Boosting traffic to your website and growing your social media followings are some of the best ways to bring in new business. But how do you get customers to this point, so that they can experience your amazing products and services. Chances are you may have considered email marketing campaigns but are unsure of the best ways to go about it. Here are some simple email marketing techniques, that you can follow to effectively improve your ideas around getting the most out of your campaigns.
1. Don’t experiment with the sender field
A recognisable name in a crowded inbox is a good thing. Keep your sender field consistent and make it easy for your reader to see who the email is from. This is the first thing that readers look at when deciding whether to open your email or not.
2. Write a prominent subject line
The second thing readers pay attention to is your subject line – so it makes sense to spend time getting it right. Be original. Be enticing. Keep it short and snappy. Speak to your reader’s fears, needs, desires, doubts or ambitions. We’ve got some great tips on email subject lines here:
3. Address your reader
Whether your email is being sent to 5 people or 5,000, write for an audience of one. Build a mental image of your model reader. Be vivid and talk to them directly, just as you would if you were talking to them in person.
4. Make it personal
If you know the name of your reader, use email marketing software to automatically include it in your emails. You can also use it in the main message of your email to keep the reader engaged. But don’t overdo it. Jamming your reader’s name into every sentence may sound a bit creepy. The aim is to sound natural.
5. Provide value
Chances are that your reader doesn’t care about that new member of staff you are so keen to announce. What they do want is the answer to a problem. Ultimately, that’s what every reader wants. When you provide value, your emails get read.
6. Make it snappy
The average person’s inbox is something of a battlefield. They want to keep the number of unread emails under control, which isn’t easy when they receive dozens of emails daily. Now, your reader has given you permission to be in their inbox. Honour that by respecting their time and keeping your content snappy. If it takes longer than a minute or two to absorb the message, it might be time to rethink the way you have written your message.
7. Make the links and call to action obvious
You want your reader to click through to an article? Then make sure the buttons or hyperlinks standout and put your main call to action near the top. Don’t expect your reader to do the guesswork.
8. Segment your subscriber list
The more targeted your message, the better you can expect your results to be. That means you need to gather as much information and insight about your subscribers as possible. Let’s say you run a high street fashion store and are offering a half-price weekend in one of your branches. You want your subscribers who live near that branch to know about the offer, but it’s a pretty useless message for anyone that doesn’t live near the store in question. List segmentation lets you target the people that matter, with a message that matters.
9. Make sure your email is mobile optimised
Around two-thirds of email is opened on a smartphone or tablet. If your email design doesn’t look great and function flawlessly on mobile devices, you could be alienating more than 60% of your audience.
10. Test, test and test again
Do your links go to the right page? Does the design look as it should in all of the most popular email clients? Do your images match your content? Run multiple tests – and send multiple test emails – before you go for the big launch.
11. Split testing is your friend
Sometimes the slightest tweak to a send title, layout, body copy message or call to action can make a big difference to the effectiveness of your campaign. Split-testing is when you send slightly different versions of the same email to a sample of your subscribers. It’s simple to compare the results, and then you can send the best performing version to the rest of your subscribers. It’s an easy way to squeeze every last drop from your campaign.
Email marketing doesn’t need to be tricky, and it remains one of the best possible marketing techniques for reaching out to your audience. Please leave any questions in the comments below.
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