Maximizing Email Marketing Effectiveness in a Crowded Inbox

There’s a reason your inbox always feels overloaded: email marketing works. Companies, however, can take steps to make sure every message they send has a purpose and makes an impact.

Clearing out your inbox after the holidays has become as common as returning unwanted gifts or setting New Year’s resolutions. If you’ve wondered why marketers keep sending you more and more emails, the answer is simple: it’s effective. Email is still a much more powerful tool for gaining customers than social media – nearly 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined.

This success stems from the fact that 91% of U.S. consumers use email daily. Not only does email trigger purchases at a rate at least three times higher than social media, but the average order value from email marketing is also 17% greater.

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Email remains a far more effective method for acquiring customers than social media. However, this doesn’t mean marketers should flood inboxes with irrelevant messages. Consumer behavior is evolving, as highlighted by McKinsey’s iConsumer survey, which found a 20% drop in email usage as a share of communication time between 2008 and 2012. Social networks, instant messaging, and mobile messaging apps have gained significant ground during this period.

While it’s crucial for marketers to invest in these emerging channels and develop advanced strategies to engage consumers and turn interest into sales, they shouldn’t be quick to pull resources away from email. Instead, marketers should focus on leveraging the inbox more effectively to maximize its potential.

Focus on the journey, not the click

Marketers often focus intensely on every detail of the emails they send, from subject lines to visuals and copy. This attention is important – but only if they remember that an email is just the starting point in a consumer’s journey. Emails are one part of a broader interaction with a brand, and marketers should be equally concerned about where the email directs the user.

Spending significant time crafting an email only to link users to a generic home page is a missed opportunity. Customized landing pages, which guide users straight to the item or offer featured in the email, can boost conversion rates by more than 25%.

It’s also crucial to optimize for mobile, as nearly 45% of marketing emails are now opened on mobile devices. Many marketers neglect this step, but it’s essential. Google reports that 61% of users won’t return to a mobile site they found difficult to use, and 40% will visit a competitor’s site instead.

Share the lessons

Top-performing marketing organizations treat every email as a valuable opportunity to understand their customers better. They set clear learning goals for each campaign, gather data, and share insights across the marketing team and the wider organization.

A leading apparel company that operates through multiple channels has introduced a monthly review process for its email campaigns. In these meetings, marketers highlight three successes and three areas for improvement. Attendees include marketers, merchants, and brand teams, and the most important lessons are displayed on closed-circuit screens throughout the corporate campus.

“We want the team to share all lessons learned,” said the head of direct marketing. “If something doesn’t work, we should celebrate discovering that.” This commitment to continuous learning has helped the company increase its e-commerce revenue as a percentage of total sales without sending additional email campaigns.

Get personal

Standing out in the crowded email marketing space has become increasingly challenging. While overall email usage has declined, the number of marketing emails continues to grow. Forrester estimated that 838 billion marketing emails would be sent in the United States in 2013 alone. With such high volumes, relevancy is more important than ever for marketers.

The most effective emails are highly personalized – and for good reason. Flash-sale site Gilt Groupe sends over 3,000 variations of its daily email, tailoring each one based on user data such as past clicks, browsing habits, and purchase history. Achieving this level of customization requires significant effort and resources. Customer data, often spread across different parts of an organization, must be consolidated to create a single customer view. A targeting system is then needed to deliver the right message to the right individual, and operational processes must adapt to handle the complexity of creating and sending thousands of unique emails.

The investment in personalization pays off. A financial institution increased revenue from target segments by 20% by sending personalized emails triggered by life-cycle events. Similarly, Williams-Sonoma saw a tenfold improvement in response rates by customizing email content based on users’ online and catalog shopping behavior.