Getting it write: Email best practices from HubSpot you can use this Afterpay Day
The first marketing email was sent in 1978, resulted in $13 million in sales, and kicked off what has become one of the most highly used marketing channels even to this day. Given its early beginnings, email isn’t as shiny as some newer channels like messaging and social, but it is an effective way to build an owned audience that gets results.
Email marketing isn’t just about you, or your company. It’s about your customer. This Afterpay Day, you can use email to speak to those customers about your sale offer in the right way, targeting those eager to shop with you, who are ready to convert.
To help you create emails that stand out this Afterpay Day, we turned to email guru HubSpot. We chatted with HubSpot’s APAC Marketing Director Kat Warboys on the best ways merchants can use email this Afterpay Day.
1. Kat, email is a powerful channel, but it’s also a cluttered one. What are the best approaches merchants can take when sending emails this Afterpay Day that can help them cut through the noise and get noticed?
While many have speculated that email is dead, we’ve witnessed the opposite at HubSpot. We wanted to understand how the pandemic was impacting the way bands communicated with their audience so we analysed the aggregated data from over 70,000 HubSpot customers globally.
We found that Aussie companies were staying more connected with their customers than ever before. In May 2020, Marketing email sends were at 24% above pre-COVID levels and, encouragingly, open rates were also up by 34%. Fast forward to today and email remains a powerful tool for marketers and a valuable medium for your customers.
Today’s consumer values interactions with your brand that are personal, helpful and authentic. When applied to your email strategy, these principles can help drive revenue for your business.
Emails should be:
- Personal
Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue, and in addition, an incredible 72% of shoppers report only engaging with personalised messaging. In short, consumers are seeking out tailored shopping experiences.
- Helpful
At HubSpot, our marketing philosophy is grounded in the Inbound methodology which essentially refers to how brands can add value before extracting value. Email marketing can be both a relationship-building and profit-building tool. Email can be used to build upon an existing relationship with your subscribers and leads by providing relevant, valuable information that will help them take action on their goals. For example, if you know your customer is interested in skin care, you can provide content that educates the customer on this topic. Increasingly we see brands offer guides and providing thought leadership within their product categories. This type of information provides great content for email which can be followed up with product recommendations and social proof.
- Authentic
What’s your brand personality? Can you include emojis in your subject lines that are playful and human? Consider signing off your emails with a personal signature from a human (not your company), for example, a customer care specialist.
2. Do you have any tips on subject lines? For example, should merchants be including their offers directly in the subject line?
We all know first impressions are important and for email, that’s your subject line. We only have to take a look at our own inbox to see how cluttered it can get so having a subject line that earns people’s attention is key. Including offers in the subject line is fine and since most email marketing platforms allow for smart personalisation tokens where you can pull in the recipient’s information you have the power to get clever with your subject lines, from product recommendations to reminding the recipient of their loyalty program rewards.
Here are a few of my favourites:
Temple & Webster: “Your saved items are now on sale!”
Witchery: “Your $10 Reward Expires Tomorrow”
Social proof is fast becoming a non-negotiable in the shopping experience and your subject line can be a great opportunity to provide that validation.
Here are some savvy brands putting this into action:
Sheridan: “Our most popular sale items as rated by customers like you”
Patagonia: “Top reviewed styles from customers like you”
HelloFresh: “Pssst… your friends are cooking up a storm!”
If your offer is going to be the focus of your subject line, limited-time offers are highly effective at getting consumers to take action. If you want to capture the attention of your recipients, use your subject line to highlight what they stand to lose if they don’t open the email.
For more subject line inspiration, we pulled together 100 email subject lines that we couldn’t help but click.
3. There are two key phases to Afterpay Day: the hype phase and the live event phase. How should merchants look to differentiate their emails and messaging across the two phases?
78% of consumers have unsubscribed from lists because a brand was sending too many emails. My advice is only send when you have something valuable to say. A well thought our email schedule and plan will ensure your communications are consistent and feel conversational as opposed to sporadic and clumsy.
The hype phase should be all about education and relevancy. What can your audience expect? How can you make it relevant to them? Consider using segmentation to focus on categories you know the customer is interested in.
Curate a wishlist category for your customers based on their interests that they can save. Provide education and social proof to truly engage the customer so they are ready and waiting for the live event! Subject lines that focus on pain points can be a great way to earn attention during this time.
If you have done the hype phase well, your audience won’t require any more education and your emails will be optimised for conversions. If they created a wish list your email should link straight to it, making the shopping experience easy and enjoyable. Use this time to communicate the key offer dates to create urgency.
4. Personalisation is always really important when it comes to email marketing. What are some of the ways merchants can segment their lists to drive stronger personalisation across their email campaigns?
We’ve all heard of abandoned cart emails and welcome offers, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. Merchants can get really creative when it comes to personalising the experience for buyers and email can sit at the heat of this.
Each person who signs up to receive your emails is at a different level of readiness to convert into a customer. The way you engage with a new subscriber vs your most loyal, repeat customer should be very different. If you send a discount code for your product to new subscribers that don’t even know how to diagnose their problem, you’ll probably lose them.
Here are some ways you could segment your audience:
Geographical location of your physical stores
Lifecycle stage
Product category interest
Previous engagement with your brand including purchases or interactions with your content
Some of my favourite campaigns that use these segmentations include:
- Restock campaigns
Do you have a product that should be replaced after a certain period of time? If so, reaching out to your customers using the original purchase date is a great way to help them stay on top. Even better if you can provide a subscription model.
- Product care
Categorising products and educating buyers on either items or product tips that will help your customers get more from the product adds a real delight factor.
- Loyalty program status
Remind customers of unused benefits or how far off they are from reaching the next loyalty tier.
5. HubSpot offers so many great tips and best practices for email marketing success. To finish us up today, what’s the most important thing merchants need to remember when it comes to running a successful email campaign this Afterpay Day?
Focus on delivering experiences that are personal, helpful and authentic within your email strategy. Provide value before you extract value. Personalisation at scale is only possible if you have the behavioural and demographic data available to segment and deliver great experiences via email or any other channel. Assess your tech stack and the data required to enable you to segment your audience and drive valuable moments to your customers..If you keep these principles in mind, your subscribers will not only read your emails, but they will look forward to hearing from you every time.
