Eight Strategies to Improve Your Email Performance (Plus a Bonus Strategy)
We all use the power of email marketing to stay in direct contact with customers and prospects.
However, email marketers can be sorted into two categories: those who deliver an average email experience (think: batch n’ blasting your entire contact base) and those who continually optimize their emails to deliver a more targeted and personalized experience.
Do you want your email performance to be average or awesome?
Email marketing remains one of the most powerful and cost-effective methods to expand your audience base and reach shoppers at the right time with the right message. In fact, 59% of consumers are influenced by marketing emails and 50% make a purchase from a marketing email at least once a month.
The efficacy of marketing emails depends entirely on the steps you take to keep your email lists healthy and reach the right audience with the right message.
Strategy #1: Know the Value of a Clean Email List
Email lists are a lot like houseplants, in that they need regular care and revival. Without ongoing optimization, your list will deteriorate over time as customers change companies, abandon old email addresses or opt out of subscriptions. With some proactivity, however, you can keep your email list alive and thriving.
Conduct regular list cleaning to remove inactive or invalid email addresses, and use email verification tools to ensure the accuracy of your contacts. By maintaining clean, lively email lists, you can improve deliverability and ensure your marketing emails are connecting with eager, active and qualified buyers – making sure your marketing budget is spent only on promising leads.
Strategy #2: Schedule Your Outgoing Emails
An email scheduling tool allows your dealership to plan and schedule emails in advance. Instead of hustling to manually send emails at specific times, you can select the ideal send dates and times in the scheduling tool. This ensures you’re reaching your audience at the most ideal moment (you may find your emails receive the most engagement first thing in the morning or during lunchtime), while saving yourself that time and effort.
Advanced scheduling tools also offer email automation – meaning your email sends are triggered by a customer’s actions. For example, instead of sending your entire audience the same inventory promotion, website visitors receive personalized emails based on the inventory they’ve viewed on your website (we’ll focus more on the power of personalized emails further on).
Strategy #3: Segment Your Emails by Audience Type
Email marketing is a true representation of quality over quantity. Casting a wide net may seem like the best way to get in front of as many customers as possible, but it’s not a good practice to facilitate lead conversions. You’re more likely to see a wave of opt-outs if you send the same generic message to every subscriber, regardless of their interest levels.
Instead, create audience lists that align with audience and email types. Group audiences by key characteristics, such as:
- Age
- Location
- Income bracket
- Purchase history
- Engagement levels
Send maintenance tips to recent buyers or friendly hellos to customers who haven’t visited your store in a while. If you have inactive subscribers, consider running re-engagement campaigns offering special incentives or exclusive content to renew their interest in your dealership. Remove unresponsive contacts, if necessary, to keep your email lists clean.
Strategy #4: Create Natural Touchpoints for Marketing Emails
Look at the way your customers shop, and identify the moments that are perfect for an email send. When a prospect fills out a lead form to learn more about a unit, they can be tipped into a send list to receive marketing emails that notify them about new inventory arrivals and limited-time special offers. Following a purchase, a customer can receive timely reminder emails to schedule maintenance services or purchase additional parts.
Bonus strategy! Automate these touchpoint-based emails by creating an automated email marketing campaign. If your email marketing platforms offers automation capabilities, you can set up personalized drip campaigns or triggered emails based on customer behavior or lifecycle stages. Email automation saves time and effort while delivering timely and relevant messages to your subscribers.
If you're a Dealer Spike customer using our Automated Email Marketing (AEM) tool, you'll receive monthly email reports detailing the performance of each email send. You'll always know how many recipients are opening your emails and clicking to your website. Click here to learn more about your monthly reporting and compare your email performance to top AEM users.
Strategy #5: Personalize Your Email Content
Do your emails relate to your customers’ interests? If shoppers feel besieged by email content that they didn’t ask for and don’t feel they need, they’ll likely unsubscribe from all future emails. With 76% of consumers becoming frustrated by impersonal brand messaging, you have an opportunity to surprise and delight your audience by delivering content that serves their interests.
To know what type of content your audience is looking for, consider their online habits. Review your website analytics to see which webpages are receiving the most visits, as this can tell you which content is most helpful to your potential customers.
Make sure every marketing email follows these guidelines: 1) serves the customer’s interests, 2) fulfills a need or request and 3) moves the sales process forward. An intuitive way to identify appropriate marketing email content is to identify the natural touchpoints that warrant an email.
Side note: When your audience appreciates your content, they’re more likely to share it with people they know. You can include social share and “share with a friend” buttons on your emails to give your audience an easy way to forward your content to their social circles.
Strategy #6: Embed Opt-in Links & Call-to-Action Buttons
You can leverage platforms outside of your website to grow your email audience. Email itself is a great tool! Have your team add an opt-in link to their email signatures to encourage customers to subscribe to a newsletter or weekly inventory-related emails.
Another option is social media. If your dealership is active on social media and creating content that your followers enjoy, you can use this to benefit your email lists. Add call-to-action buttons on your social pages inviting your followers to subscribe to marketing emails for exclusive news and deals.
Strategy #7: Invite Customers to Subscribe to a Free Online Resource
People are much more willing to give out their email address in return for free content. This could come in the form of an eBook filled with hitching guides or tips for trailer maintenance, or a series of how-to videos on tying down large loads. If you have the time and resources, you may even host a webinar where the audience signs up via email. If now is not an ideal time for your dealership to create online content, you could also host a simple giveaway that requires participants to provide contact information.
Strategy #8: Monitor Engagement
Keep an eye on email engagement metrics such as open, click-through and unsubscribe rates. This data will help you understand which emails are performing well and resonating with your audience. Use this insight to refine your email marketing strategies and optimize future campaigns.
As with any digital marketing strategy, the best way to increase your email list is to diversify your approach and use several platforms. Using a wide variety of angles to reach your audience will increase your chances to grow your list. As your audience expands, you'll be able to nurture customers and prospects into making their next significant purchase.