Email Marketing

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is the traditional way for brands to reach their customers, sending messages straight to their inboxes.

In 2017, it was reported that 55 percent of people open emails on mobile platforms, up from 29 percent in 2012. As we’ve evolved from the desktop era to a mobile-first world, email marketing requires a new set of rules: optimizing for screen size, personalizing to users’ needs, and combining with other communication channels.

How can email marketing be used with other channels?

Marketers can include email in their mobile app marketing mix to encourage more conversions at every step of the customer lifecycle. Via targeted emails, marketers can onboard new users, advertise promotions, and announce recently released features.

Email marketing is a channel outside of your app that can be integrated into marketing campaigns in the following ways:

Onboarding new users

As many marketers struggle with app retention, a welcome email can bridge this gap. Marketers should create a new user lifecycle campaign, introducing them to the app, explaining key features, and offering an onboarding tutorial. For even more impact, marketers can add deep links to onboarding emails, so users are sent directly to the screen where they dropped off.

Reducing shopping cart abandonment

Marketers can trigger automated emails to alert users one day, two days, seven days, etc. after they have abandoned items in their shopping cart, encouraging them to come back and purchase. Emails can be personalized to include a shopper’s name and details about the item, and again, deep links that take them straight to the checkout page.

Announcing promotions

Marketers can leverage email marketing campaigns to alert users to sales and discounts — extra effective when combined with other channels, like push notifications. This works even better with flash sales, when time is of the essence.

Recommending products

Using Leanplum’s analytics, marketers can build customer profiles based on demographics, technology, lifecycle stage, past behavior, preferences, and more. This abundance of data can be used to deliver personalized emails to customers who may be interested in specific products — far more effective than generic messages. For example, a marketer could recommend rain boots to a shopper who recently purchased an umbrella.

Offering news and media updates

Email marketing is a great way to alert users to new content they may enjoy. Media apps can let users know about new TV shows and musical artists. And news apps can send users a ‘digest’ with a round-up of the day’s top stories. Just be sure to personalize the content, by recommending similar genres of music and TV, and sticking to topics users have browsed in the past.

What are the secrets to an effective email marketing campaign?

According to experts, effective emails need a blend of great content, formatting, personalization, and calls-to-action (CTAs). Consider:

• Delivering mobile-friendly emails with subheadings and one clear CTA
• Segmenting your audience based on their behaviors and preferences
• Sending welcome emails after users subscribe, to increase retention
• Automating drip campaigns to encourage users to convert
• Delivering relevant content via personalization

For more tips on how to create better email marketing campaigns, read Leanplum’s article on why your emails get stuck in spam.