Email marketing is dead! 

Now that we’ve got your attention, we’re here to tell you that the exact opposite is true: email marketing is actually thriving in Australia. 

As of 2022, there were approximately 4.2 billion daily email users, and the average open rates experienced a growth of 3.5% in 2021 to 21.5%. Globally, email marketing revenue is estimated to reach 11 billion dollars (U.S.) by the end of 2023. Emails are an extremely effective way to connect and engage with your customers and boost conversions. When email marketing is done well, it can complement other marketing efforts that are part of your strategy. Here are our top best practices for email marketing that will drive results!

Build Your Email List

The first rule of email marketing is, of course, to build your email list. You can build your email list online or at your brick-and-mortar if you have a physical location in Australia. The best ways to build a high-quality email list online are via sign-up forms and pop-ups on your website, as well as through organic and paid social media.

Sign-up forms on your website. You can place static sign-up forms on high-traffic pages and areas of your website such as your footer, header, or at the bottom of a blog post. There are many types of pop-ups to choose from, but three that work particularly well on a website to capture the visitor’s attention are scroll-triggered, exit-intent and time-based pop-ups. 

• Time-based pop-ups will display after a specific amount of time, for example 30 seconds after a visitor hits your website.
• An exit-intent pop-up will appear just as your visitor is about to leave your site. This is a great opportunity to give your visitors a reason to stay or submit their details for a deal.
• A scroll-triggered pop-up will appear once a user reaches a certain section on a webpage, for example, once a user reads 60% of a page. Email marketing tools that you can use to create these pop-ups will look at visitor actions like where they move their cursor to within the page, or how long they remain idle on your website.

Gamification. One of the best ways to create excitement, build engagement and encourage visitors to take action, like making a purchase, is by using interactive elements on your website like a quiz, test, or a ‘spin to win’ game. For a visitor to receive their quiz results or win a prize, all they need to do is submit their email!

Social Media. Both organic and paid social media can be incredibly useful for building your email list. You can add call-to-actions to your bios with a link to your sign-up form on your website, you can host giveaways on your organic social channels, or you can run Lead Generation ads through Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn. These are just a few examples of using social media for email marketing, so if you would like to know more, get in touch with our team and we can work with you to create a social media and email marketing strategy for your business!

Remember, your email list must be permission-based (and give the subscriber the option to opt-out at any time), relevant to your business, and should be constantly growing!

Send Welcome Emails

Making a great first impression with new subscribers is key, and a welcome email is the perfect way to do this. You want to make sure you send an email that is valuable to your subscriber, and you want to send it as quickly as possible before they lose interest. We recommend sending your welcome email within the first 48 hours; research shows that they are most engaged within this time, and 76% of consumers expect to receive an email as soon as they subscribe.

So, what should your welcome email look like? First, you’ll want to thank your new subscriber for signing up. You then might want to set out what they can expect to receive from you – email frequency, email content (i.e. tips or sale events), and how to use certain aspects of your website (i.e. setting up a profile). 

You might want to consider a welcome email sequence if you’re looking to educate your audience about your products/services before they make a purchase decision. No two welcome email sequences will look the same, so here are some elements to consider: 

• If you are an e-comm business, you might want to include and link to some products or product categories in your email. 
• You can ask your subscribers to follow you on social media to stay up-to-date with your business. 
• You can share a discount code for your new lead to use on their first purchase. It might be worth mentioning your offer in your email subject line, for example, “Welcome to XX – Here’s 20% Off Your First Purchase!”. 

For more information on email sequences, keep reading!

Consider Setting Up Email Sequences

Sending multiple emails in stages is referred to as an ‘email sequence’, and they help you educate or set expectations for new customers (welcome email sequence), build good relationships with your subscribers (lead nurture email sequence), re-connect with customers who’ve not been engaging (re-engagement email sequence), or encourage leads to complete their purchase (abandoned cart email sequence).

These are a great way to target specific audience types too, with messaging specific to them and their purchasing or engagement behaviour.

Most email providers will allow you to automate this too, creating email workflows that can get triggered when they perform a certain behaviour.

Focus On the Subject Line

We know not to judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to emails, your readers are totally judging your email by your subject line! A clickworthy subject line is critical for any email marketing campaign in Australia; it’s what convinces a subscriber your email is worth opening. In fact, you could say that your subject line is more important than the content within the actual email. Some effective subject lines include:

• Special offers or discounts. For example, “25% off your favourite products” or “Try us for free!”.
• Urgent or FOMO. Get people to take action immediately with a subject line such as, “This is your LAST CHANCE for 50% off!”.
• Questions. Asking your subscribers a compelling, open-ended question can spark conversation.
• Personalisation. Personalising a subject line with either the subscribers name or their most recent purchase shows that you are delivering relevant content or adding value to their experience.
• Humour. Adding a funny subject line can help with your click-through rate, however, what may be funny to one person, may not funny to another. But, that’s not necessarily a bad thing depending on how aligned with your brand / you you’d like your audience to be.

There are also a few no-nos though – and these tend to be things that might trigger the spam filter, or simply cause your receiver to bin them without opening. Swear words, or words/phrases like “credit”, “100% free,’ ‘guarantee’, subject lines ALL IN UPPER CASE or containing typos, too many punctuation marks or special characters.  Don’t make false promises (such as FW: or RE:), and don’t try to “trick” the reader. 

Ultimately, you want to choose one that grabs your audience’s attention, includes action verbs, and includes up to 50 characters.

Mobile-Friendly Design

Optimising your emails for mobile is increasingly becoming more important for email marketing campaigns in Australia. In fact, research from 2021 showed 41% of email views come from mobile devices. No matter where your audience is – on public transport headed to work, or at home on the couch – they constantly have access to their mobile devices. With this in mind, you should aim to create extremely mobile-friendly emails that are easy to scroll through and visually engaging.

Nail Your Timing

A question we often hear regarding email marketing is what is the best day and time to send an email? Some research says that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days for click-to-open rates. Accoring to Coschedule, the best times to send an email are 8am, 9am, 10am, 1pm and 3pm. However, these days and time slots might not necessarily work for your business and when comes to digital, marketing and trends are in a constant state of evolution. You need to consider your industry and audience, and what might work for them. You also need to consider that perhaps these optimal times means that every other business might be following these recommendations, therefore saturating your audience’s inbox. While you can definitely follow these guidelines, it is best to test and adjust your schedule based on how your audience responds.

Plan Your Content Ahead

If you would like to share monthly or fortnightly emails, planning your content ahead of time is a must, especially if you are running seasonal and timely email campaigns. For instance, you might want to craft specific offers and content to suit the Christmas period or even the Winter months. Creating a yearly email marketing calendar allows you to map out your strategy and ensure you are sending the right messages at the right time.

Chat to Our Team About Creating an Email Marketing Strategy in Australia

Once you start following these email marketing best practices, you’ll see even more success with your campaigns. If you would like to know more about developing an email strategy for your business in Australia, please get in touch with our team. At Lance Montana, our digital experts and strategists have experience in running email campaigns for a variety of clients and business types. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help you!