. Some examples of question subject line include:

• Tired of getting nag by your wife every day?

• How can I improve my employability in today’s volatile job market?

These subject lines work because audiences can relate to these behaviours and they are more incline to click through to learn more about the possible solutions.

The ‘How to’ subject line works very well because it forces you to focus on the benefit. By reading the subject line, audiences immediately knows what are the benefits they will be getting. Take these 3 subject lines for example:

• How to increase traffic to your website within 3 days.

• How to get on the top 5 of Google SERP.

The success to this subject line is to ensure that the focus is on the end benefits and not the process or methodology.

The number subject line sets people’s expectations and tend to get a high open rates. For example:

• 5 ways to build your email list.

• 20 powerful hacks to boost your SEO.

The deciding success factor for this is the number to be used. If a lot of effort is required, then using a low number works better as it suggest the process is quicker and easier. However if you are providing value to the reader (eg no of ways to increase email subscribers), then a higher number works as it increases value perception.

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Marketing in SingaporeWHAT KIND OF CONTENT TO DEVELOPDetermining the relevancy of the content ensures that your audiences are engage instead of simply deleting or unsubscribing from your mailing list.

After knowing who you will be talking to, it is time to identify the right content to deliver to your audience. The critical point here is to focus on creating content that matters to them. As a start, make sure your content addresses their challenges and provide benefits that they do not have already. You can get content on what resonates with your audiences via your existing social media network or if your competitor has a successful email marketing program, you can emulate theirs as well.

The next step is to be specific on your content. Explain the benefits in a clear and concise manner without too much technical jargons. Last but not least ensure that the grammar of the content is error free to avoid looking unprofessional.

5 Tips To Write An Attractive Email For Better Response

Tip #1: Keep a check on the length of the email

Tip #2: Always use names in email for a better response

Tip #3: An appealing first paragraph

Tip #4: The second paragraph – just say it

Tip #5: Sleek ending noteTom Altman

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Marketing in SingaporeWHICH MEASUREMENT METRICS TO USEGetting insights into how well your email is performing helps determine if you are closer to your goals. There are a few measurement metrics that you should pay attention and they are click through rate, conversion rate and bounce rate.

We can say a lot about how well our email marketing is doing but without any forms of measurement, it doesn’t matter. Determining which metrics to track helps understand if you are progressing towards your goal.

Clickthrough Rate:

Clickthrough rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in a given email. It is the most frequently used email marketing metric. which gives you direct insight into how many people on your list are engaging with your content and interested in learning more about your brand or your offer.

Conversion Rate:

Conversion rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed a desired action, such as filling out a lead generation form or purchasing a product. It is closely tied to CTA in your email and one of the most important metrics for determining the extent to which you're achieving your goals.

To measure you will need to integrate your email platform and your web analytics.

Bounce Rate:

Bounce rate is the percentage of your total emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient's inbox. The two kind of bounces are known as soft and hard bounces.

Clickthrough rate

Conversion rate

Bounce rate

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