Why Email and SMS Are Still Queen

B2B is witnessing a boom in marketing automation, with the percentage standing at an incredible 60% per annum. Transactional emails are all the rage these days, as they’ve been generating six times as much income and eight times as many hits as all other email campaigns combined.

According to B2C marketers who use automated marketing, transactional emails’ conversion rates stand at ca. 50%.

Targeted email campaigns account for over 75% of all email revenue, so if you’re wondering why email marketing still rocks, these insights should tell you all there is to know.

How to Nail Email Campaigns

Of course, not every email marketing campaign is a good one. There are skilled marketers and there are wannabe marketers looking for fast profits at any cost.

Need we say that the latter doesn’t stand a chance in this time of big data?

Keeping data clean is the first prerequisite for success and in this context, it means investing significant efforts into building a successful brand and attracting future loyal customers. A viable marketing strategy incorporates SEO, cross-promotions, collecting feedback, and attracting subscribers.

Hence, planning is essential because there are many aspects to consider.

For your email marketing campaigns to be successful, every email you send must be customized, targeted, and mobile-friendly.

Targeting and Segmentation

Knowing your audience is essentially what targeting denotes. Who are you making offers to? You must start by figuring out this response. Campaigns can succeed or fail based on targeting and segmentation.

Several studies show that effective email marketing campaigns may increase ROI by an astounding 760%. The figure refers to well-executed campaigns, which take time to take root and develop.

Segmentation is best performed by combining insights and feedback. Not everyone is seeking the same kind of products and services, so you should pay attention to your customer’s preferences. This is where personalization factors in. Basically, it portends offering to every customer exactly what they want to see: no more and no less.

How to Optimize Email Campaigns

Email optimization is the step many inexperienced marketers dread. However, it actually doesn’t have to be complex. It’s all about the perspective.

Think about it this way: optimizing emails is easier than optimizing websites. If you want to provide the best customer experience, you absolutely must optimize your business website.

It’s important to keep in mind here that mobile device usage has climbed by 394% and by 1721%, respectively. Add to that the fact that 53% of all emails are accessed on mobile devices. If you fail to optimize your campaigns, you’re likely to miss this huge customer base.

How to Structure Emails

As mentioned above, not every email campaign is a good email campaign. What makes a campaign truly stand out is its content. Assuming you did your research on the subject line, you can genuinely increase the performance of your campaigns by getting more recipients to carry out the required action.

You should compose excellent emails that are neither too long nor too short; they need to be clear, simple, consistent, and persuasive without being too aggressive.

For instance, newsletters are a great way to notify people about the target offer, but the offer should be presented in a way that creates urgency and resolves customers’ problems. Use demographics to identify points of interest in this regard.

Don’t forget the mobile users now. You’ll want your emails to be skimmable. The finest of emails typically have a pre-set framework that incorporates all the key components, which include:

• Short and concise subject lines

• Stellar pre-header text

• Consistent message body

• A convincing call to action (CTA)

• An unsubscribe button

• Contact information

How to Nail SMS Marketing

In addition to email marketing, SMS marketing has presented itself as a relatively new solution that addresses a couple of troublesome points emails may face (notably, the issue of spam emails).

Ironically, although SMS marketing can be quite effective, it can rarely compete with email marketing in terms of efficiency because it relies on text alone.

Nevertheless, some people genuinely prefer SMS communication to email communication. Did you know that SMS open rates stand at ca. 98%? By comparison, Facebook advertisements have an open rate of only 2%, whereas push notifications’ open rates stand at ca. 3.1%.

The first immediately apparent advantage of SMS marketing is that your message won't wind up in the spam folder. Still, that doesn't give your company the right to misuse SMS marketing.

The second advantage is that recipients don’t need internet connectivity to access your offer. Your SMS will safely reach them as long as they have reception.

SMS marketing has different rules than email marketing. For starters, an SMS opt-in text should be the first message you send. Yes, you need recipients’ consent to send them SMS offers and you should include proper information in your opt-in text, as follows:

• Business name

• Information on SMS message volume

• Details on carrier prices (where applicable)        

• Information on how to decline (where applicable)

As for the actual offer, start by considering some of the best SMS marketing ideas.

Key Takeaways

As you can see, email and SMS marketing offer numerous possibilities when performed the right way.

The strong open rates alone present a huge potential for new businesses (not to mention that both are subject to high degrees of automation). Both approaches deepen communication, which is another huge advantage.

Regardless of the hectic times, new tech, and new trends, email and SMS still rule supreme.