Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to market to customers. Consistently delivering value and building relationships through email communication is what separates successful email marketers from their less-successful peers.
A lot of small businesses and startups make the mistake of not building a newsletter list. Getting an email list going is hard though — I know from experience. Even if you start building it when your blog or business is just starting out, you might lack the tools or information to get it done.
If you're bootstrapping a new business or looking to make the most out of your current business, email marketing is one area that you can and should explore. This post will cover some quick tips and tricks for optimizing your email outreach.
Top 10 Essential Email Marketing Tips for Your Business
Email marketing is an effective way to reach your customers and prospects. Whether it's a weekly newsletter, a monthly e-book, or a new blog post, email is one of your most effective channels for converting prospects into customers.
Here are top 10 tips you can follow to get the most out of your email marketing campaigns.
1. Use a clear call to action
When writing your emails, make sure you have a clear call to action in them. This will help your readers know what to do next and help you achieve your desired outcomes. For example, if you're announcing a new product or service, tell your customers what they can do with it.
It's essential to include a strong call to action (CTA) in your emails. Your CTA should entice the reader and be accompanied by a conversion mechanism, like a button that encourages that click.
Make the message clear. what do you want your reader to do? Do you want them to buy something or visit a website? Tell your readers exactly what you want them to do.
While you can get away with using "read more", "click here" and other generic phrases, it's always better to use something specific like "download your free e-book" or "sign up for our email list."
Make sure that there are no spelling mistakes or grammar errors in your text.
2. Encourage your readers to reply
Having an email list is great, but if only one side is communicating then it's not as effective. That's why you should encourage your readers to reply to your emails.
Try encouraging your readers to reply to your emails with questions or feedback on how you are doing. . You should also be ready to respond when they do respond. This will increase engagement and boost interest in your business.
Personal responses are a great way to build relationships with your leads and customers. You can even use these replies as new topics for future content.
You don't have to sell something in every email that you send. Sometimes just asking for feedback from your readers will make them feel like they have an important role in your company. It will also give you an idea of what they really need from you.
3. Make your emails campaigns personal
We all receive tons of emails every day from various people and brands. Most are generic, but some stand out because of their personal touch. That's why it's best that you make your emails personal as well.
Address them by their first name when possible and avoid using promotional language in each email message. When done right, this can help improve customer loyalty and brand awareness.
Make sure all your campaigns are personal by including the recipient's first name in the subject line and the body of the email. Personalized subject lines have shown to increase open rates by as much. It makes your recipients feel special because it shows them that you remember their names and care about them. To them, they are not just numbers on a database list.
If you can incorporate personalization into your emails you can increase click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%. A simple “Hello [customer name]!” can go a long way.
4. Make sure your Emails look great
How people receive your emails depends on which email client they're using. If your emails look different depending on the provider, it can confuse customers and send the wrong brand message. To avoid this, test each email with multiple providers before sending it out to your list.
It's no surprise that email campaigns that look good on smartphones and tablets get higher open rates than those that don't. In fact, more than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, according to Campaign Monitor.
If you're still not convinced that email optimization is worth your time, consider this. According to BlueHornet, emails designed for mobile devices have click-through rates up to 60% higher than those viewed on desktops. So making sure your emails can be read easily on smartphones and tablets should be a top priority for any business or organization.
If you're using an email service provider (ESP), there are lots of options. Constant Contact offers responsive design designs, as does MailChimp.
5. Include Links to Your Social Media Profiles
Social media is an important part of building brand awareness and driving leads and sales for your business. Make sure you're including links to your social media profiles in every email campaign you send out. You give subscribers a way to like and follow you on social media when you share this.
This will help drive traffic from your email list to your social media profiles. This could result in more followers and leads for your business.
6. Send test emails before distributing to your email List
Before you send an email campaign, make sure to test it against all of the major email service providers (ESP). For example, Gmail, outlook, Hotmail, etc.
Create test email accounts with various providers and have them forward all test emails to a single inbox you check regularly. This way, when your email goes out, you can double-check that everything looks good for every user and every email service provider before sending it to your entire list.
You want to avoid sending emails that look like spam (and end up in the junk folder) as much as you can.
Make sure that all of your emails are proofread before they're sent out and that they contain everything you mean them to contain (including images, links, logos, etc.).
It’s important that you always test your email campaigns before sending them out. This way you so you can be sure they look great and work properly across all email clients, including mobile devices.
There are many services that can help you do this such as Litmus or MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector Tool. The tool allows you to send a test email and preview it to more than 20 different email clients.
7. Keep Track of Your Data
You need to analyze your data and keep track of what works. This will help you figure out how to get more from your email marketing campaigns moving forward.
You can get a lot from that data, including what the best times are to send emails, what your audience likes and doesn't like, and where you can improve.
Whether you're paying for email marketing software or using a free service like MailChimp, the most important thing is to make sure you're tracking your efforts. This will allow you to see which campaigns are performing best and which need improvement.
8. Set Up A New Subscriber Welcome Sequence
Once someone signs up for your list, they should be automatically sent a welcome email. This is a great way to introduce yourself, thank them for signing up, and send them whatever it was that they signed up for in the first place.
You can also use this opportunity to tell them about some of the other perks of being on your lists, such as getting access to special offers or events.
When someone subscribes to your list, they should receive an automated welcome message that:
- Thanks, them for subscribing
- Explains what they'll receive from you
- Suggests other content they might enjoy (like a blog post or video)
- Gives them a next step, such as visiting your website or following you on social media
9. Clean up your emails regularly
You have probably been on an email list at some point where you noticed that you kept getting emails from it long after you had unsubscribed from it.
This is frustrating at best and annoying at worst, so make sure you clean up your list regularly by looking for hard bounces and unsubscribes.
When email addresses become inactive, it's important to remove them from your list in order to keep your campaign healthy. If you continue sending emails to addresses that have become inactive or invalid, the result could be decreased open rates. Also, increased unsubscribe requests. This will have a negative impact on other areas of your campaign such as deliverability and reputation.
10. Pick the right email marketing partner
A great email marketing service will help you grow your subscriber list and build brand awareness. These services also help you create and send compelling emails while filtering out spam, which is vital because there are so many other businesses vying for consumers' attention these days.
The right email marketing software will also ensure your emails get delivered and opened, which means they'll make it past spam filters into your recipients' inboxes. You can even deliver your message at a specific time with scheduling tools, for the best chance of catching their attention.
Grow your business with email marketing
If you take the time to plan out your email marketing campaign, clearly identify your goals and objectives, and set smart expectations with your customers, you’ll have a firm foundation for success.
Admittedly, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for email marketing. It will require a bit of trial and error as you test and tweak your ideas to achieve the best results possible. But if you keep these tips in mind, you should be able to steadily improve your performance over time.
In the end, the tips above represent an effective starting point for anyone who’s interested in learning more about proper email marketing. They should serve as a solid introduction to for you to grow your business with email marketing campaigns. Once you’ve mastered these fundamentals, you can begin to experiment with other tactics. Some of these are creating an email landing page or using direct mail via email marketing.
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