How to Improve Your Email Marketing

Social media might the major player in the digital marketing world nowadays but businesses should be wary of forgetting about the importance of email marketing.

A tightly constructed customer email list, created with a clear purpose in mind, can be vital as part of your digital marketing mix and the next step is using that list in a way that works for your business.

Below, you’ll find a few key touch points to consider when creating your next email campaign.

Keep It Simple

At its core marketing is a simple process. You, as a business, have a message you want to tell people. That’s it.

After that, it’s about choosing the right channel, conveying your message in the right way and cutting through all the noise.

Email marketing is simple an extension of the above and keeping it simple and straightforward will pay dividends.

Don’t bombard your mailing list with too many messages in one campaign. Pick one or two key messages; focus on them and save your other messages for the next campaign.

Give Your Audience What They Want

Recently when studying Mailchimp insights, when working with a client, we noticed after the first campaign, that the majority of their current mailing list came from countries like the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. 

As a result we tailored our next campaign to relate more with this international audience.

We asked ourselves “what do they specifically want to hear?”

The results were positive. We boosted open rates by 2.5% to achieve 30% overall and almost doubled click-through rates from 2.7% to 4.3%.

This is tangible proof that planning ahead and focusing on the customer works and we hope to see further growth with the next campaign!

Test Test Test

If you take anything from this blog, please, don’t repeat the same things in email marketing over and over and over…

Use each new campaign to experiment with different actions and tactics. Test different subject lines, campaign messages and text and imagery.

If possible, test everything!

After 5 or 6 campaigns of active testing you will start to see trends on what works and what doesn’t. This will strengthen your email marketing moving forward and your business will benefit as a result.

Good luck!

How to Set-Up a Mailchimp Account for Email Marketing

Despite the rise of social media, email marketing is still a massively valuable addition to any business’ online tool belt. Growing your business mailing list and creating engaging, useful or entertaining content for your subscribers should be standard practice in 2016.

If it isn’t, don’t worry. Get started today and before you know it you’ll be an email marketing expert!

In this case we will focus on Mailchimp, arguably the best and most popular email marketing platform available online.

Go to Mailchimp.com and click “Sign Up Free” in the top right-hand corner to get started.

Next fill out your relevant details including your email address, username and password. These could be generic business details or specific to a member of staff, you decide. When you’re happy click “Get Started”. 

After that you will receive an email from Mailchimp, to the address you listed, that will seek to activate and validate your account. Don’t worry if you don’t receive it instantly and keep an eye on your Spam and Trash folders just in case.

Follow the details in the email and you’ll be good to go! After that the fun can begin and you can explore the Mailchimp Dashboard until you feel comfortable to get cracking.

Good luck!

Northern Ireland Tourism Workshops

Tourism is projected to become a billion pound industry in Northern Ireland by 2020.

 

Whilst that might be the case, there is still plenty of work yet to be done and recently myself and my colleague Jason Powell, of Powell Destination Marketing, had the pleasure of teaming up to host a tourism marketing workshop in Portrush on the north coast.

 

We set-up shop in the Magherabuoy House Hotel, just off the incredible Causeway Coastal Route, and started our workshop designed specifically for local bed & breakfast and self-catering traders.

Focus on Tourism

 

Jason started the day with a focus set firmly on the principles of tourism marketing.

 

With so much support now readily available via Tourism NI and Tourism Ireland it’s important to utilise what’s already out there including the regular opportunities e-zines and in-depth market research.

 

These two massive organisations have undertaken all of the research needed so we don’t have to. 

 

Instead, we have to focus on creating engaging products and messages for our target customer profiles like the Culturally Curious or Great Escapers.

 

A Great Escaper wants a holiday linked back to nature in someway so why not package your bed and breakfast rooms with a local walking or hiking trail?

 

The research tells us this is exactly what they want so now we have to get the message out there!

 

Focus on Digital

 

The next step is all about getting these specific messages and products in front of potential travellers.

 

Nowadays it is essential to do this is via digital channels online and the second half of the workshop allowed me to focus on all things digital whilst also relating back to Jason’s talk earlier in the day.

 

We focused on using digital signposts to drive people back to your website where direct bookings or enquiries are most likely to happen.

 

These digital signposts include, but aren’t limited to, popular social media channels, search engines and email marketing.

 

Puzzle Pieces

 

It was a great day and the feedback has been very positive.

 

At Counter Digital and Powell Destination Marketing we try to keep things simple when it comes to tourism marketing.

 

Tourism NI and Tourism Ireland hand us the puzzle pieces; it’s just about us putting them together in the right order and getting out there online!

For more information on tourism workshops click here.

Connecting Online and Offline Marketing in Northern Ireland

The rapid evolution of digital (online) marketing can make it daunting but the reality is that the goal remains the same – getting a message out there and in front of customers.

 

In some cases this can only happen after successfully connecting your online and offline marketing.

 

The two should never exist as separate entities.

 

Real World to Digital

 

I recently worked with a Northern Ireland gym and they had one key aim – increase footfall and class participation.

 

We started to make members more aware of upcoming classes and timetables.

 

We filtered this message through various social channels but we had to connect with our offline marketing to really achieve results.

 

We did this by collecting the email addresses of customers who entered the gym every day.

 

Every customer was asked two things:

 

What was their email address?

 

What did they most want to know about their gym?

 

We were then able to use the growing list of email addresses and customer feedback comments to create online email marketing campaigns that really worked and added value for both the gym and their members.

 

Digital in Real-Time

 

Similar to a gym, a hotel is the perfect place to showcase the connection between online and offline marketing.

 

There are opportunities everywhere in a hotel to collect the information that’s all around you.

 

We successfully did this, via opinion cards in the bar and restaurant, and then used the data collected to inform and direct our new digital marketing campaigns.

 

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It won’t be as easy in every sector but connecting the dots between online and offline can really benefit your digital marketing here in Northern Ireland.

Why Should You Use Email Marketing for your Business?

Email is Everywhere

 

In the age of Internet 2.0, social media and mobile apps, email marketing might look old fashioned and redundant but the reality is the opposite.

 

Despite all the advances in digital communication and online marketing, email is still considered the steady workhorse because it’s a cheap and reliable method of getting your message out there.

 

Up to 82% of businesses, in all sorts of markets, use email so if you or your businesses aren’t you need to consider, why not?

 

What Should You Send Out?

 

If you do decide to undertake an email marketing campaign you need to do two things to begin:

 

Start collecting your customers email addresses

 

Start thinking about what interests them and what you’ll actually send them

 

61% of online adults use email every day and almost half of them access emails on a mobile device. Keep this in mind when creating your campaign. It has to be attractive, easy to read and concise on even the smallest of screens.

 

Engaged Mailing Lists

 

When you do begin collecting customer email addresses try to do so in a positive fashion. The average email open rate hovers around 20% but if you focus on only collecting the addresses of those most interest it can rise to as high as 50%!

 

100 engaged interested customer addresses are far better than 1000 uninterested customers that just as quickly might unsubscribe. Don’t get bogged down in the vanity of numbers.

 

Finally, try to focus on those people that might be interested in hearing more about your products, services or events on a regular basis.