Even though much has been said about email marketing campaigns, there is always something new to learn. The same applies to SMS campaigns.
These two popular ways of advertising are available to everyone; however, that doesn’t mean that everyone is doing it right.
Let’s get started by stating the obvious: not everyone is a marketer. Marketing is a learned skill, and there are many people hoping to get rich overnight by starting a dropshipping store. Things don’t work that way, otherwise, everyone would be rich.
The very first thing to remember is: not everyone is interested in your offer. Don’t buy email lists and don’t stalk your social media followers. In plain English, define your audiences first.
Here, you’ll need to keep in mind that audiences change over time. That shouldn’t worry you; it’s a normal process. Nevertheless, you should familiarize yourself with this process, so we’ll start exactly there.
Audience Fragmentation
This is not rocket science. Merely the fact that digitalization is changing the way many people predominantly communicate should tell you a thing or two about the behavior and expectations of potential customers.
Media channels have increased and so have types of devices. You know the mantra: first, there were newspapers, then the radio, then the TV… Now there’s the internet with its many offers.
Multi-device media consumption, in particular, is important in the matter of email marketing. Because some people will read your emails on their desktop devices and others on their mobile phones or tablets, you need to make sure that all your campaigns (and your website!) are optimized and consume as few resources as possible.
This basically means that your website must be responsive, your emails as short and to the point as possible, and that ALL images are optimized for mobile phone users.
This is, also, the main point of audience fragmentation. Rather than targeting everyone through a, say, TV commercial, modern marketers need to attract people using different devices, search engines, and social media channels.
The majority of markets consider Google first, but did you know that younger generations predominantly use TikTok even for searching topics?
TikTok, as you probably know, is a video-sharing service. If your target audience includes these generations, you’ll need t adapt the contents of your email campaigns to attract them.
Keeping all this in mind, it becomes obvious that measuring online audience reach has become a complex undertaking compared to, i.e., television audience reach.
Data is nowadays being collected in a variety of ways, some of which don’t differ from spying. Advertisers collect data on customers’ home and out-of-home access points, audience interactions, and individual responses (time spent interacting with ads, direct response clicks, interactions over time, etc.).
Basically, this means that marketing has become detective work and not everyone appreciates being stalked whenever they access the web.
Nevertheless, using insights is the only way for a marketing campaign to be successful, so you should learn how to read statistics and how to best implement them to make your campaigns more successful. Lots of testing is involved in email marketing and continual monitoring is recommended.
Spend Time on Your SMS Opt-In Messages
As regards SMS marketing campaigns, better SMS opt-ins are crucial.
An SMS opt-in text is the first message you send to a customer after having received their permission. This message must be, first and foremost, professional and include your company’s name, the sign-up offer (optional), your message frequency, and information about whether carrier costs apply and how the recipient can opt-out.
Segmentation and Targeting
Targeting and segmentation are the next two crucial steps in defining solid marketing campaigns. To be able to devise the finest email marketing strategies, you’d do well to listen to customer feedback and test different approaches.
No matter what you do, however, make sure to stick to your business promise and remain consistent when addressing your target audiences.
Communicate, Communicate and Then Communicate Some More!
Communication is crucial for the success of any email marketing campaign. In fact, not much has changed in marketing in this matter. Even though the ways people communicate nowadays have changed dramatically, people still communicate and so must marketers.
The good thing is that there are so many channels that communication has never been easier. From email to blogs to forums to social media, marketers can go all out to reach new customers.
Perform Regular Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis will help you devise successful marketing strategies better than any other approach. An additional benefit is that you may come up with some elements competitors may be missing. E.g., sending welcome messages. For some reason, not many businesses use this approach, which is a critical mistake.
The easiest way to perform competitor analysis is to subscribe to their newsletters.
However, not all businesses competing within your niche are competitors per se. Only consider successful brands that target the same audiences as you. For example, if your business is local, disregard global competitors.
Compare offers, costs and promotions, and make sure to keep up.
Key Takeaways
For a marketing campaign to be successful, marketers need to pick the right audience, keep communication alive, make content easily accessible, and keep an eye on the competition. This is a formula for success, if you like, so do each of these steps properly.
As for the rest — listen to customer feedback. It’s as simple as that!
