Tagged: emailmarketing

What does it take for a company to use email marketing effectively?

Email Marketing is a form of direct marketing, it is the process of companies sending mail digitally and is a common way for companies to get through to their customers by promoting their products and services. This blog will explore how companies can effectively use email marketing to communicate with their customers and will discuss where companies have gone wrong and where they have effectively used this platform.

BuzzFeed is a company who use email as a marketing strategy, it’s suggested that this platform is one of the top 5 or 6 referrers of traffic to their website each month (Beashel, 2015). These figures suggest that BuzzFeed are doing something right when it comes to email marketing. The company suggest that their email marketing is so effective because of their large mailing list, over the past few years they have become more vigilant in making sure that consumers are seeing the email marketing subscription sign up more frequently throughout their site (Beashel, 2015). However, when browsing a website it can be seen as annoying to be constantly asked for your email for a subscription, so maybe this isn’t the best way to go about increasing your mailing list. Although BuzzFeed can be annoying when asking for your email to sign up to their newsletter, they do also ask what you’re interested in before signing you up. This is a great way to keep your subscribers interested and to increase your website traffic.


(Source via: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tools/email)

Uber uses email marketing to inform customers of new promotions and deals, it’s suggested that the simplicity of their emails is what makes people love them (HubSpot, 2016). The first thing a customer will see when looking at an email, is the subject and Uber keeps it short and sweet, which is said to be perfect for subscribers who are quickly skimming the email (Target Marketing, 2015). There is a fine line between short and sweet and boring when it comes to receiving a marketing email, I’m sure everyone has received them at some point and they definitely need colour and an essence of fun to make you want to read them. However, Uber use their signature colours and geometric patterns to liven up their emails. Not only does Uber use simplicity to create their email campaigns, but they also use punchy language to give their consumers a sense of urgency and this stirs them in to action (Moth, 2014).

(Source via: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-examples-list#sm.001kj47phi3ife610mq1w8ane2ior)

Groupon use email marketing to show customers their new deals, in 2014 they gave customers a chance to win $5,000,000 in Groupon dollars and they promoted it by sending out am email consisting of a big red button. This idea excited subscribers at first, they were in for a chance for winning loads of freebies, however, the excitement quickly faded when most of the customers were obviously told, bluntly ‘sorry, you didn’t score’. It’s suggested that the majority of people who were disappointed by the big red button felt undervalued by this marketing campaign and if anything, felt put off by Groupon (Simply compelling, 2015). This is a fine example of how an email sent to promote your business needs to appear appealing to everyone, or there will be a large amount of people disappointed and if anything, it is bad publicity. Groupon have showed that effective email marketing needs to consist of targeting a majority of their subscribers, to excite and appeal to everyone.

So, now I have discussed some do’s and don’ts when it comes to email marketing you can now create the best marketing emails ever. It’s so important that the whole of your audience find your emails appealing, to ensure they don’t unsubscribe as this will lose traffic on your website, and eventually profit. The content is obviously one of the most important parts to email marketing, and keeping it simple enough for the reader to not get bored but exciting enough too is tricky but vital. The mailing list is also a big part of email marketing, and not nagging customers to join is just as important as the content, because if you have no one to email then the content wouldn’t matter any way.

References

  • Beashel, (2015). How BuzzFeed uses email marketing to drive growth. [online] Campaignmonitor.com. Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/customers/2015/04/buzzfeed-email-marketing/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].
  • HubSpot, (2016). 15 of the Best Email Marketing Campaign Examples You’ve Ever Seen. [online] Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-examples-list#sm.001kj47phi3ife610mq1w8ane2ior [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].
  • Moth, (2014). Email marketing CTA design: five good vs. six bad examples. [online] Econsultancy. Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/64997-email-marketing-cta-design-five-good-vs-six-bad-examples/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].
  • Simply Compelling, (2015). Examples of email marketing gone wrong – Simply Compelling. [online] Simply Compelling. Available at: http://simplycompelling.com/email-marketing/examples-of-email-marketing-gone-wrong/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].
  • Target Marketing, (2015). Uber Gets an A+. [online] Target Marketing. Available at: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/uber-gets/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2017].

 

Airbnb Marketing Analysis- does anyone read their emails?

How many of us actually read all of our emails? I know I personally just multi click them and mark as unread, unless it’s discounts on Pizza.

According to Ben Oren email open rates are great indicators of the quality of your mailing list, subject line choice, time of sending, and even an under performing email service provider, but I’d say emails are only really opened if you’re interested in that company or anything its offering at that moment in time, the subject could be the most interesting line in the world but if you’re not interested then there’s no chance of a read.

I received an e-mail from Airbnb, I would normally ignore an email like this as I’m a poor student and I know I can’t afford to go on holiday, depressingly. This email had attractive photo’s of beautiful Cities; Paris, New York, Berlin and had a personal touch, with the heading ‘Where travellers like you go to escape, Here’s where travellers in Brighton go when they want to live elsewhere. Even if it’s just for a week‘. I appreciate personal touches in email’s, even though thousands of other people are being sent the same one with their name or where they are living on it, it definitely makes me want to read it more. This email didn’t have my name at the beginning which it probably could have done with to be more personal and to ensure they’re grabbing the reader’s attention immediately.

pic11I want to visit every City in the world so if there was any email I would find the most interesting it would be one like this from a company like Airbnb. The photo’s are clear and beautiful, however, the layout is simple which could be viewed as boring. A lot of people would agree that there doesn’t need to be a lot of writing on an email, it is time consuming and doesn’t immediately capture the viewer. Airbnb have added a minimum amount of writing, just short snippets of the greatest parts of these Cities. A downside to the appearance of this email is that the writing is all in black and doesn’t capture the viewer immediately, it is put up against colorful, bright photo’s and this makes the writing look dull and may make the viewer not want to bother reading it. Although, I wanted to because I liked the photo’s and wanted to read more.

interesting1

Each Photo in the email takes you to a landing page; where to book for each City. It immediately lets you choose dates, a price range, what kind of room you would like and the accommodation on the Airbnb website. A map of the City with the different affordable prices placed around is also immediately visible once clicking on a photo, allowing you to choose price and location, this technique of one click taking you to the affordable and appealing accommodation in a City of your choice will persuade someone to book straight away. There is also a personal aspect to the landing pages, if you are already a member to Airbnb it will take you to the page logged in to your account with your details, making it easy and accessible to book quickly. A link of things to do in the city is also include in this page, another technique to ensure the viewer is seeing all the great parts of the City to ensure they are persuaded to book a room. Each page could have accessible to links to viewing the Airbnb’s available in other Cities as the viewer could then see the others if they change their mind and would not have to return to the email to do so, this accessibility would simply make it easier for the viewer to navigate the web pages.

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This email caught my eye because it interests me and in retrospect I am glad I actually opened one of my emails. It showed me what Airbnb has to offer and also exactly what I would send out to customers if I am ever in charge of the emailing.

References:

Oren, B. (2016) 9 ways to fix your Email marketing strategy | SEJ. Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/goodbye-spam-hello-inbox-9-ways-fix-email-marketing-strategy/147594/ (Accessed: 4 November 2016).