Email marketing is an extremely important asset of your marketing strategy for your raffles, especially when done right. In this blog BUMP will go over the benefits and best practices of email marketing that will elevate your customers experience, retention, and conversion rates.
Email marketing benefits
First off, what are the benefits of email marketing you ask? Well, there are many benefits to email marketing that not only increase your open and subscriber rates but also increase your returning customers and raise conversion rates. The cost of email marketing is relatively low, so it's an easy add for smaller foundations as well.
Below is a short list of many key reasons you should be running email marketing campaigns.
- Keeps people up to date
- Notifies people about an event/progression of event
- Creates awareness
- Product exposure
- Increase engagement
- Drive traffic to website
- Drive up conversions
Emails are a great marketing tool that should be used to send updates on new and upcoming products/releases. When used properly you should be sending these updates regularly to not only keep your customers up to date but get more word out about your product.
Subject lines
Subject lines are the first point of contact you make with a customer. You need your subject line to stand out amongst the crowd and catch your customers' attention. With the number of emails each person receives every day how do you ensure that your emails will be not only noticed but opened? Below are a few examples of how to catch your customers' attention and ensure they interact with your emails.
Email Subject Line Examples
- Make people feel called upon: Calling all [Foundation name] Supporters! Tickets are on sale now!
- Give them a reason: 30 reasons to buy your [Event name] tickets today!
- Create excitement: Announcing! This just in! Just released!
- Sense of urgency: [Urgent!], We need your help!, Sales closing @ 6:30 TONIGHT!
When you create email subject lines using these best practices, you will see a definitive increase in your email open rate. You need to pull on your customers' emotions and make sure they feel not only connected to your cause but excited to participate. Give them a reason to open your emails.
Best times to send an Email
When should you be sending your emails? Well, there are proven dates and times that are suggested by email marketing platforms based off their data. But keep in mind that your audience is different. What may work for others may not be the best for you. Below are the recorded best dates and times to send an email to increase your email marketing success.
The best time to send an email – during working hours:
- 6am-9am 11.3% Average Open Rate
- 9am-12pm 34.9% Average Open Rate
- 12pm-3pm 27.6% Average Open Rate
You want to send your emails in the early morning and during work hours. Funnily enough you'd think that would be the worst time to send, but people check their phones first thing in the morning to catch up on what they missed. Also, send emails when they are at work, this is when people have the most access to their emails during the day. The worst times to send are after work during rush hour, no one is on their phone as they are commuting back home from work and dealing with traffic.
Best days of the week - best to least effective
- Thursdays
- Tuesdays
- Wednesday
- Monday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
Above are the recommended best times to send emails based off of email marketing platforms data. Weekends tend to be the worst times to send as people are either trying to disconnect from work and not checking their emails, or they are busy with their personal lives enjoying the weekend.
Again, all this data is recommended. You can try to send emails on different dates and see what times and dates get the best response from your audience. Your cause and your audience is different and testing send times is an important part in discovering your email marketing best practices.
Crucial emails to send
What type of email content is important to send to your customers?
Ensure everyone is kept up to date with the latest announcements and news of your cause. Are there new products coming? Do you have fun events happening? How can people participate? You need to ensure that you are keeping your customers up to date on the most important happenings and making sure they can not only be aware of it but have the opportunity to take part as well! Below are crucial emails to send when you are creating content for your email marketing campaigns.
- Event open announcement email
- Reminder email
- When you hit a jackpot milestone
- Early bird draws
- Closing date reminder email
- Winner announcement email
What should you write about?
- Anticipation – Make them wonder what is inside the email and be driven to click on it due to our natural curiosity. Entice readers with images, copy, and intriguing subject lines
- Joy – Happy readers become happy customers. People want to hear about good news. Be the email that brings happiness to its readers and that readers look forward to receiving. Positive messaging is key!
- Trust – in order for people to feel comfortable opening and interacting with your email they need to trust you. What makes you trustworthy? Speak to them as friends, give advice, and be vulnerable when you communicate with them.
We hope this blog provides the important information needed to start your email marketing journey off on the right foot. All this information is recommended, your audience may have different habits, you should always be looking at your analytics for your emails and seeing how your audience is interacting with your content. If you require more help on this topic, contact BUMP today and our marketing team would be happy to assist with ensuring your email marketing is performing at its best!