6 Tips to Start Sending Successful eDMs

Email marketing has come a long way since the early 2000s. While the novelty of may have worn off over time, its value as a communication and sales tool has not. Global data shows that over half of consumers have made a purchase or taken action as a result of an email they received in the past 12 months, representing a 9% growth since 2021.

In fact, Electronic Direct Mail (EDM) marketing remains one of the MOST effective marketing channels to date, proving to be up to 108% more effective in driving sales compared to social media and display ad advertising!

While this doesn’t mean you should disregard your other campaigns entirely and focus solely on EDMs, it does emphasise the importance of integrating email into your marketing strategy.

So how should you go about creating a successful EDM strategy? Here are our top 6 ways to start sending successful EDMs.

1. Don’t Overdo It

It’s important to be mindful that despite the popularity of EDMs, our inboxes are becoming increasingly crowded. In 2022, businesses and customers collectively exchanged approximately 333.2 billion emails on a daily basis. This number is projected to reach 347.3 billion by the end of 2023 and is expected to surpass 376 billion.

We are all too familiar with the annoyance that emails can bring, and while many of us appreciate receiving messages from brands we actively engage with, we quickly become disillusioned with lacklustre communications. Additionally, our spam filters often prevent us from even seeing a majority of these emails. If this rings true for you, it undoubtedly applies to your customers as well.

As such, it’s important to avoid clicking send every few days on a new EDM template. If you work in a service-based business, instead opt for a quarterly or monthly newsletter to prevent EDM overload.

2. Keep It Personal

You can’t just market en masse any more, sending out the same emails to your customer base and hoping they’ll interact. Customers want to feel seen and heard.

Personalising EDMs has proven to enhance lead generation efforts. Why? Well, when emails are personalised, they feel more relevant and valuable to the recipients, making them more likely to open, read, and act upon the content.

Personalisation also contributes to brand awareness and consumer engagement by creating a unique and memorable experience for recipients. This can strengthen the brand-consumer relationship and increase brand loyalty while reinforcing your business identity, differentiating it from competitors.

To personalise content effectively, consider:

1. 1. Segmentation: Divide the email list into smaller segments based on demographic, behavioural, or preference-based criteria.
   2. Personalised subject lines: Craft subject lines that address the recipient by name or include specific details related to their interests or previous interactions. Data has shown that EDMs with personalised subject lines generate 50% higher open rates.
   3. Automation and triggered emails: Set up automated email campaigns triggered by specific actions or events, such as abandoned carts, birthdays, or milestones, to deliver timely and personalised messages.

3. Be Different

In a metaphorical world full of Woolworths’ and Coles’, be an Aldi. You want to be ‘good different’. You need to stand out and, most critically, be relevant.

What do all the spam and promotional emails you receive— the ones that get deleted immediately — have in common? Irrelevance. They all involve offers, content, rewards, or promotions, that you’re just not interested in. If you’re sending out EDMs that are of little value to the receivers, you’ve most likely just got yourself a one-way ticket to an EDM flop.

Instead, focus on embracing your brand voice, implementing a great design and user experience, incorporating interactive elements, adding videos, blogs, testimonials or good news stories and providing links to social media. You don’t want your EDMs to feel like an ad; you want them to reflect your brand, build trust and be a means of communicating with your audience, not just selling to them.

4. Track Results

You can’t improve if you don’t know what the benchmark is. Be sure to monitor your click-through rates and open rates and use the data to adjust your strategy over time; you can even A/B split test different emails to see which gets better interaction. Remember, this doesn’t all happen overnight; it takes time to analyse and learn from the data.

5. Reach, Reach, Reach

Organically growing your EDM audience can be a tough nut to crack, but there are ways that you can expand your audience reach quicker, one of which is going through a list broker.  It goes without saying that this takes additional investment, but it may be just the trick to break into an untapped pool of high-quality leads and potential customers.

List marketing can provide opportunities to reach potential customers who aren’t currently signed up for your mailing list. This can be provided by a third party, but don’t just choose any list marketer (particularly international providers), as these often provide poor-quality contacts. Instead, we can recommend expert local list marketers to help you get valuable contacts, not just a spreadsheet full of *poop emoji*.

6. Stay Consistent

EDMs provide little value if you only send one out every turn of the century. Just like going to the gym, successful EDMs are achieved through consistency. Once a month is generally sufficient for most businesses.

Want to create, engage and deliver great email marketing campaigns? Contact 80/20 Digital today on (03) 9042 0714 to see how our EDM specialists can help you.