Email marketing is the postman of the marketing mix – it delivers. Hubspot reports, “email generates $38 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 3,800% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available”. With such a significant ROI, it’s more important than ever for financial marketers to take note and start utilising email within their marketing mix. Whether a brand is reviving an old email marketing strategy or looking to kick start its first email campaign, to deliver the greatest value, all finance brands should answer the following questions before hitting send.
What’s the goal for your email marketing?
Whether you’re re-engaging with new subscribers, telling them about an event you’re hosting or sharing insights from within your business, all emails should have a clear purpose that can be measured against. “Often clients have an email marketing program in place that hasn’t been reviewed in years and they’re just punching out emails with no real reason as to why they’re doing it,” says The Dubs general manager, Justin Buckwell. Finance brands should identify a clear goal or purpose and make sure it’s being reviewed regularly to stay on track.
“ Often clients have an email marketing program in place that hasn’t been reviewed in years and they’re just punching out emails with no real reason as to why they’re doing it.”
Is your email marketing working?
It’s not a case of set and forget once you press send. It’s important to make sure you’re constantly reviewing the analytics and engagement with audiences. With the CTR affecting your ROI and CR, it can be easy to get lost in all of the acronyms. So if that sentence sounded like a foreign language, Hubspot offers a crib sheet as a starting point which shows the metrics you should be paying attention to in your email marketing efforts. Analytics will tell you if your email marketing campaigns are effectively contributing to reaching overall marketing goals. Need something to compare yourself against? Take a look at some finance brands spicing up their email marketing campaigns to boost engagement.
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Is your email designed for mobile?
In 2019, 52.2% of global web traffic came from mobile, a clear sign for finance brands to think mobile-first and foremost rather than shoehorning desktop designs to fit for the smaller screen. Technology experts, Smart insights have found that “mobile is providing a greater number of email opens than desktop, mirroring mobile shifts across the digital marketing spectrum”. Finance brands should make sure the user experience is optimised for mobile-first, then desktop and tablet users.
Are you segmenting your audience?
Segmenting your audience and sending them tailored messaging in emails can improve open and click-through rates. Email marketing platform Mailchimp has found that “on average, segmented campaigns result in 23% higher open rates and 49% higher click-through rates than unsegmented campaigns”. Finance brands should start simple and then as more data and insights come in, layer filter options to give greater targeting.
Have you set up marketing automation?
Marketing automation allows you to set up personalised, automated email workflows that can be triggered in a number of different ways like when a contact gets added to a subscription list, submits a form on your website, clicks a link in an email, views a page on your blog, clicks on one of your AdWords ads, etc. Buckwell says, “we’ve seen with clients that smarter automated email segmentation has led to increased performance, customisation and accessibility”. Finance brands should look to develop a customer workflow and see how delivering timely content that’s smarter, more tailored and more accessible can generate higher engagement with audiences.
When do you send your email marketing?
There’s a bunch of sources that will say Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. But if everyone’s sending emails on those days, is it better to opt for Monday or Friday? “The key here is to test and learn. A/B test your newsletter send on various days over a three month period and you’ll hopefully see trends start to form,” says Buckwell. There’s no hard and fast rule with this one.
Is your email marketing imagery arresting to the eye?
“A picture is worth a thousand words or a 42% higher click-through rate,” says email platform Vero. Finance brands need to step away from the stock images of shaking hands in a boardroom and select images that catch the reader’s attention. “Imagery that makes you look twice can be more powerful than text,” says Buckwell.
Your email subject lines should be just as irresistible as your imagery so make sure you follow tips to write email subject lines that are deserving of a click.
The key to a successful email marketing strategy is to make sure that a “test and learn” process is put in place and that campaigns are being reviewed against wider business goals. Your audience is unique to your business so don’t use a cookie-cutter approach to your email marketing. Make sure all data that is being collected is being reviewed, analysed and tweaked to deliver valuable content to their inbox.
To find out if your email marketing is working for you, or to get a helping hand with setting up your email marketing campaigns, get in touch with The Dubs.
