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You’ve arrived at the final installment of a three-part series called “Demystifying Digital Marketing for Small Business.” Don’t worry, we’ll keep the conversation going throughout the year on topics that you want to know more about. We’re listening, so tell us what you want to read about in the comments section below.
For part three, we’re looking at two aspects of digital marketing that we believe are super important and uber relevant − email and video. Let’s get stuck in.
Untold Truth #4: Email marketing is not dead
We’ve noticed a trend − a new form of digital marketing will hog the spotlight for a good decade or two and then someone out there in the upper echelons of everything digital will declare it to be dead. First SEO died (it didn’t by the way). Then social media marketing kicked the bucket (really?). And then we got wind of the fact that email marketing is also dead. That’s when we thought it was time to intervene. Allow us to state unequivocally that we believe email marketing is still alive and kicking. What has died, are outdated ways of doing email marketing. And what has happened is that email marketers have become wiser, more strategic, more inventive. And they have to be, in what we call a “climate of noise.” The internet is a noisy place. Breaking through that noise using email as a tool, is one of the modern marketer’s ultimate challenges. Here are a few practices we think belong nowhere but six feet under:
- The Generic Greeting
The days of referring to your customers as “dear customer” or simply saying “hey” as a greeting, or even worse − “to whom it may concern” (*cringe*), are soooo over. Let’s leave those generic lines in the 90’s where they belong shall we? Fortunately, almost all of the mass mailer software we’re using has the option of personalisation. Please, use it and address your customer by their first name. It’s the polite thing to do, and it converts. According to Campaign Monitor, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. So there you have it.
- The Generic Subject Line
Please don’t bore your customers with unexciting subject lines. Think about how many emails you receive in a day with subject lines like: “maintenance notice,” or “customer survey,” or “today’s update.” Spare your customers, we beg of you. Your subject line is a piece of marketing collateral – treat it that way. You have 41 characters to wow your customers. Use relatable language, add an emoji (or two), use punctuation − do something to grab their attention and give them a reason to open the email. Use language that makes it clear that it comes from your company. The great news is that you don’t have to apply the “spray-and-pray” approach where you send subject lines out into the world and simply hope for the best. If you’re not already A/B testing your subject lines, now’s the time to start. You could improve your conversion rates by up to 49% simply by testing different subject lines and sending out the version that performs best. While we’re on the topic, would A/B testing and how to write killer subject lines be something you’d like us to write about? Let us know on social media (details at the end of this article).
Quick tip: You can avoid your email being kicked into your customers’ junk folders by testing it for spammyness before you send it.
- The Mobile-Second Approach
One of the biggest mistakes that small business owners and marketers make when compiling emails they hope will convert, is taking a desktop-first approach to the way an email is designed and written. According to Smart Insights, almost half of emails are opened on smartphones and tablets. That’s a big proportion of a sizeable global audience. When creating emails, we recommend putting mobile first and optimising your design to look amazing on smaller screens. That also means you have to think about things like text length, using responsive templates, creating an optimal user experience and making image sizes manageable for mobile devices.
Untold Truth #5: Video could be your secret weapon
Google, “video marketing statistics,” and you’ll be met with a whirlwind of content on how the demand for video content has shot to unprecedented heights in just a few years. Statistics everywhere are demonstrating the same trend − when it comes to consuming content, people would rather consume video than written text. Long gone are the days when producing video content required a studio and props and lighting and actors, and and and… What we’ve seen with the proliferation of mobile devices, is that mobile technology has made quantum leaps in terms of what it can do. Lady Gaga’s production team used an iPhone to shoot her release, “Stupid Love,” and she’s not the only one. We’ve seen celebs like Kanye West and Selena Gomez following suit. That’s great news for the DIY marketers out there, because now, you don’t need expensive equipment to make a video or advert that’s beautiful enough to engage your audience. Next month we’ll be talking about the best tools for small businesses and we’re thinking of making a list of the next video processing apps. Is that something that would be helpful? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
This article is part three of a three-part series on demystifying digital marketing for small business. Need to catch up – check out part one and two. Also you can connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
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