As great as social media is, it can’t compete with email in terms of engagement. Your most loyal followers and customers are those who have opted in to receive email communication from you. If you do a good job of engaging them, you will foster loyalty and increase the lifetime value of your customers. If you fail, you’ll lose subscribers and the credibility you’ve built up with them.
Per MailMunch, 60% of the internet marketers they asked said that they believed email marketing outperformed social media. Furthermore, they found that email drives more traffic and direct conversions.
Are you convinced of the power of email yet? Here are five ways to boost customer engagement with your campaigns.
Don’t buy, lease, or borrow lists. If you aren’t sure why, have a look at this post via HubSpot.
Market to those who have given you the permission to market to them. Marketers often talk about getting high quality traffic to their website – it’s not just about quantity, but also about quality. The same can be said for email subscribers – you want people on your list who are going to read your emails and click on call to actions, not those who are never going to open a single email.
Building an email list can take time, but it is worth the effort you put into it. Add opt-in forms on your website, use a lead magnet (such as an eBook or a whitepaper) to attract more subscribers, and gain permission from your guests to send them emails (such as by leaving signup cards in their rooms).
If you don’t communicate with your list for longer periods of time, and attempt to re-engage them later, your unsubscribe rate will go through the roof. The best way to keep your list engaged is by sending them regular emails and offers that are relevant to them.
Now, you don’t want to send too many emails. Once or twice per week is fine. And you shouldn’t send them just because you can. You need to think carefully about the content that you’re and how it adds value to your subscribers.
Emailmonday notes that 55% of emails are now opened on a mobile device.
Whether you’re using MailChimp or AWeber, your service provider should have mobile-friendly templates you can customize and use to ensure ease of use with smartphones and tablets.
If your campaigns do not look good on smaller screens, engagement will decrease, and you will get fewer clicks.
MailChimp has discovered that segmented campaigns, overall, perform much better than non-segmented lists. Campaigns sent to segmented lists saw 14.69% more opens, and an astounding 42.64% more clicks.
Those signing up to receive emails from you aren’t all interested in the same thing. Some might be looking for discounts on their next stay. Others might want information on your locality and activities. This is easy to tell based on what they’re signing up for on your website (i.e. did they opt in for your general discounts and promotions newsletter, or did they sign up on a blog post about activities in your town or city?).
Setting up segments in your list may take additional effort on your part, but sending the right message to the right person at the right time will have a significant positive impact on engagement.
No matter what email service you’re using, you should be able to set up autoresponders to automate the sending of key emails.
For example, welcome messages. You don’t have the time to send a welcome email every time a new subscriber signs up. But with an autoresponder, you can have an email sent to them the moment they opt in and deliver valuable content in the process.
If other customers come to your website looking for travel tips, you could have a specific sequence for those who want to learn more (i.e. a weekly travel tip email sequence with new tips each week).
Autoresponders are what make segmented lists more manageable. Automate what you can, because you may not have the time or resources to craft new emails for all your segments every single week.