Staying in touch with your audience is a challenge. With so many communication channels for a marketer to choose from, finding the right combination for your marketing strategy can be tricky.. But one channel that all marketers should have in their communication toolkit is email. Not only can email offer dynamic and personalized communications, but it also allows for measurement of both engagement and return on investment (ROI). Your customers will love the relevant interaction, and you will have the opportunity to share updates and encourage return to your theater - it’s a win-win. 

Whether you’re new to the email marketing sphere, or are simply wanting to polish your skills, we’re here to share a number of tips to boost your email marketing strategy. Discover how you can optimize the content and design of your email communications, maximize click-throughs and engagement, and keep your audience coming back for more.

Tip One: Know Your Audience

Personalized emails and email list segmentation were the most effective email strategies of last year. In 2018, if your communications aren’t clearly targeted to each member of your email database - in both language and included content - you’ll quickly lose the attention you’ve fought hard to gain.

But how do you create emails that are relevant, timely and personalized enough to truly engage your audience? Using analysis, segmentation and campaign management tools, movie marketers can create highly engaging content with Movio Cinema that captivates their audience and maximizes ROI. Audience Insights takes this one step further, segmenting your recognizable moviegoers into groups based on how likely they are to watch a movie, allowing marketers more time to focus on being creative with content and design.

Tip Two: Make Immediate Impact

An email subject line is your first opportunity to grab attention. Take time to optimize the wording as, if it fails, there’s no second chance to get your readers to click through to the rest of your email. 62% of recipients open emails with personalized subject lines, so keep them snappy and inviting enough to lure readers to the main event. 

Remember that you are competing with many others in their inbox, so becoming a trusted source that your recipients are happy to hear from is extremely important - not to mention it will keep you out of the dreaded spam folder. We’ve previously covered the technical issues of email deliverability, but there are a number of things marketers can do with the subject line to improve open rate:

1) Consider it your email headline. Your audience must be intrigued enough to click, so ensure every subject line piques interest, is relevant to your email copy, and encourages interaction.

2) Trial and error is okay (and necessary!). Keeping it short and simple is best, with 61-70 characters resulting in the highest open rates. Refrain from using all caps, excessive punctuation and repetition, as these are all indicators of spam email and risk immediate direction to ‘Trash’.  

3) Introduce personalization. Personalization should be used throughout your communications, in email and elsewhere, but a simple first step is in the subject line. Try including your recipient’s first name here, or even mentioning a film title based on their movie preference. For example, a promotion of Ready Player One could be sent to those members who watched Wonder Women, Maze Runner: The Death Cure and Black Panther.

Still unsure what is working best for your audience? Try an A/B Test and review your campaign results.

Tip Three: Get Personal

From a deliverability standpoint, sender reputation is heavily weighted toward IP and domain reputation, but content also plays an important part. Double check all links to ensure they aren’t broken, review HTML and spelling, and always use reputable sources when referring to external sites.

Our goal at Movio is to always send the right message to the right person at the right time via the right channel - and we encourage all marketers to follow this mantra. We’ve simplified the process of audience segmentation and targeted, personalized campaigns with conditional content in Movio Cinema. The more data you can attribute to each customer, the more you can ensure all communications are clearly designed for them. Afterall, who wouldn’t enjoy opening an email that includes movies they love, deals tailored to their viewing habits and location-based information that directly impacts their specific moviegoing experience?

Tip Four: Use Design To Reinforce Your Message

In Movio Cinema, you can upload pre-defined templates customized to your brand. The email editor allows you to apply the templates you wish to use and edit the content according to your specific campaign. Here are our key tips for setting up stellar email templates:

• Embed your logo in a strategic position and ensure your brand is represented consistently across those email templates, your website and social media channels.
• Include a balanced number of images to communicate and reinforce key points and themes.
• Ensure clear calls to action so your recipients understand where to go to for further information. Limit these to one per email to encourage specified engagement.
• Check how your emails load on a smaller screen - mobile optimization is a necessity in 2018. 

The bottom line for design? Keep it simple, on-brand and appealing to the eye. You want your imagery and themes to complement the overall message of the email, not overload it. 

In summary

Many communication channels are being replaced by new medias, but email is not one of them. With smartphones being more prevalent than ever, the ease of email inbox access cements the communication tool’s status as a marketing strategy must-have - but it can only be as successful as the person sending the campaign. Evolving with your audience is key to ongoing success, so it’s the role of a marketer to be constantly testing, refining and learning from your customers to figure out what works. Read more of our top tips to ace your marketing in these blog posts.