Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase customer loyalty and retention, and it drives 40% more conversions than social advertising. Of course, that all hinges on your execution. If you’re not delivering what your customers want, you won’t get as much as you could from your email marketing efforts.

But what do customers want? We set out to learn just that.

To learn more about consumer email marketing preferences, including the interactive features they like to see, what makes them stop reading and how often they like to receive emails from a single brand, we surveyed 700 adults in the U.S. Read on to see what they had to say about email marketing to better inform your own campaigns.

Stop Signs

Your email lands in someone’s inbox, they open it and start reading. While we hope they’ll read to the very end, there’s a chance they’ll drop off. Quite a few things might make someone stop reading, but here’s what our respondents said makes them call it quits in the middle of an email (respondents were asked to select all that apply):

• 54.7% said the content is too long
• 47.5% said the content is not relevant to them
• 44.5% said the headline causes them to stop reading
• 39.1% said the subject line was misleading
• 36.6% said the design
• 18.7% said they typically read emails all the way through

Key takeaway: To keep people reading, make sure your emails are short and sweet with content that is as relevant to your audience as possible.

More Information, Please

Delivering information to your readers’ inboxes is the entire reason you send marketing emails in the first place. But are you giving them the information they need in the email, or are you asking them to visit your site to “Read More”? When we asked if respondents prefer getting their information from the email or if they want to go to the site to learn more, here’s what they said:

Key takeaway: Don’t rely on users clicking through. Put the bulk of the information you want recipients to read in the email. This may sound counterintuitive to our advice of keeping emails short and sweet, but it will allow you to explore ways to provide all the necessary information while still being succinct.

Caution: High Frequency

Marketers know that sending too many emails will cause people to unsubscribe. In fact, in part one of our email marketing survey, over 77% of respondents said that’s why they hit the “unsubscribe” button. 

So how often should you send emails? Here’s what people said when we asked how often they want to receive marketing emails from a single brand:

Key takeaway: Customers are comfortable hearing from your brand weekly or even daily! But before you rework your email marketing calendar to send more frequent emails, think about whether you can deliver relevant, quality content that often. If not, sending less frequently is perfectly fine—and in most cases, preferable to more frequent, low-quality emails.

Make it Fun

It’s no secret that interactive features can keep people engaged and on a website longer than text alone. While interactivity is a little more limited in email, it’s not impossible to incorporate it. Here are the interactive email features that appeal to survey takers the most (respondents were asked to select all that apply):

• 46.7% like to see new product preview
• 43% enjoy leaving a product/service review
• 42.7% like taking polls
• 39.6% like seeing countdowns in emails

Key takeaway: Any interactive element is likely to be a hit, so experiment with different ones to find which one resonates with your audience the most. For example, a countdown is a great way to create a sense of urgency around a sale ending.

Step by Step

When making a large purchase like an appliance, furniture or car, the process isn’t always quick. With manufacturing time, shipping delays and order backlogs, it may be weeks or months before your customer gets what they ordered. When faced with a long buying cycle, we were curious to know if customers wanted an email at each step of the process. The answer? A resounding “yes.”

• 90.1% said yes
• 9.9% said no

Key takeaway: If customers are making a big purchase, they want to be kept in the loop. Look at your purchase journey and identify key points where an email would be useful for a customer. Even if it’s just a status update, identifying messaging opportunities during the sales process will only strengthen brand affinity.

Picture This

Every marketer knows that an email’s design is important. But when it comes to the assets used in the email, do readers prefer still images or videos? Here’s what they said:

• 57.8% prefer images
• 36.5% prefer videos
• 5.7% have no preference

Key takeaway: Don’t force videos in your marketing emails. If you only have images, that’s fine! Images can work on their own, or they can be combined to make a gif for an easy way to add motion to an email.

Click Here

Button design is a big part of UX, and we were curious to see which buttons people would be most likely to click. Users chose one button from two different sets. Here’s what they chose:

Key takeaway: Cool colors like blue, green and teal were chosen more consistently than warmer colors. Four of the five button designs that users ranked the highest had sharp, not rounded, corners. Both of the top-ranked had multiple colors. When designing your next CTA button, try incorporating one or more of these elements and track any changes in click-through rates.

Get the Most Out of Your Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best ways to nurture your customer base, so don’t neglect it! Contact us to learn more about our work and how we can elevate your business.

As much as we’d like customers to purchase our product the first time they see it, we know that’s not the case. In fact, the “rule of 7” states that, on average, people need to see an ad or message at least seven times before they take action. Those messages could come in the form of advertisements, social media posts and emails. 

The most effective way to get your message across? Email.

It’s the best way to nurture your leads, and it consistently provides the highest ROI of any marketing tactic.

What is Lead Nurturing?

At its core, lead nurturing is building relationships with potential customers.

The messaging that your company puts out establishes, strengthens and maintains that relationship. A successful lead nurturing campaign makes your brand more memorable and increases sales.

Why Nurture via Email

Email is just one way to nurture leads. You can also retarget them with ads on social media, display or search and even send mailers. But email marketing has the highest ROI, generating approximately $42 of revenue for every $1 spent.

That makes email marketing the most cost-effective way to nurture leads, but that’s not the only reason to create a lead nurturing strategy. Here are three more reasons that nurturing with email is king:

• Email is 40X better at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
• Nurtured leads tend to make larger purchases (47% larger, on average) because they have more trust in your brand. 
• People want to hear from you! When surveyed, just over 60% of people said they want to hear from companies they do business with at least weekly. 91% said they want to receive promotional emails at least monthly.

How to Build a Lead Nurturing Email Strategy

Whether you’ve never built a lead nurturing email campaign or you’d like to revamp your current campaign, you’re in the right place! Here’s our step-by-step guide to building an effective email nurture campaign:

1. Set a Goal

Like any marketing initiative, the first step is identifying your goal. What do you want from this campaign? Higher sales or conversions and increased website traffic are two common, concrete goals, but an additional goal could be to educate your audience about your unique product or service.  

2. Understand Your Buyer’s Journey

Understanding the way your audience interacts with your brand and purchases your product is key, especially when creating a lead nurturing strategy. Here are some questions to consider to better understand your buyer’s journey:

• How long does it typically take someone who becomes aware of your brand to become a customer?
• How much information do your customers need before they purchase?
• What kind of information do they need to become a customer?

For service-based businesses, letting customers know what they can expect at important points throughout their buying journey is a great way to nurture them:

3. Identify Your Audience(s)

The most effective campaigns have a clearly defined audience. And in some cases, it’s most effective to have more than one audience. 

Segmenting your audience—or dividing it up based on factors that impact their buyer’s journey—is a surefire way to improve the effectiveness of your emails. In fact, segmented campaigns can lead to as much as a 760% increase in revenue. Even simply personalizing the subject line can result in a 50% higher open rate. 

There are nearly endless ways to segment your audience, but here are some common segments:

• Geographic location
• Purchase history
• Browsing behavior
• Gender
• Stage of the sales funnel
• Email engagement, like those that regularly click links in your emails

There is no best way to segment an email audience; it all depends on your product or service. For example, KOHLER Generators segments its audience based on geographic location to better speak about the factors that may lead someone to need a generator:

For your business, it may make more sense to segment based on purchase history or browsing behavior. It’s all about what allows you to best speak to your customers.

4. Create a Schedule

In a lead nurturing drip campaign, you’ll probably send emails every few days for a limited time. From there, we recommend sending weekly, bi-weekly or monthly emails to keep your subscribers engaged and your brand top-of-mind. Sending emails too frequently can be annoying, leading customers to unsubscribe.

To determine how frequently you should send marketing emails, think about how often you can realistically create good, valuable content and how often your customers really need to hear from you. Sending subpar emails just for the sake of appearing in someone’s inbox isn’t an effective strategy. In addition, sending more information than your customers need will only leave them feeling overwhelmed rather than educated.

5. Create a Content Calendar

Your content calendar will combine your schedule with the topics your emails will address. Here are some things to consider when choosing email topics:

• What type of content does your audience need to move through the purchase funnel? What product or service features can you highlight?
• What are the most visited pages on your site? This will help you understand the type of information people are looking for.
• What insights can you use? Your community management and sales teams can provide valuable insights into your customer’s mind.
• What are some of the most searched keywords in your industry? Although keywords don’t impact email marketing, it’s a great way to create content that people are actively searching for.

When brainstorming content ideas, think about the marketing emails you receive that appeal most to you. See if you can apply these findings to your own email campaigns.

Part of creating your content calendar is creating enticing subject lines. 47% of people say they open an email based on the subject line alone, so it’s important to spend time on your subject lines instead of making them an afterthought.  

6. Send!

Once your emails are written and designed, it’s time to send! Most email marketing platforms allow you to create drip campaigns and customer journeys that will automatically send emails based on certain “triggers.” For instance, you can automatically send a follow-up email a few days after a purchase or an email with a coupon code for an abandoned cart. For monthly newsletters or one-off emails, send them manually or schedule them according to the calendar you set.

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