By 2020, it’s expected that 3 billion people worldwide will use email. This equals to almost half of the world’s population! If you’re looking for unmatched effectiveness and reach in the marketing realm, email campaigns are the way to go.
However, according to companies like Victorious, successful email marketing is more than sending a daily email to your list of subscribers. Your emails have to stand out in a user’s inbox and be convincing enough to open and read from beginning to end! Needless to say, there are certain rules you’ll want to follow. Here are 6 must-dos if you want your campaigns to be a success
1. Be Attention Grabbing
In email marketing, there are several factors working against you. First, the average person receives about 88 emails each day. This means that your company email could easily get lost in an ever-expanding inbox. Another fact to consider is that thanks to the ever-evolving digital world, our attention spans are shorter than ever. This means that the emails you send not only need to be unique, but they need to be attention grabbing.
Since the first thing user’s see is an email’s subject, always use a catchy subject to grab the user’s interest. You can do this by highlighting a common problem, introducing a new offering, or giving an offer that can’t be refused.
By grabbing a user’s attention immediately, you can improve read rates and hopefully gain the conversions you’re aiming for.
2. Use a Call to Action
After crafting the perfect subject line, the next step is to include catchy a call to action in the email body. Once you’ve persuaded users to open your email, the next goal is to convince readers to click on the content that directs them to your website to make a purchase.
A proper call to action should be inspiring, actionable, and most importantly, clever. These few words can make or break the success of your latest batch of emails.
So how do you create an effective call to action? Top tips include:
- Keep it simple
- Be concise
- Stick to one call to action
- Use humor if appropriate
- Take a risk
With the right call to action, you can improve conversion rates.
3. Use Personalization
There’s nothing better than opening an email from a company and realizing that it’s been tailored to your wants and needs as a consumer. If you want your email marketing to take you far, personalization is a must. This not only includes a personal opening (ie. Hello Customer Name), you’ll also want to include information that’s tailor to each customer’s behavior and wants. This makes emails much more useful.
There are all sorts of marketing products that can assist with email personalization. Top options include MailChimp, Outreach, and Remarkety. When comparing email marketing services, be on the lookout for personalization and metric tracking services.
4. Know Your Audience’s Language
The more you know your audience, the better you can connect with them when your emails hit their inbox. When communicating with repeat customers and new leads, you want to speak their language so that the email feels less “salesy” and more personal.
For example, if your readers are action people, motivating and somewhat-pushy emails are likely to do the trick. If your readers are more social, stick to friendly conversion with minimal pressure and wait for them to come around.
By communicating with your readers in their language, your company messages are less likely to end up in the spam folder!
5. Ask for Replies
Even when used for marketing purposes, email is all about two-way communication. Unlike many other forms of marketing, email is a great way to talk with your subscribers on a personal level. By inviting responses to your emails, you open a door that allows customers to voice their concerns or feelings about your company, your product, and their overall perception of your brand.
Asking for replies makes emails much less of a marketing ploy and more so a way to get one-on-one with your customers. When requesting replies, don’t make it obvious by simply saying, “reply back!” Ask a question about your product. Ask what people think of your new website branding. Entice people to want to respond.
6. Frequency Matters
If you’re properly tracking your open and engagement metrics, you should have a pretty good idea of how often your email subscribers want to be contacted. If you’re not tracking these metrics, you can easily ask your recipients how often they’d like to hear from your company.
While you may think it’s ideal to reach out to subscribers every single day, the fact is that most people aren’t looking to hear from you daily. In fact, sending emails too often can become more of a nuisance than a tool for connecting.
Emailing users without this functionality can seriously damage your company’s reputation and cause all sorts of frustrated customers. Moreover, if you’re working with a massive list without results consider calling in a marketing agency to help you capitalize on your contacts.
Conclusion
Before sending off your next email marketing campaign, be sure that you’ve followed all of these rules to achieve optimal read and open rates. This way you get the best return on investment by generating new leads and conversions.
What are some ways you have found to boost customer engagement through email? Leave a comment with your best tips in the section below.
