Email marketing analysis & Its Success

How to perform an Email marketing analysis on your competition?

Carrying out an email marketing analysis of your competition is one of the ways to anticipate the actions of your competitors and stay one step ahead. It is not only important to know what products they sell, but how they sell them.

This analysis will give you a global vision of all aspects, both its strengths and weaknesses. What are they doing well? What are we doing better? What can we learn? How can we improve? Once all the questions we ask ourselves have been answered, we will obtain a complete and detailed report that will help us better understand how the sector works and how your competition moves.

The actions of your competitors can give you a clue of what works best and worst in the world of email marketing and marketing automation. For example, if the emails are always launched at the same time and on a specific day of the week. If the launch of a campaign on a day designated as Mother’s Day is carried out a week before if it uses transactional emails if it carries out nurturing programs or welcome programs.

Knowing all these aspects you will not only anticipate the actions of your competitors but also achieve a better organization, planning and optimization of your email marketing strategy.

How to start preparing an email marketing competition analysis?

To start email marketers will need to select the competitors they want to analyze, visit their websites, and subscribe to their newsletter. In this way, you will begin to verify what type of emails they send and how they send them. You should start looking at all the details, if they only send promotional emails, how many emails you receive per day, if they use trigger-based emails, etc.

For this process, you can use a spreadsheet or a presentation where you can add screenshots of the emails and comments.

What points are important to perform this analysis?

The more complete the report, the easier it will be to draw conclusions.

In addition to analyzing in detail the elements that make up the email, such as content or design, it is also important to take into account how shipments are managed, the type of campaigns or how subscribers are directed.

Let’s see the most important elements that cannot be missed in your email marketing competition analysis:

Subject:
Here you should observe if your competitors’ subjects are clear and direct, short or long, if they use emoticons, if they are formal or friendly and if They use customization. This will make you see if they are very different from yours and thus be able to perform A/B Test on your next shipments to check if they are more effective.

Design:
At this point it goes without saying how important your emails are to be responsive. If your competitors’ emails aren’t, you’re ahead. Examine if they use eye-catching designs, check their structure, the number of images it contains, if they use gifs, etc.

Personalization:
Analyze how they use personalization. If it is only with labels or also with dynamic content. Check if the personalization is based on your personal data such as name or city, or if they also use personalization according to your interests, based on your clicks, your products purchased or added to the basket, so you will know how they manage and use the information of their subscribers.

Action calls:
Study if they use links or buttons, what kind of words they use, where they are placed, if they are eye-catching and the amount. Don’t forget to click to see if it leads to another action. For example, if you click on a product, you receive an email with more information about the clicked product.

For the management of email marketing campaigns we cannot lose sight of the following techniques:

Channels:
It is interesting to know if they complement their email marketing strategy with other channels such as paid media or social ads. For this reason, we recommend that you not only subscribe to their newsletter but also observe their entire online environment.

Type of campaigns:
Analyze all your campaigns, if they have a welcome campaign, promotional campaigns, seasonal, etc.

It is important that you interact on their website to complete this part, so you can check if they carry out transactional campaigns such as navigation abandonment, cart abandonment or birthday campaigns. This way you will be closer to knowing part of its strategy.

Content:
It is important to know if your competition’s emails are promotional, educational or both. Check if they make enough use of promotional codes and offers or, if not, they make more use of informative emails, such as industry news and news of interest, if they make resources such as free guides. Do not forget to observe what kind of language they use to know how they communicate with their subscribers.

Shipping frequency and time:

Check if the delivery days and hours are similar to yours and how often you receive emails to verify their delivery frequency. This way you will check the level of saturation that your subscribers can have.

3 critical success factors in email marketing

Email marketing has shown very favourable results in terms of the conversion rate obtained in some sectors such as eCommerce, retail, and B2B businesses, among others. A study carried out by e Consultancy among marketing professionals places it as the digital marketing tool with the best return on investment (ROI), mentioned by 73% and surpassing other valuable tools such as SEO (72%), content marketing (63%) and advertising associated with search engines (60%).

I could cite multiple investigations that show some of the benefits of sending mass emails, however, on this occasion, rather than justifying its use by companies, I want to comment on three critical factors for success in its application. Yes, because it is one thing that, in general terms, email marketing shows favorable results and another, very different thing, is that any massive email campaign that is carried out obtains these results.

As in everything, there are those who do it well and those who, on the contrary, fail in the attempt. Now, how to increase your chances of success with email marketing? Taking these three key factors into account.

As seen in the highlighted texts, email marketing involves an audience, a message or content, and finally, a delivery.

1.  It all starts with a good database.

Email marketing involves an audience, for which we require a database that contains at least the email addresses of the recipients. This seems to be enough, but it definitely is not. The database must be of quality and that implies that these people have some relationship with the company, even better if they gave their consent to receive emails from our company (opt-in model).

I do not recommend the opt-out modality, where people are added voluntarily and they are the ones who must leave the list, once they start receiving messages. Even less, buy databases. The best practice is to build an organic database, starting from a relationship between the audience and our company or brand (not always limited to electronic media but using the store or physical interactions such as events). The second component, related to the content, will be very useful for this purpose.

Some additional recommendations are as follows: comply with the new privacy protection laws such as the European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), design simple registration forms that do not include more than five data fields, and clean regularly the database to eliminate those contacts that do not receive the emails.

2. Content is also king in emails.

Also in email marketing, as on the Web, content is king. Most of the people who register in our database do so to receive a value in exchange, be it a special discount, preferential treatment, information, or test services, among others. This is what we call the “magnets” to capture prospects or leads, but it should not be limited to the time of registration, but must be maintained over time or we will simply lose those subscribers. A practice that helps us in this relationship definitely surveys. Knowing the interest of our audiences is extremely important to add value.

But not only the quality of the content is enough, also the form. In this sense, I refer to the format used. Avoid sending overloaded messages or with many links or calls to action. Treat your emails like a landing page: one email, one goal.

Some additional recommendations are as follows: Carefully design the subject line of your emails, as the open rate is a function of the attractiveness of these subject lines. I suggest you try different options, using the A/B testing features offered by some of the main email marketing platforms. If you personalize your emails, much better.

3. Do not trust the sending of your emails to anyone.

The return on investment (ROI) in mailings is high because, thanks to technology, it is possible to send mass mailings at low cost or even for free (much less than when sending printed information). However, it is important to invest in a good platform that guarantees us compliance with best practices in order to prevent our messages from being classified as spam. Likewise, a good email marketing platform will provide us with the necessary statistics to evaluate our efforts.

Some additional recommendations are the following: ask your registered users to include you as a contact and thus minimize the chances that your messages will be included in the spam folder. If they use Gmail, they add you to the main inbox to prevent your messages from staying in the promotional inboxes, forward your messages to those recipients who did not open your first message, making it easier for your subscribers to unsubscribe from the list and investigate possible reasons.

Remember, email marketing is a wonderful digital marketing tool, but you have to do your homework. That is, comply with the best practices related to the database of contacts, content and shipments.

Conclusions

Once you have enough necessary data you can share it with the rest of the team and start to see conclusions. You will see the competition’s strategy in email marketing more clearly and this can help you to achieve a competitive advantage and be one step ahead of all your competitors.

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Digital Marketing and Digital Ecosystem 2022

Why is digital marketing important?

With technological advances, there are many changes that digital marketing has experienced. Among them, the way in which we communicate, promote and acquire products and services stands out. Being networks, email marketing and positioning strategies, avant-garde techniques of wide impact that involve different activities and areas of specialization.

For SMEs and freelancers, this is of the utmost importance. Well, digital marketing allows you to create direct, interactive and profitable advertising campaigns that can be directed to a local destination with the possibility of scaling up to a large scale.

However, all promotion and sales techniques require special care, in addition to other research and business management methods. For this reason, today we will talk about digital marketing as a fundamental tool for companies.

Make yourself comfortable, because next we will share ESEM’s super digital marketing guide

What is Digital Marketing?

Before getting into the matter, let’s talk about digital marketing as a concept. As a starting point, digital marketing is the set of strategies aimed at communication and online marketing of products and services.

Today, it is the main means by which companies and freelancers connect directly and personalized with the potential client. In the same way, it should be noted that digital marketing is not a substitute for traditional marketing, but rather a value supplement that has led to the evolution of global trade.

With more than half of the world’s population active on the Internet, digital marketing is the most profitable and viable way to develop new forms of business. Since all the efforts are arranged in an online ecosystem that is increasingly used and accepted by the consumer.

Just as there is a natural ecosystem that connects us with others, there are also ecosystems in the digital world. Understanding this environment provides the opportunity to organize and implement good strategies for the positioning of products and services. So digitizing in the midst of a technological age must be part of our strategic planning if we really want to achieve business success.

Digital ecosystem

Digital marketing starts, therefore, from the digital ecosystem itself. This includes digital tactics that manage to benefit companies in terms of:

·         web traffic

·         Converting visits to leads

·         Lead Qualification

·         Optimizing interaction with prospects

·         Sales increase.

On a large scale, the digital ecosystem comprises the process of internal adaptation of companies around the network of collaborations necessary to facilitate the acquisition of goods and services. In this way, through computer technology, it is possible to generate online interaction between companies, partners and consumers, generating benefits for all.

This, combined with traditional marketing, offers verifiable competitive advantages that even influence the company’s organization, and can even achieve a first-class service that provides effective solutions within the market.

 In summary, a well-structured digital ecosystem serves to position and control the form of communication that we use to promote our commercial brand.

Elements of a digital ecosystem 

Before implementing any marketing strategy you must improve your digital ecosystem. This includes website, branding, social networks, SEM, SMM and SEO, metrics, conversion and blog as essential elements of a properly planned online management.

·       Website: All part of the website. Well, it is your letter of introduction and the central point of all the digital tactics to implement. The website is, in other words, the engine of your brand or business online and even offline. Since it is the site where customers can corroborate your experience, commitment and reliability of the service.

·      Blog: If the website has an informative blog that at the same time stimulates interaction on the official website. The idea of ​​a blog is, of course, to solve queries, offer interactive information and optimize to increase visits.

·    Social networks: Social networks are very powerful tools today. Since they allow a much more direct interaction with your target audience and potential customers.

·         Branding: Brand strategies related to communication channels.

·        SEM, SMM and SEO: Positioning and monetary investment for digital media. Fundamental pillars of the new digital marketing strategies.

·        Metrics: Use of indicators or KPIs to define the course of marketing strategies with objective foundations.

·     Conversion: Part of your landing page or landing page. From there, customers will be guided through the entire process that involves a sale through contact formats, lead nurturing and emails. This process, it should be noted, allows you to attract, inform and delight prospects.

Reasons why is digital marketing important?

In a new modern era, companies face multidisciplinary challenges that, if not overcome, spell the end of any booming business project.

Hence the importance of applying specialized techniques that yield quantifiable results in a given period. With this in mind, the competent study of marketing strategies not only offers a clear vision of the tools to be implemented, but also allows  savings, optimization of processes, increased productivity of the company ,  personalization of commercial proposals,  etc. .

Other of the many benefits for companies can be summarized as follows:

·         Measurement: Online marketing strategies can be measured much more easily than traditional marketing strategies.

·         Brand visibility: Online positioning increases brand visibility.

·         Personalization: Through market segmentation and other techniques, it is possible to personalize marketing campaigns in favor of your target audience.

·         Recruitment and loyalty: Digital marketing can attract potential customers and retain current customers.

·    Community: Thanks to the power of networks, it is possible to create much more direct and interactive communication channels that allow connecting with customers.

·         Profitability: Online strategies are much more profitable than traditional advertising. However, together, they are very powerful tools of great scope and business consolidation.

·       Ease of monitoring: The tools facilitate constant monitoring of network activities in order to check the success of strategies and compare results if, in any case, different strategies are implemented in different ecosystems. For this reason, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are becoming increasingly important in the digital ecosystem.

·      Approach to your brand image: Digital marketing allows you to build a brand reputation, optimizing the approach to it and improving the relationship with our target audience.

·      Impact to more people: By facilitating the implementation of marketing strategies, the impact of a good advertising campaign can influence a large number of people.

·        Make adjustments easier: Digital marketing also allows for more control over the content of campaigns, meaning errors can be edited more easily and at virtually any time.

·       Optimizes business survival: Having an online business means taking advantage of the tools of the online ecosystem to continue promoting and selling products and/or services in case of problems with our physical business.

Consumer acceptance versus digital marketing

Years ago, trusting the Internet was quite a challenge. Today, as consumer acceptance is greater and economic needs have changed, the level of security regarding purchases and sales in the online environment is also greater.

·         59% of adults ages 18-29 use Instagram.

·         On average, a person can spend at least 20 minutes on Facebook per day.

·         86% of users consult opinions on social networks before making a purchase.

·         In Spain, 80% of people look for products online before buying it.

Without a doubt, the data speaks for itself and it is the responsibility of the entrepreneur to know how to adapt to the new needs of the modern consumer. But, even with the great access we have to the network, digital marketing is not a discipline to be taken lightly. Well, the commercial success of a promising company depends on it.

Therefore, if you are one of those who want to professionalize to take charge of your business or, failing that, find or get promoted in a job, we advise you to take the master’s degree in business management and digital marketing from EyeT. Without a doubt, a unique opportunity that will allow you to enhance your skills in record time.

How to make digital marketing strategies?

As we have already indicated, online marketing is the set of actions that are implemented to promote specific products and services. Therefore, we are talking about multidisciplinary activities that require different types of strategies, monitoring and control when starting any action plan.

In other words, carrying out effective marketing strategies derives from the knowledge we have about the multiple disciplines that respond to a specific marketing plan.

Therefore, like all part of the strategies that give visibility to commercial projects, we must start with the   prior definition of the objectives and the knowledge we have about the audiences.

The following steps below offer a better idea of ​​what it is like to implement a digital marketing strategy.

Create a Digital Marketing Benchmark to define and compare performance. It starts with a performance test to identify and compare measurable digital practices against the competition. Some aspects to evaluate may be:

·         Market sector.

·         Usability of a web page.

·         Creation of a blog and topics of interest.

·         Use of social networks.

·         Keywords.

·         Definition of the best digital practices according to the market sector.

Define the objectives of the strategy

The general objectives must be measurable and must be complemented by the corporate objectives. In this sense, we can define two types:

1.      Business-oriented goals:

·         Strengthen the brand.

·         Increase sales.

·         Get prospects.

2.      Customer-oriented goals:

·         Improve customer service.

·         Improve customer knowledge.

·         Improving customer satisfaction.

·         Loyalty customers.

Audience Identification

Identify your audience based on:

·         Age range.

·         Economic level.

·         Education level.

·         Place of residence.

·         Interests.

·         Personality.

·         Lifestyles.

·         Gender.

·         Marital status.

Business diagnosis

Identify the current status of your project. To achieve this, evaluate the main marketing strategies:

·         Usability and conversion of the website.

·         Positioning in search engines (SEO).

·         Social Media Marketing.

·         Email Marketing.

·         Online advertising.

·         Influencer marketing.

How to create a digital marketing plan?

No strategy can be successfully developed without a professional digital marketing plan. Take into account that the marketing plan encompasses the strategies that we will carry out in the online world. So scheduling by dates is essential.

Establish your mission as a company

Establish the corporate mission of your business. This includes defining your proposal as a brand. Since, it is important to be very clear about the message that we want to convey through the brand image.

Analyze the market

Analyze in depth the market of your sector. This way you will know the context and how your commercial brand is developed, this will give you a much broader vision of its performance and position in relation to the competition.

In this way you will take better advantage of the opportunities and you will be able to act in accordance with the proposed objectives.

Define your buyer person

Develop a representation of your potential customer. How? Well, simple:

·         Analyze consumer behavior.

·         Study their demographic information.

·         Identify motivations and needs.

But, it should be noted that to make a realistic portrait of the audience, you need to gather objective information from questions such as:

·         What do you work on?

·         What labor sector do you belong to?

·         What is your training?

·         Where you live?

·         What challenges do you face every day?

·         What are your fears?

·         What solutions do you need to achieve?

·         What doubts arise when trying to execute those solutions?

Sociodemographic aspects are fundamental in this process. Well, they complement the study regarding behaviors, work life, personality and behavior on the network. Therefore, all these aspects can help us define the profile of the ideal client.

In addition to this, the following questions to answer are:

·         What activities do you do in your free time?

·         What are your aspirations and motivations?

·         What would you change about your job to be happier?

·         What media and books do you usually read?

·         In which social networks are they most active?

Collecting all this information allows you to draw a much clearer profile that can be enriched as you identify the interests that motivate the consumer to purchase products and/or services related to a specific market sector.

By understanding the behavior and needs of the consumer according to their profile, you will be able to draw up an effective marketing plan.

Define your business goals

With the above information already collected, outline your business objectives based on the SMART methodology:

·         Specifics.

·         Measurable.

·         Achievable.

·         Relevant.

·         Temporary.

Guides the strategies to follow and defines the action channels

Once our buyer persona, the target market and the SMART objectives have been defined, the next step will be to outline the marketing strategies. Yes, finally after a long road, we will be able to take decisive action directed at our public.

And to achieve this, nothing better than communication channels as means of action. Due to the nature of digital marketing, the actions can be unlimited, although it is important to choose based on our objectives and budget.

So what channels to use?

·         Social networks.

·         Web page.

·         Email marketing.

·         Online advertising.

·         Video marketing.

·         Influencers.

Schedule and schedule actions

Organize a calendar with the actions you will carry out. This calendar must include:

·         Title of the project.

·         Deadlines.

·         Name of the work team.

·         Relevant comments and suggestions.

Implementation of a digital marketing strategy

Now that you are clear about the guidelines to follow, it is time to talk about the basic implementation of a digital marketing strategy. In general, this is what you need:

·         Have a web page:  Create a light and optimized web page or landing page that allows you to offer quality content, as well as offers, promotions and specialized services. Web pages are everything for a commercial brand. Well, that’s where most of the strategies for capturing, positioning and promoting products start.

·         Web traffic:  As we have indicated, the actions implemented on your website must attract organic and inorganic traffic to your website. And this is achieved with nothing more and nothing less than SEO and SEM.

·         Keywords:  To optimize, improve web positioning and increase the number of visits, analyze the keywords that respond to your market sector. The correct selection of keywords will allow you to create interactive articles of informative quality.

·         Social Media:  And last but not least, social media. That the actions are directed towards your official social networks. Well, they are direct communication channels that create interaction and connection between users and brands.

4 important factors to launch a digital marketing campaign

If you have reached this point, you must be very clear that the correct management of a professional marketing campaign deserves a budget.

In this way, based on your initial budget, it will be necessary to take into account the following 4 factors of a professional launch:

·     Usability:  The web pages or landing page must facilitate the purchase conversion. Therefore, its interface must be very intuitive and practical for the user. Therefore, check the usability of your website before starting promotional campaigns.

·     Templates or graphic design:  The aesthetics of the design is fundamental both in a web page and in a digital marketing campaign. In this sense, graphic design must adequately represent your brand image.

·     Search engines:  Optimization and positioning are an important part of the performance and profitability of a booming online project. As we have already said, the answer lies in the advantages offered by SEO and SEM as potential tools.

·     Promotion:  Take advantage of the great potential of Social Ads or network advertising. Integrate branded content and content marketing as part of your network marketing actions, always with a good brand design at the forefront. 

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