Email marketing is even more important that ever. A way to connect to your customers and a tool that you have full control over, unlike social media. Done in the right manner, this method of marketing can generate critical business leads. Detailed here are some helpful tips for organising a successful email campaign.
1. Don’t use email to only sell
If you exclusively send the same message repeatedly to your clients, trying to sell, i.e., product offers, discounts and offers such as free shipping then you risk turning off your clients and devaluing your products.
2. Earn the attention of email subscribers
Each time you send out an email message to your database it is important to grab their attention immediately with the subject line and then always include something of value. You might want to share a link to a video, a new webinar, some type of industry report or an infographic. In this way, your recipients will be excited to open your messages because they will expect to see real value in them. Avoid sending emails with exactly the same headline each time as the reader isn't given an incentive to read further
3. Ensure you have permission
Permission based marketing is not only important for good business practice it is also illegal to send emails to contacts whose permission you do not have as this is considered spam.
4. Mobile friendly
The use of smart phones has escalated and will only increase, so it is important that you test your emails on these devices to ensure they can be read easily.
5. Use language your customers will understand
Not only should you ensure correct spelling and grammar but you should also make sure you avoid industry jargon (unless you are sending to the industry) as your customers will simply turn off or not understand what you are trying to say.
6. Don’t rely on email only
All of your marketing tools should be used consistently as part of an overall marketing strategy – one tool alone will never succeed in today’s cluttered and fragmented markets.
7. Balance Images
Use a balance of text and images in your email, usually 70-80% of your email should be text, 20-30% images.
8. Links
Use links to lead your readers to more content on your website, blog or social media networks, like Facebook and Twitter.
9.Content:
Scanability - make your email content easy to scan by using bullets, short chunks of copy, headlines and subheads. Length – short copy and link to more content on your website. Copy – break up longer copy into easy-to-digest (and scan) chunks, generally 3 lines or less.
10. Frequency decisions made for the wrong reasons
How do you determine the frequency of your newsletters? Does it happen by default? "Monthly seems good, let's do that" If you send too frequently you risk annoying your readers or too infrequently you run the risk of lower performance. To avoid this, test. Email tracking is very sophisticated and you are able to obtain the information that shows what works and what doesn't. Marketers are starting to ask the question before sending: "am I sending because it's on my to-do-list, or something my readers will find of value?" That should help determine your schedule.
11.Call-to-Action
Tell your readers what you want them to do. Use call-to-actions that are clear and concise, and don’t confuse your readers by overloading your email with CTAs. Examples include: Read More, Learn More, Buy Now, Sign Up Today.
12. Constantly test and refine
What may work for one advertiser may not work for another. In the end, all you can do is test the tactic or strategy, and then test it again – because “what works” is often elusive. Your customers are changing along with the marketing sophistication and the competition in the inbox so you need to ensure your marketing approach also adapts to match.
