The financial services industry is fast-evolving. New companies are popping up every day with cutting-edge innovations. Staying competitive as a financial services brand has become more demanding than ever. Every brand that wants to be ahead of the curve must adopt a working marketing method. Email marketing has been proven to be effective and provide a high return on investment.

Consequently, financial services providers leverage marketing email strategies to remain relevant and keep up with the pace of industry transformation. According to an Econsultancy survey, about 73% of companies say email marketing is excellent for ROI. 

Email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is a 4,200% return on investment. Clearly, an email marketing campaign is one of the best options available.

Why are Email Marketing Strategies Important?

Email outreach campaigns offer a predictable system of reaching your target audience and keeping them engaged. The ease of sending targeted messages explains why it is one of the marketing channels with the highest ROI.

With a robust marketing email marketing strategy, you can send targeted emails to your audience to keep them excited about your offers. What’s more, personalized emails can score significant points for your audience and your conversion rates. 

The Power of Quality Emails Cannot Be Overstated

80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from brands that provide personalized experiences, and 71% of consumers say a personalized experience would influence their decision to open and read brand emails.

Personalized emails sent to the right audience builds strong relationships that eventually convert leads to loyal customers.

Email strategy is affordable and measurable, and automation tools make the work easy for marketers. A campaign can be planned and executed with just the click of a button. 

Consequently, human resource requirements are low – since a few people can get the job done quite handily. And, developments in autoresponder algorithms mean responses can be preplanned and fired off without human interaction. In addition, measurability helps you track your results and optimize the entire process as necessary.

Take a look at the funnel and email strategy we put together for Nav, a small business lending services company.

A 6-Step Email Marketing Strategy

How you implement your email marketing campaign determines the results you get. That said, here are some email marketing strategies for financial services companies to make the most of your campaign:

1. Identify Your Target Audience

The first step to take when creating an email marketing plan is to identify your target audience. Every other part of the campaign process revolves around sending messages to the right people. 

As a financial services brand, you have to identify the people who need the solution you provide. Engaging a set of people that are not interested in your offers is a recipe for deleted emails, high unsubscribe rates, and ultimate failure.

Once you are clear about who your audience is and where to find them, the next thing is to build your list. At this stage, you need two things: an email marketing service provider and an incentive for signups. Choose the best email automation provider based on your needs and budget, and identify incentives that address your audience’s pain points to get them to sign up. From there, develop a flow of emails addressing each paint point and how to solve it, offering a solution only you can provide.

2. Segment Your Audience

Audience segmentation improves the results of email marketing campaigns. After identifying your target audience, you have to take a further step and segment, or group, them. With a good understanding of your audience you can strategically divide your list into smaller groups, which enables you to send more personalized emails.  The more personalized and relevant the messages are, the better the open and click-through rates.

3. Write Compelling Messages and Determine Sending Frequency

Successful brands hire copywriters to craft compelling emails. They know the best practices to deploy to deliver results, and can avoid the trap of information overload: throwing too much too soon at your audience. Ideally, address one pain point per email with copy that is concise, scannable, straight to the point, and easy to read. Avoid bogus promises and other words that can be flagged by spam filters, and keep abreast of spam words that will send your emails to the junk folder.

Establish a sending frequency that is strong enough to keep your audience engaged but does not bore or frustrate them. Remember: information overload does more harm than good. Time your emails to make sure every message counts.

4. Design Your Emails

Intentionally designing your emails significantly improves your results. As a general rule, place the most important information at the top so recipients can see it if they don’t have the time or inclination to read the entire message. Many email automation providers allow you to create custom HTML templates, saving time and streamlining the campaign process.

5. Test Your Emails Before Sending

You have to test your emails to make sure they are responsive on both mobile and desktop, and to ensure that any actions taken by a recipient are accurately received by your marketing team. Check carefully for typos and grammatical errors, reading the emails aloud to find what your eyes may miss. Enlist staff or friends to preview the campaign on their devices and report back any findings or improvements. In addition, use A/B testing to find the best version of your emails. A/B tests help you get better results by letting you experiment with different variants of your emails.

6. Measure and Optimize Your Performance

Measure important parameters like open and click-through rates to ascertain the performance of your campaign. Contemporary email automation tools provide comprehensive analytics you can

use to analyze your results. If performance is below your standards, implement optimization measures to get the results you seek.

Final Thoughts on Email Marketing

You can predictably give your financial services brand a leg up with a robust marketing email strategy. Running a successful email marketing campaign requires continuous optimization, but once you kick-start the process, optimizing at different stages will get your desired results. 

Whether you’re stuck in an email rut, want to run your new campaign thoughts by a pro, or are ready to ignite change and spark growth with a polished campaign, our financial services marketing agency is here to help. Learn more about our email marketing services in financial services companies.