8 tips for a successful email marketing campaign
In our opinion, one of the most effective ways to market your business is through email marketing campaigns. Sure, while you may have a beautiful website, fully responsive and very intuitive, with great SEO behind it, an email marketing campaign is still an amazing way to get more visitors on your shiny new website.
You want to know why this works? Because everyone checks their email(s) at least once a week, and I mean everyone. Also, it’s quite affordable and relatively easy to implement – but do we get started? What are the best and most effective ways to implement an email marketing campaign? There are a number of basic pointers you can keep in mind as you prepare to enter the realm of email marketing. Here are a few tips to get you started and well on your way to creating an effective and hopefully successful email marketing campaign:
1) You have to know your audience
We consider this to be one of the most important factors when it comes to a successful email campaigns. You have to know your audience. You have to know what they are looking for and why they subscribed to your newsletters. This allows you to create content that will appeal to them, and thus, greatly increasing the chances for a successful email marketing campaign.
2) You have to deliver value with your email
Value? Yes, as in your emails should deliver genuine substance to your readers. Even as you’re marketing your business, be sure your readers will come away with something of substance in your email. Put personality and style into the writing, and try to stay true to your company’s brand. Oh, and make sure the writing is of high quality and free of typos, no fluff.
3) Make sure your title is attractive
An intention-getting title is important to the success of your email campaign. If the subject line message doesn’t appeal to the reader, they likely won’t even open the email. You can test different approaches and subject line content to see what generates the best open-rate and response from your readers.
4) Try to merge email marketing with social media
Never forget to let your Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and all social media followers that you’ve sent out a fresh newsletter. This is more important than you’d think. Oh, and be sure to include a sign-up form in each email as well as linking to all of your social media accounts.
5) Be aware of what people are saying about you and your company
This is also very important. Try to stay on top of your game! You can do this by reading reviews, by reading comments on your social media, by reading (and replying to) instant messages on your social platforms, etc. And obviously, if you see that people aren’t happy with what you’re doing, then maybe it’s time for a change. Try to re-think and revise your strategies when it comes to emails. Maybe even sign up for a few newsletters yourself, just to see how the competition does with their own email campaigns.
6) Build your subscribers list!
Even if you’ve already got a long list of emails for clients and prospects, you should never stop adding to it. Especially since it’s not nearly as hard as it sounds. For example, make sure your list is always growing passively with a signup feature on your website. Subscription forms should be on your home page, blog page and everywhere else you can fit it without taking away from more important content.
7) You have to keep your emails out of the “Spam” folder
If your carefully constructed emails are flagged as spam, they’ll never see the light of day. Start off by making sure your recipients have opted into your emails. Beyond that, avoid using all caps, too many exclamation marks, and hyperbolic phrases (“CLICK HERE NOW BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT!!!!”). Poorly formatted HTML in your emails can also hurt how they’re handled. Every spam filter is different, so an email might pass through one filter but get flagged by another.
8) Make it as easy as possible to “Unsubscribe”
This is just as important as every other step. Having a clear “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of your email is a must. Maybe they don’t remember signing up for your newsletter, or maybe they didn’t even sign up at all! Nothing is more annoying than receiving daily emails for things that you don’t want/don’t care about.
It may seem as though you are cutting off the “conversation” by giving clients the chance to opt out. But if a user wants to remove their name from your lists and can’t do so easily, they’ll flag emails as spam, which will cause you problems in the future.
Closing thoughts
Like most marketing efforts, becoming successful with email marketing is quite a long and difficult process. It’s a combination of good planning and analyzing data to make improvements to your campaigns. But the only way to learn and improve is to get out there and apply these tips to your next email marketing campaign.