Email Marketing
Creating Effective Campaigns in Today’s Competitive Market
Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, yet remains very effective. But, just because it has been around for a comparatively long time, doesn’t mean that it hasn’t evolved at a rapid pace. Email marketing for today’s U.S. audience has become more sophisticated as user requirements have changed.
More than ever, email marketing is about providing relevant, valuable information to your audience.
As you expand into the American market, you need to be on top of recent developments, so you don’t waste time and money trying to build a new email marketing strategy that doesn’t resonate with U.S. users.
At Mount Bonnell Media we have over a decade of experience as European business owners in developing relationships with American consumers. We can help you to stay on top of the latest developments in email marketing technology, and develop a strategy that gets your messages out in the most effective way. In this guide, we’ll walk you through some of the key developments in email marketing and how Mount Bonnell Media can help you leverage this potent marketing tool.
Email Marketing Remains One of the Most Powerful Tools for Marketing Your U.S. Business
Email marketing is still a powerful tool for entrepreneurs planning to expand their business into the U.S. During 2019, email marketing spend in the U.S. is predicted to rise above $3 billion. No wonder considering the impressive statistics about email marketing:
The number of email users in the U.S. is projected to grow to 254.7 million by 2020.
66% of purchasers in the U.S. purchase after receiving an email.
73% of Millenials identify email as their preferred means of business communication, and 72.9% of 18-24 year old use their phones to check email.
48% of businesses use some form of email automation.
Email is 40 times more effective than Facebook, and Twitter combined when it comes to customer acquisition.
In the U.S. every $1 spent on email marketing has an average ROI of $44.
(Source – WordStream)
Email is effective because of its continued flexibility, especially with the growing use of mobile devices. People can access their email at any time from different devices, and more than half of mobile users open plain text email to check what’s new during the day.
Email marketing is a great tool to increase awareness, build loyalty, add value, and create an ongoing dialogue between you and your customers. But, to get to this stage you need to be able to convince your new audience to start that interaction, and it’s becoming harder to grab that all-important slice of attention from American customers.
Challenges International Entrepreneurs Face When Email Marketing to an American Audience
The average office user gets 121 emails per day, and in North America, the average clickthrough rate is 3.1%. People are just too busy and too saturated to spend time on email unless they have a compelling reason to do so. Carefully planned and executed email marketing strategy stands the best chance of making an impact.
Litmus has identified several key organizational and technical issues that many email marketers face, including:
Lack of quality data and integration into campaigns for aspects such as segmentation, analytics, content, and testing.
Inadequate tools for the email creation process and/or limitations of email service providers.
Poor coordination in integrating other channels into email marketing.
A lack of clear goals and KPIs for email strategy.
Low visibility around email performance and deliverability.
Moving Past Barriers to Reaching an American Audience
As a European looking to break into the American market, you are also going to face a series of unique challenges. For example, you may have email marketing processes that work well in your current niche, but are you able to build your fresh email list by talking to a new market in a way that will resonate for them?
International entrepreneurs often want to know how they can get past barriers like cultural misunderstandings, knowing which messages to give to a different audience and how to create the best media to ensure that they use optins most effectively.
Other issues we’ve seen at Mount Bonnell Media are a lack of knowledge around local markets and audiences and how those audiences are likely to respond to different styles and tone. There are also a series of questions to answer around which kinds of sequences are the best to use, whether media like videos be added to emails, and how should personalization and segmentation be used.
There’s a wide range of issues to consider, especially when it comes to strategy and implementation and ensuring you get the best possible ROI. At Mount Bonnell Media we can help to create genuinely value-for-money email marketing – and we believe one of the key ways to do this is to leverage the power of automated, yet personalized emails.
Why Autoresponders Are Incredible Vehicles to Tell Your Story to U.S. Customers
Autoresponders are nothing new in email marketing, but the way businesses are using them in the U.S. is changing. They are a fantastic choice for your business because, so long as they are well planned and utilized, they can bring great results.
Autoresponders are perfect for American audiences because they can be used to tell stories and offer high-value information so that your new audience can get to know you and your business. This is a vital part of building trust and an ongoing long-term relationship. Autoresponders take time because they need to build rapport and carefully develop your email list so that people are genuinely engaging with what you are sending.
The average American is saturated with marketing messages. That means that your audience is hungry for interactions that will stand out and offer personalized, engaging content, rather than just yet another one-dimensional impersonal marketing message.
It’s also important to remember that American audiences are unique, but they are also highly diverse. The U.S. is a vast array of states and municipalities that have their own traditions, culture, and way of doing things. So, you need to be aware of how to hyper-segment your email marketing so that you are delivering quality content to the right people – in the way they want to receive it
The Evolution of Autoresponders
Autoresponders have been a fantastic thing for email marketing. Being able to create a series of emails you can send out automatically to your list has saved a considerable amount of time and made the process of email marketing much easier to quantify.
But it’s now no longer enough only to design a sequence of emails and set them to send to your email list at regular intervals.
You need to think bigger and more intuitively about your target audience. This means using two types of autoresponders –
Sequential & Responsive
Sequential Autoresponders. These are “traditional” autoresponders. You set up a sequence of content with a particular focus (for example sharing a series of informative emails about your niche, or building up to an offer), and set the emails to send to your list at regular automated intervals.
Responsive Autoresponders. These autoresponders are really where your business should be heading. They set up a sequence of emails for a particular focus, but you use a variety of styles and content that only gets sent out if a specific action triggers them.
Responsive Autoresponders Make Emails Hyper-Effective
Responsive autoresponder sequences have been made popular by people like Perry Marshall who uses them as part of a “maze” style of communicating. The beauty of using these types of autoresponders is that they adjust in accordance with how much engagement and interest you are getting from your audience.
You can set sequences to send out further emails if your customer takes a specific action as a result of an email. Over time this can build your relationship with your customers by letting you highly segment your list and provide tailored, personalized messages to the people who really want to hear from you.
It’s also important to use email marketing and personalization holistically, aligning with your other marketing channels to provide cross-platform multi-channel messages for your customers.
Building Valuable Ongoing Relationships With U.S. Customers – The Future of Email Marketing
Personalization and segmentation are so popular right now because they offer the chance to evolve your marketing so that your focus is less on making quick sales and more on creating better long-term business relationships.
These days, American users demand far more from the brands they choose to interact with. Building awareness is only the first step in this more mature customer-business relationship. Being able to personalize your messages and provide individualized experiences now goes beyond just keeping in touch or reminding people about your product or service. And, although this is something that has been achievable with email marketing for some time, the way that you now build your email personalization is more advanced.
Building Trust and Connection With Your U.S. Audience
Customers now expect to connect with you on an emotional level and to develop a connection that builds trust, loyalty, and real value, beyond the initial product or service you are offering. This kind of ongoing interaction depends on you using more complex automation in your email marketing and integrating it with other channels to provide consistent and valuable messages.
Mobile technology will be an essential part of how you move forward with email marketing. According to emailmonday 8 in 10 users now access their email accounts exclusively from their mobile devices, and 70% of consumers will delete emails immediately if they don’t render well on their mobile device. This means it’s crucial that you also create campaigns that will translate well to mobile devices.
The bottom line is your U.S. audience expects to receive intuitive and personalized cross-channel messages that are about more than acquisition and loyalty. People want businesses to make suggestions, offer extra experience and anticipate their needs. This means using email marketing alongside areas such as social media marketing, on-site personalization, and paid advertising to expand the user experience. Ultimately it’s about the Lifetime Value metric (LTV) rather than short-term sales.
Mount Bonnell Media and Email Marketing Services
We love helping European entrepreneurs make the jump over the pond and into U.S. success. We firmly believe that email marketing is one of the most potent channels you can use to get your business out there and growing at the rate you want it to grow.
We’ve had years of experience helping businesses tell their unique story to an American market. Our team of skilled marketers can help you to take advantage of the latest developments in email marketing with services in:
Strategy advice and consultation. We can help you to identify your target audiences, and choose and execute an effective strategy.
Working with you to identify and clarify your unique business story and integrate it into your email marketing. We’ll help you target the right audiences and how to communicate with them in a personal, effective way.
Management of email marketing – from A/B split testing to automation. We’ll advise you on the best email platforms to use and analyze performance and metrics to discover which campaigns are the most effective.
Help you to grow your U.S. email list, using optins, landing pages, and lead magnets that offer real value to your customers.
Help you to integrate other marketing tools with your email marketing such as PPC, Social Media marketing and PPC.
Work with you to plan long-term strategies that will nurture your customer relationship management.
Offer copywriting and design services as well as local expertise to ensure your messages are speaking to U.S. audiences in a way they can identify with.