In an age of short-form social media content and the consistent evolution of marketing communication, it’s easy to forget about trusty email marketing. Used for over 40 years, it may not be the shiny new marketing innovation anymore, and it may not have the appeal of an Instant Experience Facebook ad, but it continues to be a tried and tested way to communicate with potential customers and prospects. Email marketing looks like it’s here to stay.

So, how can you maximise the benefits of email marketing? Take a look at our 5 top tips on how to make the most of this customer touchpoint to increase awareness and drive sales:

1. Consider your audience and use segmentation

When addressing your email database, it's important to avoid using a blanket approach with your communications. Taking the various segments of your audience into consideration can allow you to use messaging that appeals directly to the recipient. This may involve sending certain emails to recipients based on demographic or geographical factors, like their age or address. Alternatively, behavioural factors can be used; targeting customers who haven’t purchased in a certain number of months, or retargeting prospects who showed interest by clicking a call-to-action in a previous email, for example.

A useful way to create a strategy for this is by utilising a marketing funnel. A funnel allows you to pinpoint which stages your audience are at, and show them relevant and engaging content to help progress them from awareness and interest to desire and action. For example, focusing on brand-specific messaging that highlights unique selling points may be key for generating interest, but using promotional messaging and showcasing your brand’s product/service offering is likely to aid in the push towards action.

With the help of segmentation, automation also becomes much more effective. Email automation involves sending emails on a trigger system, along each stage of the customer journey. This can be used in multiple ways, such as sending to people who have recently purchased or contacting customers on their birthday. This time-saving method will allow you to send relevant emails to your audience as they progress through their customer journey.

2. A/B testing and personalisation

Whichever email-building software you use, it’s likely they’ll provide you with a range of tools that you can use to improve your email marketing strategy. The first example of this is A/B testing. Nailing what content your audience will and won’t want to see can be a tricky task; that’s where A/B testing can come in handy. It involves sending slightly different variations of your emails to a section of your audience so you can track what leads to optimal results. Whether you’re changing email subjects, contents, imagery or audience, this will give you a chance to fine-tune your strategy.

Another way to improve your emails is by using personalisation tools - this links directly to the prior point regarding segmentation. Once you’ve established more information about your audience, you can use it to adapt your email content. From addressing your recipients by name to including an image and corresponding link to a product/service they have shown interest in, personalisation is a proven way to increase your engagement.

3. Maintain your brand's tone of voice

A fundamental component of a brand’s marketing strategy as a whole is creating and maintaining an appropriate tone of voice and image. The same is true for your email campaigns. With the ability to adapt and customise the entire contents, subject, and audience of your emails, you can implement a specific tone of voice, too. Whether you’re keeping it formal and informative or adopting more of a friendly, personalised tone, establishing your brand’s way of speaking will provide you with a basis to create and mould your content. Consistency is important here, your brand voice needs to stick throughout email marketing communications if your audience is going to trust and understand your brand.

A potential exception to using a consistent tone of voice could be if you have a members-only or VIP email database. If you’re providing special incentives or information to this database, it can be effective to utilise changes in your tone of voice for an extra sense of exclusivity.

4. What are your competitors doing?

Competitor analysis can be a crucial tool in enhancing your email marketing strategy. Signing up for the newsletters and mailing lists of your closest competitors is an easy yet effective way to analyse the content your audience will likely be comparing to yours. This will therefore allow you to assess what may be performing the best in your industry, and help you to identify areas where you can improve on what your competitors are providing.

What should you consider during your analysis? The frequency of emails, email contents and design, subjects and call-to-actions are some of the key things to look for. Examining these aspects consistently will help you understand the strategy and approach your competitors are taking and let you discover any changes that may occur.

5. Act on your email performance

Although it’s wise to create and utilise an email marketing plan, flexibility is key - you need to be able to adapt based on ongoing performance. Analysing your email performance by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) will allow for ongoing monitoring of what is going well and what needs improving. Useful KPIs for tracking the success of your email marketing usage include:

Open rate

This metric will indicate how many people are clicking on your email once it lands in their inbox. As well as giving a general measure of your database’s current interest in your brand, it’ll also help you establish whether your subjects are appealing and intriguing to your audience.

Click-through rate

CTR provides you with an indicator of how much people are engaging with the content within your emails. This metric is a percentage of people who have clicked on at least one of the links in your email. You can also look at the click rate of individual CTAs to find out where the majority of your audience’s interest lies.

Unsubscribe rate

While CTR shows you which elements of your strategy are performing well, the unsubscribe rate will highlight when your content isn’t interesting to your audience. This will allow you to make informed decisions on the emails you send in the future.

Alongside these indicators, you can look into additional KPIs such as click rate, bounce rate, and conversion rate. Similarly to your competitor analysis, it is important to analyse this information on a regular basis. This will help you build and maintain a strategy that takes customer and competitor trends into perspective.

To conclude

Developing an email marketing strategy that maximises potential involves taking a range of factors into consideration. However, at its core, the fundamental part is knowing who you're talking to and how you can talk to them in a way that generates brand awareness and drives action.

It’s vital to think carefully about who your target audience is and what you want them to do or think in response to your email communications. Then, you need to make the most of the performance indicators and competitor information to continually improve and adapt your strategy.