1. Start With A Plan
Like with any aspect of digital marketing, you need to have a plan before launching into email marketing. Email campaigns should be executed with a clear strategy in mind. Start with your goals. Why are you doing email marketing? What are you hoping to get out of it? Don’t start email marketing just because someone told you you should be doing it.
If your objective is to acquire new customers, figure out how you’re going to approach it and define these new customers. Build your customer personas so you know how to effectively reach out to the different segments.
If you want to nurture existing customer relationships, be clear on what you want to get out of that in the long-term. And then work your plan towards it. For example, if you want to gain customer referrals, plan what incentives you’ll offer existing customers to achieve that objective.
Always remember that, ideally with email marketing, we’re hoping to connect with new or existing customers. We need to offer value, or incentives, to turn readers into customers and existing customers into becoming brand loyal. And, finally, we want to delight them enough that they become our promoters. They’ll then do the work of acquiring new customers for us while we sit back and congratulate ourselves for a job well done!
The other reason we do email marketing is to collect valuable data and insights on our readers. Email campaigns should be a win-win situation for the brand, and for the consumer. They hand over their information and get rewarded with rich content that speaks to their interests.
2. Work On Your Email List
It goes without saying (I’m going to say it anyway) never buy an email list. It might sound like the easy option but it’s spammy and ineffective. Building a solid email list does take time. But if you ensure that everyone on your list has opted-in because they want to hear from you, you’ll enjoy a higher email ROI.
It can be daunting at the start when you don’t have even one email subscriber and somehow have to build this big customer database. Firstly, you need to think about every single touchpoint your business has with consumers, and find a way at each to get that sign-up. So, not just having a subscribe button on your website, but also reaching out to your social media followers with your sign-up form. And maybe having a sign-up sheet in-store if you have a bricks-and-mortar shop. Let’s say you have a rug store, you could ask customers after purchase to sign-up to your emails and receive a free guide on keeping their rug looking like new.
It can be hard for business owners to agree to do a competition, or offer something for free, with no guarantee of a future purchase from the subscriber. Try and remember that you’re not just always hoping for an immediate sale. You’re encouraging word-of-mouth with great content, you’re gaining new prospects through referral programs and you’re staying top-of-mind with relevant emails.
When you have your email list, you need to then separate it into different segments. These segments could reflect where the subscriber is in the purchase funnel and it’s important for you to identify that and have relevant emails directed to each segment. Let’s say you sell expensive, infrequent, purchase products. It could be frustrating for a customer to receive a discount coupon just after they’ve made a purchase. Make sure the content you’re sending out will resonate with the receiver.
Segmenting your email list can significantly increase open-rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. It’s what will separate you from either trudging along or killing it at email marketing.
3. Spend Time On The Design And Subject Line
What usually makes a reader decide if they’ll open an email? The subject line. So, you need to make sure you’ve taken the time to make that subject line so compelling there’s no way the reader can ignore it.
Cliff hangers are one good way to entice the reader. Have them needing more information, or the answer to a question, and the only way to get it is to open the email. Just be careful in the way you use this method and make sure not to overuse cliff hangers.
Creating a sense of urgency with a limited time sale or offer is also a good way of piquing interest. Consumers don’t like to feel like they might miss out on something. Promotions or deals for subscribers only can give the sense of importance to your readers and make them feel special.
Be clear and concise. Keep in mind that the end of long subject lines can be cut off on certain devices.
Be mindful of the sender name you use, try to avoid using ‘no-reply’ sender names. You want your company to come across as personable and approachable.
After spending time creating the perfect subject line, you don’t want the visuals of your email to disappoint once the reader has clicked through. Keep their interest going with a clean and visually appealing design. Use images to grab attention but don’t rely on them as some spam filters may block them from showing.
Keep paragraphs short. A long block of text can look daunting and a reader may decide it’s not worth reading the content. Use headings to make everything clear and neat.
Don’t send out really long emails, keep the most important information in and ensure every other sentence has a purpose and isn’t just a space filler.
From including logos to colour choices, keep it brand consistent. Make each email recognizable from your brand.
Make sure your email is responsive and optimised for mobile. What looks good on the desktop you’re designing from may not look the same on the mobile your reader receives it on. Test and make sure images, text, CTA’s, etc, all look good and work on the different devices.
4. Personalize
It’s important to personalize your emails. Personalized subject lines saw open rates increase by 50%. This isn’t the kind of stat you should ignore. So, how can you go about personalizing your emails?
You could start by adding the subscribers name in the subject line and then always address the subscriber by name in the email.
How much personalization you can do depends on how much data you’ve been able to gather on your subscribers.
You can send out relevant offers or product information based on your segments interests. Just be careful not to get too personal and creep them out!
Content can be tailored based on demographics, location, interest and behaviours.
Make the most of the subscriber data you have and send emails that really speak to each subscriber and grabs their attention. Show them recommended products based on their purchase history. Make them feel like you’ve gotten to know them and can help with what they’re looking for. Nowadays there are more and more options for personalising emails. You won’t be able, or want, to use them all. But do check out what’s available and decide which can work for your business.
5. Have Your Most Important Information At The Top
Ensure your most important information is within the first paragraph. A lot of readers will just quickly scan an email so you need to make sure they’re getting your message immediately.
Have a call-to-action visible before a reader has to scroll so there’s more chance of a conversion. Most people will decide within the first few sentences if an email is worth reading in its entirety, so reveal whatever value your email is offering early on.
6. Offer Value In Every Email
When a person subscribes to your email list they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They want to get something out of this subscription. Whether that’s information, discounts, or a gift, they expect something for handing over their valuable details.
You don’t always need to be giving away freebies or even be always offering a promotion. A lot of the time great content that educates or interests the reader is more than enough.
Now, here’s the important bit, if you have suddenly come up blank with something new and exciting to say, and you aren’t in a position to do another promotion or offer a freebie – don’t send anything. Don’t write a pointless email that offers nothing to the reader. In this instance you are always better off waiting until you have value to add. You should have already learnt a lot about your subscribers when you were segmenting them. Use this information to delve deeper into what interests them and what their pain points are. This knowledge makes it easier to come up with valuable content.
7. Use Compelling CTA’s
Nowadays we’re so used to seeing call-to-actions everywhere online that we may not even notice the over-used, uninteresting phrases some CTA’s use. Make sure your CTA’s stand out.
Instead of just a boring ‘Buy Now’ link, try make it more intriguing…‘Buy Now & Get 10% off’. Or, instead of ‘Learn More’ within an email about how your gym offers the best in weight loss training, try ‘See The Results’ and link to your customer testimonials. Instead of ‘Shop Now’, try ‘Shop The Trend’. Words are powerful and used correctly they can evoke emotions that compel consumers to take action.
People are often driven by a fear of losing out so don’t be afraid to create urgency in some of your offers. Using words like ‘Limited Time’, ‘Today Only’ and ‘Don’t Miss Out’ can help encourage the reader to click through.
Keep your CTA text brief. Explain the desired action in as few words as possible. Some emails contain more than one CTA and, in my opinion, this can lead to confusion and no action. Having one clear CTA per email leaves the reader with no question as to what you want them to do. If it makes sense, have one button above the fold and one at the end of the email.
8. Test, Analyse And Optimize
As with everything digital marketing, testing, analysing and then optimizing is a must. You should be testing most elements of your emails, from the subject lines to the time of day you send your email out.
With subject lines, have two variations and send out to a small sample of your subscriber list. The best performing can then be used for the campaign. You can do the same with headings and CTA’s.
Analyse the results of a short-form email against a longer-form email. Test different days and different time of day to send your emails out.
Don’t get carried away testing everything though with no clear plan in mind. You should know why you’re testing an element and exactly what action you’ll take after studying the results. Don’t be disheartened by any bad results, each test is a learning experience.
Optimising your emails to reflect what you’ve learned in the analysis stage is what will drive those higher click-through rates, open-rates, and ultimately conversions. Learn what your readers prefer and you’ll deliver compelling emails, placing you ahead of the competition.
9. Regularly Clean Up Your Email List
It’s not enough to just build and grow an email list, you have to take the time to then maintain it properly. You want every subscriber on your list to, firstly, be actually receiving your emails and then to show some form of engagement with your brand.
If a subscriber has been ‘radio silent’ for a long time, try once more to re-engage them and if that fails, remove them from your list. You’re better off having a shorter but effective list. Remove addresses that hard bounce and those that too frequently soft bounce. Those that never open your emails are only hurting your metrics, and are of no benefit. Make sure cleaning your email list is on your to-do list. Depending on the size of your list you may want to do this every 3 months or, at the very least, once a year.
10. Make It Easy For Someone To Unsubscribe
You might think you don’t want any unsubscribers, so why make it easy for them to opt-out? Because those readers that don’t actually want to hear from you will do more damage than good to your email marketing.
Not only will they hurt your email open and click-through rates, but if a subscriber becomes frustrated by a difficult process to unsubscribe, their feelings towards your brand can quickly become sour.
Keep your unsubscribe button visible and clear in all correspondence. And make it as easy a process as possible for someone to opt-out.
If you’re thinking about introducing email marketing to your digital plan, get in touch and we can chat about how it might help your business.