Does your organization grapple with low engagement rates?
Do subscribers seem increasingly disinterested in your email marketing campaigns?
Or are you getting fewer and fewer clicks on your carefully crafted email content?
Perhaps it’s time to turn the tables and elevate your email engagement with Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC).
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive marketing solution that empowers organizations to connect with their customers in just the right way, at just the right time.
No more bombarding your audience with mass-generated messages that don’t resonate! SFMC delivers exactly what brands need to make their marketing campaigns feel personal. It comes with an impressive set of features, including:
- Personalized email marketing
- Journey builder
- Predictive analytics
…and much more!
These next-level tools allow organizations to create targeted, personalized email campaigns that go deep—far below the surface-level brand interactions customers are used to.
What makes SFMC stand out from similar solutions? We’d like to highlight its:
- Unparalleled scalability
- Extensive customization options
- Holistic view of the customer across all touchpoints
- Superior customer experience that drives increased engagement and loyalty
Our experts at MAC wrote this guide to help you understand the potential of this powerful tool and use it to:
- Optimize email personalization
- Boost open and click-through rates
- Improve customer segmentation
- Maximize ROI
Before we show you how amazing SFMC is, let’s go over why email engagement is crucial for your organization’s success.
Why Email Engagement Matters
Statista projects that by 2025, the global community of active email users will grow to an astounding 4.6 billion. So, what do these staggering numbers mean? Today, organizations have an unprecedented opportunity to reach a massive audience through email marketing.
But reach isn’t enough to achieve success. You also need to engage with your audience.
Email engagement is a measure of how readers interact with your campaigns. Marketers track engagement metrics like:
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- Conversions
With these metrics, you can gauge how effective your email campaigns really are. Based on those insights, you can make informed decisions to improve your marketing efforts.
Strong email engagement will help you:
Leverage a Direct Line to Your Customers
According to Optinmonster, 99% of email users check their inboxes every day.
As you can see, email remains one of the most efficient and direct ways to reach out to your customers. It offers the intimacy of direct communication, allowing your message to reach customers right in their inbox, where they are most likely to see and engage with it.Drive Revenue
Highly engaged email subscribers are more likely to convert into paying customers. Effective email marketing can drive up your revenue by leading your customers from awareness to consideration and finally to a purchase decision.
Nurture Customer Relationships
Email engagement allows you to build and nurture customer relationships. By providing valuable content that resonates with them, you can foster loyalty, which in turn boosts customer retention.
Enhance Brand Perception
Effective email engagement can enhance your brand perception. Engaging emails that provide value create a positive impression in the minds of your customers, which enhances your brand image.
Enable Performance Tracking
One of the greatest benefits of email marketing is the ability to measure its success. Email engagement metrics give you insights into what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to refine your strategy for better results.
At the end of the day, increasing email engagement is more than just boosting open rates and click-throughs. It’s about establishing a meaningful connection with your customers, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help you do that.
Understanding Email Engagement
Email engagement is not just a one-time interaction—it’s a continuous process that needs to be nurtured and monitored. Here are some key points to consider:
The Human Element of Email Engagement
Email engagement is more than a cluster of numbers. It represents the real people who are opening and clicking your emails. Understanding this human element and what motivates your audience to interact with your emails is the key to crafting engaging content.
The Role of Personalization
Personalization is a powerful tool in driving email engagement. SFMC enables you to create personalized emails that speak directly to your customers, based on their preferences, behavior, and past interactions with your brand. This personalized approach makes your customers feel valued, leading to increased engagement.
The Power of Relevant Content
Content is king across every platform—including email. Relevant, valuable, and engaging content captures the attention of your audience and encourages them to interact with your emails.
SFMC provides insights that help you understand what kind of content resonates with your audience, enabling you to create more of what they love.
You can also use a tool like Google Trends to stay on top of hot topics in your industry and create content that is relevant and timely for your audience.
Importance of User-Friendly Design
A well-designed email can significantly boost engagement. User-friendly designs with clear calls to action, easy readability, and appealing visuals make your emails more engaging.
SFMC offers customizable templates and design tools to help you create visually appealing, easy-to-navigate emails.
Emphasizing Timing and Frequency
Too many emails can overwhelm your audience, while too few can make them forget about you. SFMC’s automation features help you hit the sweet spot—sending the right message at the right time.
Now that we’ve covered the key aspects of email engagement, let’s dive into how Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help you boost your email marketing game.
How Salesforce Marketing Cloud Enhances Email Engagement
Compared to traditional email marketing platforms, SFMC offers advanced features and capabilities that help you take your email campaigns to the next level.
Overview of SFMC’s Email Marketing Features
SFMC enables you to create “WOW” worthy content through its various features, including:
Personalization and Dynamic Content
Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers a suite of features that allow you to personalize your email content.
You can create dynamic content that adapts to match the interests and preferences of each individual subscriber. This means you can send tailored content to different audience segments, increasing the relevance and interest of your emails.
Email Journeys
SFMC’s Journey Builder enables you to create and automate customer journeys. You can design multi-step email campaigns that target customers at various stages of their journey—from initial lead to loyal customer. This ensures your communication remains relevant and engaging throughout the lifecycle of your customer relationship.
Testing and Optimization
The platform provides robust testing and optimization features. You can conduct A/B testing on your emails to understand which content, design, or subject line works best. This data-driven approach helps you optimize your emails for better engagement.
Analytics and Reporting
SFMC comes with powerful analytics and reporting functionality. You can track key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. These insights allow you to fine-tune your email strategy, delivering content that truly engages your audience.
Integration Capabilities
SFMC seamlessly integrates with other Salesforce products and external systems. You’ll have a unified view of your customer data, which you can use to create highly personalized and targeted email campaigns.
By integrating all your marketing tools together, you can eliminate data silos and support your strategy with a comprehensive, results-driven approach.
Optimal Email Send Times and the Power of Einstein STO
Research from CoSchedule and Salesforce has shown that the best time to send emails for higher subscriber engagement tends to be between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., with 10 a.m. being particularly effective. The period between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. can also yield high engagement rates.
However, it’s important to note that there isn’t a universally optimal time for email engagement. Different audiences may have different habits and preferences, and what works best can vary significantly depending on factors like the nature of your business and the content of your emails.
SFMC uses an AI tool called Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) to analyze subscriber behavior and determine the optimal time to send emails, leading to improved engagement rates.
Rather than relying on generalized data, Einstein STO analyzes the last 90 days and the last 24 hours of data, reading subscribers’ behaviors to determine the best time to send out emails for each individual subscriber.
Einstein STO is more than just a time-optimizer—it’s a predictive analytics tool. The Einstein STO dashboard provides valuable insights by displaying analytics that predict future message engagement.
It works hand-in-hand with Journey Builder, an advanced feature that allows marketers to create personalized, automated customer journeys across different channels. Journey Builder enables you to design a series of interactions based on customer behaviors or predefined triggers.
With Einstein STO, you can program a Journey Builder activity to send messages to each contact at the time when that contact is most likely to engage with the message.
If Einstein doesn’t have enough data to create a model for a contact, the contact receives messages according to a generalized model derived from sending data in your enterprise.
SFMC, with the power of Einstein STO, offers a dynamic and effective solution to enhance email engagement, providing businesses with a valuable tool to optimize their email marketing strategies.
How MAC Can Help You Harness the Power of SFMC
Looking for a way to supercharge your email marketing campaigns? MAC has your back!
With almost 15 years of experience in the field, we are experts in marketing automation and CRM services, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Here are a few reasons to choose us:
- Flexible and Affordable: We offer certified MA and CRM services with flexible billing options. You can choose how you want to engage with us!
- Collaboration at Its Best: We believe in teamwork. Our approach is to work seamlessly with your team, ensuring smooth communication and synergy in bringing your marketing visions to life.
- Comprehensive Support: Sure, we optimize email campaigns—but we do a lot of other things, too! We offer end-to-end support, including design, web development, and much more!
- Industry Expertise: Over the years, we’ve worked with clients across all verticals. This deep industry expertise allows us to understand your unique challenges and craft solutions that truly fit your needs.
Interested in taking your email engagement to the next level with SFMC? Contact us to connect with a Salesforce expert today!
