We’ve all received an email we immediately deleted, marked as spam, or ignored altogether. As a marketer, this is usually the first thought that pops up as soon as we go hit “send” on another email newsletter, promotion, etc. With the ever-expanding realm of digital media, getting your message across seems even easier, and at the same time harder, than ever before; and even with the presence of social media up-taking a large part of digital media, email marketing continues to be a vital communication channel for many. Here are a few tips to elevate your email marketing and get into your customers’ inboxes.
1. Start with the Subject
If you’re wondering how to do email marketing right, the best place to start is with the email subject line. Make sure your subject line is attractive, enticing, and most important of all relevant to the content in the email. You want to keep it simple enough to grab their attention while at the same time enticing enough to have viewers to open the email. Perfecting the subject line can be the difference between recipients opening your email, deleting it or, even worse, reporting it as spam.
2. Optimize for Mobile
The first thing many people do in the morning is open their phone and check their messages. In fact, 66% of email opens occur on smartphones or tablets. If your emails aren’t optimized for viewing on these devices, you’re potentially missing out on a huge number of clicks. Having a responsive-friendly designed email can ensure readers are getting the most of your content. Some quick design tips for mobile-friendly emails include:
•Converting your email to a one column template
•Bump up the font size for improved readability on smart phones.
•Make the call-to-action obvious and easy to tap. Many users tap and scroll with their thumb, so keep important tappable elements in the middle of the screen.
3. Build a Subscriber List
If you’re sending emails to the same people you’ve been doing business with, chances are you aren’t offering them anything new. Taking time to build out separate emailing list is necessary to keep your emails relevant and useful to the persons your sending it to. This results in not only more opened emails, but significantly fewer unsubscribes.
Reaching out to new prospects and potential clients can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your emails. One way to do this is have people sign up for your emailing list. Subscription forms should be on your home page, blog page and everywhere else you can fit it without taking away from more important content. Even if you’ve already got a long list of emails for clients and prospects, you should never stop adding to it.
4. Links & Buttons
The aim of most email marketing campaigns is to increase traffic to a site, sometimes a specific landing page. No links means no clicks. The focus of these points is to encourage recipients to interact with your email. Always try to include visually striking buttons with text that give readers more than one opportunity to interact (e.g., Find out more! Download Now! etc.) Whether that’s clicking on a link in your message, filling out a form, or visiting your website, encourage readers to engage with, or better yet, respond to your emails.
5. Proof. Analyze. Repeat.
Analyzing emails goes beyond past reports. As simple as it sounds, make sure you are proofing emails thoroughly before sending them out. Check that all links are working, graphics are loading, and content can be easily viewed on multiple platforms. Double-check that your messages look the way you want them to by sending them to employee accounts. Ideally, you will view them on Outlook, Gmail, and on a variety of mobile devices before finalizing your drafts.
Going back and following your email reports might be one of the biggest tools in creating effective email marketing campaigns. Analyzing how many opens, link clicks, bounce rates, unsubscribes, etc. can give you a good look at your customers behaviors. Find out what times are receiving the most opens, which links are being click most, and what content is being viewed.
Conclusion
Unlike direct mail, email marketing opens the door for meaningful conversations with real people interested in your business. It strengthens client relationships and keeps reminding your prospects to reach out to you. Getting to know your audience- analyzing their actions, motivations, and preferences- is a great way to boost conversions, and as long as you aren’t heartlessly spamming your subscriber lists, email marketing is an incredibly powerful tool for getting messages directly to your clients and prospects.
Email marketing requires a strong, dedicated group of marketers to ensure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns. At dezinsINTERACTIVE, we offer professional email marketing services that are focused on creating efficient, effective marketing campaigns for your business. Call us today at 225-615-8358 or visit our website https://dezinsinteractive.com to learn more.
In addition to our services, we are hosting an exclusive, in-house seminar on March 29th at 10am covering various topics of successful email marketing. This workshop is dedicated to teaching the ins and outs of email automation, and what you can do to elevate your company’s email marketing. For more information and registration, visit here.