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8 Ways to Improve Small Business Email Engagement

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4 min read

8 Ways to Improve Small Business Email Engagement

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A successful email marketing plan can be viewed as a method to significantly raise a company’s brand awareness and establish trust.

It makes no difference whether the company provides services or goods. Utilizing an email marketing approach can be advantageous in a variety of professional fields, consisting of the following:

  • economic effectiveness;
  • product marketing;
  • rise in sales;
  • individually tailored client communication;
  • building a community for your subscribers online.

Nevertheless, simply sending emails to numerous email accounts is insufficient. To obtain a good return on investment (ROI), it is essential to track newsletter engagement metrics.

What Exactly Is Email Engagement?

It is a measure of how subscribers react to your letters. This metric includes the number of active subscribers and their responses to the content of each letter. As a result, email initiatives can be viewed as an essential component of business advertising campaigns. An email specialist holds subscribers informed about new products and services, sends out newsletters, and so on.

While email marketing may appear to be a waste of effort, it is not, and you need to attempt to enhance your email marketing campaign using some of the suggestions in this article.

Recommendations for Improving Email Engagement

Now let’s see what you can do today to increase the effectiveness of email campaigns.

1. Increase the effectiveness of the subscription form

The subscription form is the main tool for collecting subscribers. Therefore, it is not enough just to add a subscription form to the site. It is necessary to make the user notice it. Motivate the clients to leave their emails in exchange for a favorable offer. It can be a discount, a gift, or participation in a closed promotion or event.

For example, if you offer any products, offer to subscribe to the newsletter to receive a gift when buying.

Use pop-up subscription forms. According to research, the average pop-up conversion rating is 3.09%. This means that if your site is visited by about a hundred people every day, then you will attract at least 92 subscribers in a month. Please note, this is an average and it can be at least three times higher.

The pop-up form, which appears at the right moment, helps the user find the necessary solution or motivates them to buy. For the pop-up subscription form not to annoy visitors and help you achieve your goals, follow the following rules:

  • Don’t show pop-ups at the same time as other pop-ups. When several sentences appear on the screen at once, it distracts the visitor’s attention and, most importantly, is very annoying. Therefore, ensure that the pop-up does not conflict with anything.
  • Ensure that the subscription form does not pop up for authorized users. If visitors have logged into their personal accounts, then their email addresses are on your mailing list. Consequently, the pop-up form is no longer relevant to them.
  • Make sure that the pop-up will not distract the customer from the purchase. To do this, do not show the form to those who place an order in the shopping cart.
  • Do not broadcast the subscription form to visitors who have visited the site from a letter. As in the case of authorized users, the pop-up is not relevant to them.
  • Set the display time. Do not encourage the users to subscribe immediately after opening the site. Allow them to “look around”. Remember, a pop-up subscription form brings results only if it is displayed at the right time and in the right place.

To increase the effectiveness of the subscription form, make it more personalized. For example, create a pop-up for each product category.

2. Segment your audience and personalize your content

You will not achieve your email marketing goals if you send useless information to the users. The clickability of segmented email campaigns is better compared to non-segmented ones, and personalization increases revenue by about six times.

To personalize your content, segment your audience first. There are different ways to group subscribers into groups:

  • by gender and age;
  • by geolocation;
  • by categories of purchased goods;
  • by the number of purchases;
  • by behavior on the website or in a letter;
  • by interests;
  • by place of work;
  • by subscription duration.

You can perform primary segmentation at the subscription stage.

3. Set up trigger mailings

Trigger mailings increase audience engagement. They are sent automatically after the user performs the trigger action. Such mailings allow you to remind about an abandoned basket, inform about promotions and offer relevant products based on pages viewed or a wish list.

Trigger letters help not to miss sales and return the client to the site on time. Such mailings include:

  • registration confirmation letters;
  • transactional mailings;
  • letters about an abandoned shopping cart;
  • holiday mailings;
  • thank you letters after purchase;
  • letters based on behavioral factors;
  • activation letters.

If you haven’t used most of them yet, it’s time to start doing it.

4. Experiment with content and conduct split testing

The longer the users are subscribers of the company, the weaker their involvement is. Therefore, to maintain the interest of recipients in email lists, it is necessary to regularly fight for their attention and create various creative campaigns. Add useful videos, interactive elements, and GIFs to your emails. Look at the example below.

In order not to lose with creatives, do not rely only on intuition. Perform split testing. Create two mailing options and test the subject of the email, the call-to-action button, or the content. Split testing helps to determine the most effective letter format.

Girl working on MacBook

5. Choose the right time for mailing

Time affects the effectiveness of email campaigns. Dozens of emails accumulate in the user’s mailbox every day, and in order not to get lost among them, it is necessary to know when it is better to send a newsletter. However, there is no exact time, because it depends on the target audience, business sphere, and other factors.

How then to determine the best day and time? Here are four tips to help you figure it out:

  • Analyze the site statistics. See which days of the week and at what time the attendance is highest. Then make a newsletter according to the received data and analyze the result.
  • View your competitors’ mailing lists. This is not the most accurate way, but it can be useful. Most often, users subscribe to offers from different companies, therefore, in addition to your letters, they also receive letters from competitors. See when they make mailings, and try to send your campaigns a little earlier or, conversely, later.
  • Conduct A/B testing to confirm or refute the guesses and find the optimal time.
  • Don’t forget to track statistics and analyze performance.

6. Reactivate passive subscribers and delete inactive contacts

Track those who have stopped opening the company’s mailing lists and reactivate them. Motivate passive subscribers to re-engage and increase customer retention. For example, offer them a personal discount or other benefits that will prompt them to perform the desired action.

If the user has not opened the reactivation newsletter, send it again, but change the subject of the email. If this did not bring results, delete the email address. Remember, it is not the volume of the mailing list that is important, but its quality. Delete disinterested subscribers to avoid distortion of statistics and accumulation of invalid addresses.

7. Use gamification to diversify your emails

Games are an excellent way to capture and hold the attention of users. Gamification will attract new and renew the interest of the old audience. For example, you want to hold a seasonal sale with discounts. Subscribers will rather win these discounts or perform simple tasks to get them with great interest than they will read about the next sale in a letter.

  • Why use game elements in the first place? Since the games are in the message:
  • the conversion rate will be 2.5 times higher;
  • the average check will be 15% higher;
  • the income will be 300% higher.

8. Improve your mailing lists regularly

Today it is difficult to stand out among competitors, but it is extremely important to achieve your goals. Subscribe to the mailing lists of other companies. Analyze the design of their emails, content, and personalization methods. Think about what is worth taking note of, and what can be done better. Do not repeat the techniques of competitors, be original.

Remember, for successful email marketing, it is not enough to get a users’ contacts – you need to win their favor and keep their attention. Therefore, track statistics, test email newsletters, analyze results, and regularly improve your campaigns.

Conclusion

If you see that your emails are not as effective as they used to be and people don’t respond to them as often, these simple tips will help you increase engagement so that your email marketing campaign brings you better results.

It is recommended to indicate what content your subscribers will receive from you and send them personalized letters of thanks to build positive relationships.

Segment your audience and use automation to communicate with your subscribers at the right time. Turn on strong calls to action, optimize email for mobile devices, and write fascinating topics, and you will instantly increase your engagement in email marketing.

Find and try new or old ways that you haven’t used for a long time to improve engagement in emails. Maintaining customer interest in your brand and your newsletters is one of the keys to success.