Have you ever checked your IM apps and noticed that you have different conversations with the same person via different channels? The psychology of messaging is a strange thing; you can send memes via IG DMs, have a heart-to-heart via WhatsApp, and keep things professional via Slack.
Well, when you’re a brand, it shouldn’t work this way. People have a hard time humanizing brands, but they, at least, expect them to be consistent. Your tone, voice, and messages should be the same on social media platforms and in your content marketing. In other words, you need to sound more or less the same on your website as you do in your emails and the other way around.
Here’s what you can do to make your emails more web-driven and easily align your email marketing strategy with the rest of your online presence.
Understand your audience
The first thing you need to understand is your audience. You’ve all seen successful branding attempts from various businesses with the use of memes on social media. Well, there’s a reason why this is more common today than it was a few years ago. Namely, meme communication comes naturally to modern audiences, which are becoming a larger and larger part of your audience’s purchasing power.
It’s also important that you conduct some research of your own. Make sure to define your target audience and understand their preferences. What kind of devices are they primarily using? Now, this part isn’t nearly as important as it was in the past. Why? Because you optimize for the lowest common denominator. In terms of device use, this usually means smaller screen sizes and mobile devices.
Now, remember that the majority of your audience browses the web via mobile and that there are no real downsides to going mobile first. It’s not like mobile-first sites will respond poorly when accessed via desktop PC.
The most important reason why you need to figure out your audience is so that you can adjust your email content. Different audiences respond differently to various content forms and formats. For instance, while one audience may prefer a video in an email, others will be less likely to open it.
In other words, the most important thing you should focus on is figuring out the behavior habits and patterns of your audience. This way, you’ll be able to create a far more effective marketing strategy.
Visual integration of design
Using the same visual markers between your website and your emails is incredibly important. Still, what does this even mean?
First of all, what are the visual markers of a website? Here, you have the layout, the main theme, the logo, and even the font. Upon entering the site, you’re absorbing all this information, even if you’re completely unaware of it.
Why not do the same with your email?
Why not use the same font, theme, and color? Why not go with the same layout and customization options? For instance, if, for whatever reason, your site doesn’t have a vertical scroll but a horizontal scroll instead, you can always make a similar thing (through a slide show and horizontal scrolling) on your site, as well.
This helps you with more than just branding. In fact, it may actively boost your SEO efforts. How come? Well, first of all, a lot of people are afraid of phishing. Others just hate clickbait. This is why they leave the site immediately upon suspecting that it’s not the same thing. Fortunately, when you make the email the same as the site, they follow the link, and while they are taken to a different domain, the theme remains the same. The transition won’t be perceived, which will slightly reduce your bounce rate.
Other than this, you get to use the IP that you already have. Chances are that you’ve already paid for the template and the design of your logo. You may even use it in your custom email signature. The more you use this IP, the more value you derive from it.
Be concise and to the point
With an email, you have a limited time to make a good impression.
People who click on the link leading to a piece of content are likely to read or at least skim through the content. After all, when they clicked on the link, they had a general idea of where they were going, which already implies intent to engage with content.
It’s not the same thing with your emails. Emails are often unsolicited and from an unknown source, which means that their open rate lingers on how credible your email address sounds and how relevant (and well-put) your subject line is.
Remember, your email has a purpose, and you have an agenda that you’re trying to pursue with it. Just use an email for what it’s for - the first step in the long game of conversion. If you want them to read more or explore more of what you have to offer, you can ask them to click on the link or just follow the link in your bio. With the help of a link in the bio tool, this is even easier to integrate.
In other words, you have no time to waste; introduce yourself and tell them why you’re there right away. If you have links, tell them where they lead and why you would like them to click on them. If there’s a video, give them a one-sentence summary of why it’s worth their time to play it. It’s that simple.
Just keep in mind that if you do your job right, this shouldn’t be a one-way correspondence.
Segmentation
Every good email marketing strategy relies on segmentation. This is a lesson that you can learn from their site experience. How do the majority of people interact with your site? Most of them go through the homepage and straight to the category they’re interested in. There, they either scroll, apply filters, or just use the “sort by” option.
In other words, the majority of your site visitors are only interested in a small corner of your site that affects them directly and nothing else. Ideally, they would go straight there, and they sometimes repeat the process.
For instance, while typing in the address bar, they may have several options offered, one of which leads them straight to the category in question. They’ll probably even bookmark the category so that they don’t have to go to the homepage (if they choose to bookmark at all).
So, if it’s completely normal for your visitors to interact with your site in this way, why not offer them the same experience via email? Just send them the content that’s meant for them and give them a chance to interact with it.
The key thing lies in properly segmenting your audience, and for this purpose, you can create a self-feeding loop. Think about it: You can use their site activity to see what they’re interested in and, later, use your email content to feed them back into this funnel. If you’ve followed our advice regarding visual integration of designs, for the most part, they might not even have figured out that they’ve left one medium and accessed another.
Use analytics and apply A/B testing
When trying out new things, don’t just take the results for granted. Also, don’t make assumptions. It’s fine to have an idea of how something will perform, but why approach this so dogmatically? Instead, test it. See what analytics have to say.
Better yet, have two separate ideas, test them simultaneously (A/B testing), and compare the results. This way, you automatically get a reference point, which means that, instead of just getting a random number that you can interpret arbitrarily, you’ll get a direct comparison and a direct answer to the question - what performs better?
Now, keep in mind that you can monitor your email marketing campaign and see its click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, open rates, etc. However, you shouldn’t stop there. Track their journey across your website and try to figure out how your email marketing strategy translates to their on-site behavior.
Also, just testing is not that impactful. Instead, you need to make sure that you make the necessary tweaks and adjustments. Whenever something’s not working, discard it and find something better. The main reason why you’re doing analytics, in the first place, is so that you can get insights. These insights need to be used right.
Email marketing and your overall online presence need to be on the same page
The bottom line is that there’s more to your email marketing strategy than just luring people to your website. This is a part of their customer lifecycle, and you want to ensure the interaction is positive every step of the way. The most effective way to do this is to make your email marketing strategy web-driven.
Have you ever checked your IM apps and noticed that you have different conversations with the same person via different channels? The psychology of messaging is a strange thing; you can send memes via IG DMs, have a heart-to-heart via WhatsApp, and keep things professional via Slack.
Well, when you’re a brand, it shouldn’t work this way. People have a hard time humanizing brands, but they, at least, expect them to be consistent. Your tone, voice, and messages should be the same on social media platforms and in your content marketing. In other words, you need to sound more or less the same on your website as you do in your emails and the other way around.
Here’s what you can do to make your emails more web-driven and easily align your email marketing strategy with the rest of your online presence.
Understand your audience
The first thing you need to understand is your audience. You’ve all seen successful branding attempts from various businesses with the use of memes on social media. Well, there’s a reason why this is more common today than it was a few years ago. Namely, meme communication comes naturally to modern audiences, which are becoming a larger and larger part of your audience’s purchasing power.
It’s also important that you conduct some research of your own. Make sure to define your target audience and understand their preferences. What kind of devices are they primarily using? Now, this part isn’t nearly as important as it was in the past. Why? Because you optimize for the lowest common denominator. In terms of device use, this usually means smaller screen sizes and mobile devices.
Now, remember that the majority of your audience browses the web via mobile and that there are no real downsides to going mobile first. It’s not like mobile-first sites will respond poorly when accessed via desktop PC.
The most important reason why you need to figure out your audience is so that you can adjust your email content. Different audiences respond differently to various content forms and formats. For instance, while one audience may prefer a video in an email, others will be less likely to open it.
In other words, the most important thing you should focus on is figuring out the behavior habits and patterns of your audience. This way, you’ll be able to create a far more effective marketing strategy.
Visual integration of design
Using the same visual markers between your website and your emails is incredibly important. Still, what does this even mean?
First of all, what are the visual markers of a website? Here, you have the layout, the main theme, the logo, and even the font. Upon entering the site, you’re absorbing all this information, even if you’re completely unaware of it.
Why not do the same with your email?
Why not use the same font, theme, and color? Why not go with the same layout and customization options? For instance, if, for whatever reason, your site doesn’t have a vertical scroll but a horizontal scroll instead, you can always make a similar thing (through a slide show and horizontal scrolling) on your site, as well.
This helps you with more than just branding. In fact, it may actively boost your SEO efforts. How come? Well, first of all, a lot of people are afraid of phishing. Others just hate clickbait. This is why they leave the site immediately upon suspecting that it’s not the same thing. Fortunately, when you make the email the same as the site, they follow the link, and while they are taken to a different domain, the theme remains the same. The transition won’t be perceived, which will slightly reduce your bounce rate.
Other than this, you get to use the IP that you already have. Chances are that you’ve already paid for the template and the design of your logo. You may even use it in your custom email signature. The more you use this IP, the more value you derive from it.
Be concise and to the point
With an email, you have a limited time to make a good impression.
People who click on the link leading to a piece of content are likely to read or at least skim through the content. After all, when they clicked on the link, they had a general idea of where they were going, which already implies intent to engage with content.
It’s not the same thing with your emails. Emails are often unsolicited and from an unknown source, which means that their open rate lingers on how credible your email address sounds and how relevant (and well-put) your subject line is.
Remember, your email has a purpose, and you have an agenda that you’re trying to pursue with it. Just use an email for what it’s for - the first step in the long game of conversion. If you want them to read more or explore more of what you have to offer, you can ask them to click on the link or just follow the link in your bio. With the help of a link in the bio tool, this is even easier to integrate.
In other words, you have no time to waste; introduce yourself and tell them why you’re there right away. If you have links, tell them where they lead and why you would like them to click on them. If there’s a video, give them a one-sentence summary of why it’s worth their time to play it. It’s that simple.
Just keep in mind that if you do your job right, this shouldn’t be a one-way correspondence.
Segmentation
Every good email marketing strategy relies on segmentation. This is a lesson that you can learn from their site experience. How do the majority of people interact with your site? Most of them go through the homepage and straight to the category they’re interested in. There, they either scroll, apply filters, or just use the “sort by” option.
In other words, the majority of your site visitors are only interested in a small corner of your site that affects them directly and nothing else. Ideally, they would go straight there, and they sometimes repeat the process.
For instance, while typing in the address bar, they may have several options offered, one of which leads them straight to the category in question. They’ll probably even bookmark the category so that they don’t have to go to the homepage (if they choose to bookmark at all).
So, if it’s completely normal for your visitors to interact with your site in this way, why not offer them the same experience via email? Just send them the content that’s meant for them and give them a chance to interact with it.
The key thing lies in properly segmenting your audience, and for this purpose, you can create a self-feeding loop. Think about it: You can use their site activity to see what they’re interested in and, later, use your email content to feed them back into this funnel. If you’ve followed our advice regarding visual integration of designs, for the most part, they might not even have figured out that they’ve left one medium and accessed another.
Use analytics and apply A/B testing
When trying out new things, don’t just take the results for granted. Also, don’t make assumptions. It’s fine to have an idea of how something will perform, but why approach this so dogmatically? Instead, test it. See what analytics have to say.
Better yet, have two separate ideas, test them simultaneously (A/B testing), and compare the results. This way, you automatically get a reference point, which means that, instead of just getting a random number that you can interpret arbitrarily, you’ll get a direct comparison and a direct answer to the question - what performs better?
Now, keep in mind that you can monitor your email marketing campaign and see its click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, open rates, etc. However, you shouldn’t stop there. Track their journey across your website and try to figure out how your email marketing strategy translates to their on-site behavior.
Also, just testing is not that impactful. Instead, you need to make sure that you make the necessary tweaks and adjustments. Whenever something’s not working, discard it and find something better. The main reason why you’re doing analytics, in the first place, is so that you can get insights. These insights need to be used right.
Email marketing and your overall online presence need to be on the same page
The bottom line is that there’s more to your email marketing strategy than just luring people to your website. This is a part of their customer lifecycle, and you want to ensure the interaction is positive every step of the way. The most effective way to do this is to make your email marketing strategy web-driven.
