15 Key Ways to Win At Your Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of your most powerful marketing tools, if done correctly. It’s a very personal touch point to reach current and potential customers/clients and has been shown to have one of the best ROI among various marketing channels, even social media.
1) Think about prime send times
Depending upon your unique subscriber list, content, and company, you’ll have a prime send time that varies from everyone else’s. According to an email report by Experian Marketing Services, most emails performed best when sent between 8:00 p.m. and midnight. This block of emails boasted a 22% open rate and a higher-than-normal clickthrough and sales rate.
These results may be on account of inbox crowding: if you send your email While this is a great baseline to start from, it’s important to remember that each company’s prime send time will vary, so it’s important to look into your analytics to find your best sending time.
2) Give something away
People love free stuff and it’s just as true in email marketing as it is anywhere else. Recently, Bluewire Media ran a test on their 6,300 email subscribers. They were wondering which types of content earned the highest click and conversion rates. What they found was, overwhelmingly, that emails giving away templates and tools were opened at a much higher rate.
To get more engagement from your customers and produce higher levels of conversions for your company, offer to give something away every now and again. Whether it’s a template or an eBook, freebies keep your users interested and help you produce great email marketing results throughout the new year.
3) Optimize for mobile
We can’t say enough about this. Mobile is a huge deal right now and if your email marketing content isn’t optimized for mobile platforms, you’re missing out. Mobile traffic makes up 47% of the average email open rate. That said, it’s hugely important to make sure that everything you send out via email looks and performs great on a mobile phone.
This means converting your content to one column templates, increasing font size to make it more readable on a small screen, ensuring that buttons are at least 44 pixels x 44 pixels, and making CTA buttons obvious (above the fold) and easy to click (by placing them in the middle of the screen).
4) Make use of weekends
Earlier we talked a bit about your prime send times but what about your prime send days? According to the aforementioned Experian study, emails sent on Saturday and Sunday outperformed emails sent on weekdays. That said, consider whether sending your marketing emails on the weekends is something that will work for your clients and company.
5) Keep your whole list active
Say you have a list of 1,500 email subscribers. Great! The problem is that only a portion of that list is likely to be active. In fact, some studies have found that most lists have an inactivity rate of 63%. That said, in order to make the most of your email list, you’ll have to figure out a way to engage the entire list rather than just a portion. One of the most effective ways to do this is through what marketers call a “Re-engagement campaign.”
Re-engagement campaigns look a little different for every marketer, but essentially they involve testing different subject lines to find out which ones earn the highest open and click rates from the highest portion of your list. Keep in mind, though, that any re-engagement campaign you run should offer value, as well. Once that inactive 63% of your list clicks an email, they’re going to want to see something good.
6) Write to one person
Nobody wants to be just one person in a crowd of subscribers, so help your readers feel unique by writing every email as if you were writing to them and them alone. This approach makes your emails more personal and provides a higher level of value for every reader.
7) Be respectful
Remember how we said earlier that 144 billion emails are sent every day? Most consumers feel like all of them wind up in their personal inboxes. For this reason, it’s hugely important to be respectful of your readers’ time. To put this another way: don’t spam anyone. Spam is one of the quickest ways to get yourself booted from the inbox and companies that don’t send spam are generally more well-regarded by their customers.
That said, only write an email when you have something valuable to say and be careful to get to the point as quickly as possible. This will keep you in your customers’ good graces and allow you to maintain your inbox privileges.
8) Remind your readers that they’re not alone
Why do people sign up for email lists? To get great content, information, and offers. But what’s one of the easiest things marketers can do to ensure that their readers are anxiously awaiting the next email?
The answer is simple: remind readers that you’re on their side. This takes a variety of different forms, including polling readers for content ideas, offering surveys, letting readers know you sympathize with their struggles, and then offering them actionable solutions to deal with them. This tip should pervade your content and, when done correctly, can take your emails from “blah” to “wow!”
9) Reward readers
So you’ve got a faithful list of readers. How do you keep them that way? You give them a reward! By rewarding your readers for faithfully opening your emails, you inspire them to continue doing so in the future. Rewards can be anything from access to a super-secret sale to insider info, industry tips, or inspirational content that’s not shared anywhere else.
10) Make use of power words
When you get 20 emails an hour, nothing much stands out. Until, that is, you see a subject line that includes emotive, exciting power words. Incorporating sensory phrases into your email marketing can go a long way toward improving your open rate and ensuring that your emails are well-received by readers.
11) Keep headlines simple
If your readers have to puzzle over the meaning of your email headline, they’re going to hit “Delete” in no time. Trust us on this one – when it comes to email marketing, the simple path is almost always the right one. Emails shouldn’t be brain twisters – they should simply provide valuable information in a quickly digestible package. Enough said.
12) Automate it
One of the easiest ways to make email marketing easier for you is to automate it. Services like MailChimp and Constant Contact both offer automated email marketing with simple drag-and-drop template layouts. Utilizing an automated service like this can help ensure that your emails get out when they need to as well as giving you a place to monitor your analytics.
13) Make the most of your CTAs
If you’re going to include CTAs in your email, they need to be clear, concise, and compelling. You should be telling your readers exactly what you want them to do and reminding them what they’ll get if they do. CTAs aren’t platforms for guesswork and when you lay it out clearly for your subscribers, you’re likely to produce better results.
14) Keep body copy short
You’re writing an email, not a novel. Long, bulky, text-dense emails are going to lose your readers’ interest in a hurry, so you’re best off keeping your body copy short and concise. The next time you edit your email, challenge yourself to cut your body copy in half before you send the email out. This will distil your points to the most important ones and ensure that your readers are getting only the information they need.
15) Be natural
Now more than ever, consumers want to interact with authentic marketers and companies. To help this come through in your email marketing, avoid using strict formulas, be conversational in your tone, and ensure that you’re interacting with your readers like you would interact with real people. This will help make your emails something readers look forward to.
Conclusion
When done right, email marketing can be more effective than other types of marketing, including social media marketing. To get it right, though, you’ll need to keep these 15 tips in mind. Doing these things ensures that you’re sending valuable, exciting, actionable emails that your readers will love to engage with.