The most daunting task with mobile applications is finding the best way to market it. If you lack the right marketing tactics, getting the right audience on board and enticing them to use your app won’t be possible.
This is where email marketing can help. It’s not just cost-effective but is also a high ROI generating strategy to gain maximum exposure for your applications.
In fact, according to a study, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect a return of $42. Furthermore, Statista suggests that 49 percent of buyers want their favorite brands to deliver weekly promotional emails.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll be outlining 5 proven ways to garner maximum exposure for your apps with email marketing.
Why Market Your Apps With Email Marketing?
Worldwide mobile usage is growing exponentially, and there’s no sign of it slowing down any time soon. After all, the number of worldwide mobile internet users is close to 7.1 billion.
Consequently, there has also been a constant growth in the number of mobile applications. And with new mobile apps coming out every day, bloggers, business owners, and other marketers are utilizing email marketing for their apps.
This marketing method is not just a key component for most marketers, it’s also the main driving force when it comes to retaining customers for small to medium businesses. After all, 81 percent use email for client acquisition and 80 percent rely on email marketing for retaining valuable customers.
And unlike social media, where you have to compete with algorithms and expect users to see your posts, you can deliver newsletters knowing that email marketing and email conference provides reliable, targeted viewership. Moreover, if people have subscribed to your email list, it means they’re interested in your content. This is also the reason why they make perfect candidates for your sales campaign.
Hence, if you wish to refine your email marketing strategy for your mobile applications, or if your existing marketing approach needs improvement, the following steps can help you execute a successful campaign.
1. Set Your Objectives
It’s possible that you might have prior experience with building email lists. Perhaps, you have even promoted your apps via email marketing tools before. Though we’ve all applied some ineffective marketing tactics in the past, the experiences that you’ve attained will prove beneficial for your upcoming campaigns.
Nonetheless, even if you might have the experience, it’s important to make some careful planning before launching your email campaign. Besides, the aim is to improve your marketing tactic instead of repeating previous mistakes.
So, start by setting your objectives. This could be more engagements, higher ROI, or overall growth. Also, if you’ve already promoted your app through email campaigns before, try to find areas that could have been done differently.
2. Devise a Pre-Launch Tactic
Once you’re done planning your targets, it’s time to devise a pre-launch tactic. For this step, start by outlining your campaign. This includes the tone, look, and cohesiveness. Also, you’ll want to pick an ESP (Email Service Provider) so you can build your subscriber list.
- Picking Your ESP:While there are several ESPs available, you need to choose based on your email list size, product, and budget. Make sure you do proper research and then decide on one that best suits your unique requirements.
- Build Your Maling List: For this, your website will need a newsletter pop-up. Another way to attract readers is via an ambassador program or contest. Also, if your app has an affiliated blog, you might want to think of content upgrades that might encourage readers to join your list. The following example shows how Creative Revolt’s blogger Jorden Roper adds a content upgrade and elevates her blog post. Anyone who downloads the PDF is automatically made to subscribe to her newsletter.
- Optimize Emails for Mobile & Desktop: It’s vital to ensure that your newsletters are easily readable on mobile and desktop. Why is this step critical? 70 percent of emails that display poorly on mobile is likely to be deleted within 3 seconds, which leads to unsubscription by 15%.
3. Test Your Campaigns
After you’re done outlining your mobile campaign, consider introducing some complexity. For example, do you want to determine your customers’ interests and gather information about their preferences? Is appealing to individual groups depending on their location and preferences your goal?
A/B testing campaigns: If your answer is yes, A/B testing your emails is necessary. In doing so, you’ll be able to gain valuable information about your customers. Another effective way to optimize your emails for a wide-ranging audience is to use that data and segment your outgoing campaigns. If both strategies apply to you, consider using an ESP that streamlines personalization.
Beta Testing: Aside from A/B testing, you need to beta test your emails as well. This gives you the option to tweak your creativity and prevent any mistakes that could harm your brand image, waste the customers’ time, and hinder your open rates in the future. For successful beta testing, you need to pick a small group of people and direct how they can sign up for the test and gather their feedback. This will help you in resolving bugs and other problems that could pose inconveniences for future consumers.
4. Launch & Expect Issues
Based on your campaign, you’ll have to create some hype before the launch. For example, you can promise important upcoming news and announcements.
Use emails, social media, and blog posts as a way to prompt interest in your new marketing campaign. The example below shows how Soylent uses this approach by promising to release a “sequel” within just 24 hours.
After launching your campaign, you need to brace yourself to face some issues. However, this happens in every process and therefore, don’t get too stressed or worried if you experience bugs or a sudden rush in support inquiries. When this happens, it simply means that your audience is opening your mails.
Besides generating interest in your apps, the most priceless part of this operation is perhaps the insights you can garner from the launch. Make sure to use an email marketing tool that can give analytics, concerning both your emails and your app. This data includes: revenue generated, bounce rates, open rates, unsubscribe rates, etc.
5. Use Insights & Plan the After-Launch Strategy
Using the data collected after your launch, you’ll be able to plan for upcoming emails. For example, if you experienced more than your usual higher open, consider how to continue emulating the email style. Perhaps you performed A/B testing for your headlines. If you notice that one headline yield better results than the other, make sure to use this style for your upcoming emails.
Also, when you receive feedback, whether good or bad, use the opportunity and ask your readers what improvements they’d like to see. Customer retention and feedback are incredibly important, and good support is what you need for improving user relationships. Besides, selling to an existing client is over 350 percent more profitable than a new buyer. Therefore, make sure you don’t neglect your current users when pursuing new ones.
3 Best Practices of Email Marketing
Here are 3 best practices of email marketing to help you meet your goals:
- State the benefits of Your Emails Precisely: Without an appropriate number of subscribers, the efforts you put into your email campaign will go to waste. Fortunately, by clearly communicating the benefits of your emails, you’ll be able to gain the interest of valuable clients and encourage them to subscribe.
- Refine Your CTA: Even if your open rates are excellent, they won’t be of much value if your CTAs (Call-to-Actions) don’t perform well. This is a very critical part of your email and a good CTA can not only increase your ROI but also your retention rates.
- Personalization is Key: It’s very important to Personalize emails if you want better results. In fact, you can expect to generate an open rate of over 50% when your subject lines are personalized. Therefore, when creating your email, consider mentioning the name of the recipients whenever possible.
Bottom Line
If you had difficulties creating successful email campaigns before, marketing your apps via email may seem quite overwhelming.
Fortunately, no matter what your campaign is for, it doesn’t need to be an overly stressful process. Besides, they can be an excellent way to boost your ROI. Moreover, regardless of the success rate, your email campaign will most likely yield better results than your social media efforts.
With email marketing, not only will you have the opportunity to boost your sales rate, but you’ll also be able to retain your loyal clients through consistent interactions. These interactions might make all the difference when it comes to gaining optimum exposure for your apps.
As it’s clear now that email marketing isn’t just a marketing strategy, but a company mission as well. When you start planning an email campaign for your app, make sure you remember to set targets, strategize, test, and make improvements.
Author Bio:
Robert Jordan, a seasoned marketing professional with over 10 years of experience, currently working as Media Relations Manager at InfoClutch Inc, which provides technology database for your marketing campaign. Have expertise in setting up the lead flow for budding startups and takes it to the next level. His passion is writing. Now he works at Studyclerk as a content writer.