How to Make the Best Email Marketing Campaigns

email marketing campaign

Email marketing is a lost art. On second thought, it’s more like a never-found art because it’s often overlooked for those flashier campaigns. Marketing on Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, etc. You get it. You may have even been there yourself when having to make the call on how to best allocate your ad spend.

Email is very much not the sexiest thing, when you have a free moment you spend it scrolling through email…or something else? Don’t say it, we know. It’s understandable.

But email marketing is mega low cost and it’s messaging directed at the people literally asking for you to engage with them. They signed up for your email list after all. C’mon, that’s a potential goldmine!

So if you’re running these campaigns, how can you make the best email marketing campaigns? Make them count! Keep reading to find out The Snow Agencies’ best email marketing campaign tips: 

The Best Email Content for Marketing 

Make It Personal

This is huge. No one likes feeling like a number or a cog in the marketing machine. This seems like something that would take a while to personalize, no? Incorrect, most mass email platforms let you customize and personalize every part of your email, name included. 

Listen, we all know what’s going on with marketing emails, we all understand the email wasn’t legitimately written directly to us. We know that. Getting an email with a generic header, without your name, just reeks of not caring. If you won’t go to the effort to address me by name, why bother reading the rest of the email. That’s the mindset you have and therefore it’s certainly the mindset the recipient of your email will have.

If you can manage a quick personal anecdote or story, to create that human touch, even better.

To make the best email marketing campaign – Make those things personal!

Keep It Short

Have you made it this far in the blog? You’re still here? Phew, ok, here’s another important tip; keep it short and sweet. If the email is too long, people simply won’t read it. Too much text is a turnoff. The last thing anyone wants to see when they open an email from your company is an enormous block of text the size of the Empire State Building.

Instant delete.

Don’t be that brand. Keep it tight and to the point. Don’t skimp on the message though, don’t cut that part. You need to deliver value with brevity and get to your call to action with as few speed bumps as possible.

Pro-tip; the sweet spot for word count according to an exhaustive study by Boomerang is between 50-125 words.

Check It (Before You Wreck It)

Double, triple check before you send it out. Please. The best email marketing campaigns have zeo typos. This is so easy but you’d be surprised how often it gets overlooked. Spell check it and use Grammarly to make sure everything is copacetic and cool with the writing.

Above all, make sure you’re checking and testing the software you’re using so you don’t end up sending an email that says “Hey There {First Name}” to your entire list. It breaks rule number 1 that we mentioned above and, oddly enough, just does not leave a good impression on the receiver aka your potential client or customer.

Make It Mobile Friendly

While you may still check most of your email from your desk an astounding 46% of all email opens are from mobile. Given that, you’re going to make sure you’ve optimized your message for mobile since there’s roughly a 50% chance that that’s where your people are going to open it.

The Best Email Marketing Campaigns With the Snow Agency

Email marketing has the highest ROI of all the marketing avenues you can choose from. Not tapping into and leveraging it properly means you’re leaving money on the table. If your email marketing can use a reboot and a revitalization, reach out to us because at The Snow Agency we don’t leave money on the table.

Best Social Media Platforms to Advertise On

best social media advertising platforms

You’re at the point where you’ve created your social media accounts, you’re running the communities, engaging with your audience and all is well. You’re in the mix. That’s not necessarily the end of the story though, as social media platforms have evolved they’ve become ever more sophisticated tools for advertising your business. A remarkably cost-effective tool in fact when compared to the traditional media of yesteryear with a starkly better return on investment.

You need to be advertising on social because it’s by and large where your audience is hanging out. Across all platforms, there are 3.8 billion social media users globally, which equates to about half of the planet. And those 3.8 billion are spending about 3 hours per day on those platforms. That’s big. 

So what are the best platforms for your brand to advertise on?

Facebook

The old standby. The one we all know and love, Facebook boasts the most users globally and over 2/3rd of American adults are on it. Facebook has become synonymous with social media. They even made a movie about it. It’s a magnificently powerful tool for advertising with access to 1.7 billion daily active users. If your audience is social (they are) they likely have a Facebook profile and whatever else suits their needs and tastes.

Aside from the dramatic reach you get with Facebook Ads, the targeting they allow you to do to get your message in front of your exact audience is extraordinary. As long you know or have created your highly specific customer profiles the segmentation available to you is extremely precise and refined.

Importantly, Facebook has the best cost per thousand impressions (CPM) out there.

YouTube

Quick question. What’s the 2nd largest search engine? The subheading for this section on YouTube makes the answer is obvious but can you believe that? After Google people are going to YouTube for search. Amazing.

As our digital and online lives migrate more and more to our cell phones, YouTube is becoming the place to be for your social media advertising. The numbers speak for themselves, the platform accounts for 37% of mobile traffic. Moreover, YouTube reaches more people in the 18-49 demographic than all cable television networks combined.

Your audience is consuming and yearning for new video content at an ever higher rate, meeting them where they’re watching it is a no-brainer.

Snapchat

Young gun. Youngblood. Snapchat.

The “newest” addition to the major leagues of social media platforms, Snapchat has been on the rocket ship called growth for the last handful of years.

If your brand skews to the younger demographics, this is the platform you need to be advertising on. It’s straight up and unequivocally the most popular network for teens and of those in the 18-24 demo, 73% are using Snapchat. It’s where they’re spending about 30 minutes of their time these days and both its user base and ad revenue are increasing steadily.

More and more companies are unlocking the power of Snapchat and if youth is in your brand’s DNA, Snapchat has to be in your marketing plan.

Importance of Social Media Advertising

Ultimately, if you’re not reaching your audience or prospective clients and customers on social, where are you reaching them? Social media advertising is a must these days and should have a prominent position in your media mix.

Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat are among the most effective vehicles with which you can get your message in front of the very audience that needs to see it. But getting the most out of these platforms isn’t necessarily a cakewalk. Reach out to us at The Snow Agency and we can help you leverage your social media advertising more effectively to take your sales to the next level.

How to Drive Engagement With Your Instagram Captions

According to a recent statistic published by the Pew Research Center, 80% of social media browsing takes place on mobile devices. For this reason, it is imperative for the survival and longevity of a business to take advantage of their social media presence on Instagram, which has grown to over 700 million active monthly users.

Having stunning photos and videos is only part of the solution for driving engagement and sales through the social media platform. If you’re not delegating time and effort to formulate attention-grabbing captions, then you may be losing out on critical opportunities. Having a strong visual can grab the attention of your audience initially, but a carefully thought out caption will help you engage with your audience and market your products/services more effectively. Additionally, a compelling and robust caption will help you strengthen your brand awareness and personality.

Earlier this year, Instagram shed light on how it’s new algorithm functions:

“What shows up first in your feed is determined by what posts and accounts you engage with the most, as well as other contributing factors such as the timeliness of posts, how often you use Instagram, how many people you follow, etc.”

Contrary to what most people believe, the posts that appear first in your feed are not entirely determined by the number of followers you own. In reality, Instagram also takes into account the number of people that engage with your post, which is extremely important. This means individuals are liking, commenting, and sharing your posts.

Here are a couple of suggestions to ensure you are maximizing the potential of your posts

1. Take Your Time

More often than not, people rush the caption creation process. They will spend hours capturing and editing their photos to look visually pleasing but will write their captions in a matter of seconds. This is the wrong way of approaching the post. It would be best if you spent time creating drafts and perfecting your wording. Your first few sentences should contain a specific purpose which will allow you to grab the reader’s attention immediately. The key is to create a sense of dialogue and conversation. Posing a question, leaving a link in your bio, or tagging a friend will get the reader more interested.

2. Be Authentic

One of the keys to social media is to communicate like an authentic human being. Make sure to show your real character and come across as natural and friendly. This can be done by choosing captions that move and inspire you. Developing captions that reveal personality will help you build a stronger relationship with your audience.

Here, for example, is one way Old Spice incorporated fun and creative caption and photo into its marketing strategy.

3.Include Emojis and #Hashtags

Using emojis will convey the feeling behind your words. Make sure to choose emojis that are relevant to the message you are trying to communicate and consistent with your brand image. Don’t overload your caption with a jumbled bag of emojis because this will leave your audience feeling overwhelmed and confused. Implementing hashtags is just as effective. On average, incorporating hashtags generates 12.6% more engagement compared to those without. It’s an excellent way to build a sense of community and entice individuals to talk about your product/service. Creating a memorable hashtag will persuade people to share their experience with your product/service on their social media pages. The beauty of this strategy is that your brand will become advertised without any additional costs.

Thousands of community members the #TogetherIsBeautiful hashtag, most of whom are posting about their experience enjoying Coca Cola.

4. Add Value

Use your captions as an opportunity to share valuable information with your targeted audience. Offering “tips and tricks” or any detail that sparks creativity will make users more likely to share and bookmark your post. Users are not only browsing through social media platforms to purchase products/services. They’re also looking for credible pages to gain knowledge and insight from.

5. Organize Contests

Holding organized contests is an excellent method of promoting and marketing your brand by getting users excited about your product. Based off of multiple findings, contests will drive the most user engagement. It’s a successful campaign strategy because it incentivizes people to follow, encourages user-generated content, builds awareness, and sparks conversation as users bounce ideas off of one another.

Dunkin Donuts asked its audience to showcase their favorite Dunkin inspired costumes for a chance to win $1000 and a year’s supply of coffee.