Email marketing is the practice of sending information to groups of people via e-mails. And despite being around several decades compared to more recent digital marketing innovations and channels, it is still widely used in businesses across a variety of industries.
Although email marketing and email newsletters are indeed still relevant today, there are certain things you should consider in order to ensure they remain successful.
So what should you be doing to make your email marketing as effective as possible?
Stay Out of the Spam Folder
Even the best e-mail campaigns will be rendered useless if they fail to get through the spam filter and don’t reach your intended recipients. Make sure your e-mails actually make it into the inbox rather than the spam folder by doing the following:
- Ensure all recipients have willingly joined or signed up to your mailing list
- Choose your subject line wisely
- Avoid ALL CAPS or too many exclamation marks
- Ensure no spam has been sent from your IP address in the past
You should also ensure that your content is relevant and useful to your recipients. Although your e-mails might make it through the automatic spam filter, if the recipient finds it irrelevant or annoying, they can always mark you as spam themselves.
Make sure you also provide an easy way to unsubscribe. Although that is not your desired outcome, customers have a right to do so and will appreciate being given the option to do so without too much trouble. They are more likely to return to you or become a customer at a later date if you make this process easy and hassle-free for them.
Offer Value
Make sure all of your content offers some kind of value to the recipients. Whether that’s information that will help them in some way or discount offers for your products, it should involve something more than just self-promotion.
Providing valuable content for your recipients will also help gain loyalty from your customers and will build your reputation as a knowledgeable, valuable and reputable source within your industry.
Get Personal
To get the best response from your email recipients, make the language personal and avoid pushy sales language. Today’s consumers respond better to a transparent and direct yet personal approach.
For example, make sure that the recipient is addressed individually at the top of the e-mail. There are tools you can use to ensure this without individually typing the e-mails, so there really is no excuse. You can also use tools to send e-mails “from” an actual person’s e-mail address rather than a generic company address. This again makes the e-mail feel more personal and it is, therefore, more likely to receive a response.
Keep it Short and Sweet
No matter how interesting your subject matter may be, recipients will immediately be put off by never-ending paragraphs of texts. Keep your e-mails short, sweet and to the point for maximum engagement.
Separate the content into catchy headings and usual visual aids and colorful graphics to grab the reader’s attention. Images, however, should be used sparingly to illustrate your point rather than replace content. Keep paragraphs short and be sure to include keywords that are clear and relevant to the reader. If you must convey a lot of information, present it in bullet point format for easy reading.
The purpose of the e-mail is to initiate an interaction with the recipient so don’t overwhelm them with too much information upfront. You should provide links to your website or particular landing pages to explain the topic further.
You should also make sure that your email includes a clear call to action buttons. Whether that’s “view our catalog”, “find out more”, “read our blog”, “download our e-book” or “buy now”… whatever you want the recipient to do should be outlined clearly with a hyperlinked call to action button.
The layout and content of your e-mail should all be designed to make it as easy as possible for the reader to engage with you. When putting an e-mail together, think about things from the recipient’s point of view to ensure that your information is presented in a way that is easy to understand.
Be Mobile-Friendly
According to some research, 55% of email opens occur on smartphones. It’s therefore imperative that you make sure your e-mail displays well on mobile and that any landing page the email links to is also optimized for mobile. So whether you’re a popular wedding band providing string quartet wedding services or a small hipster brewery, you should prioritize mobile devices when designing your marketing emails.
Conclusion
Although there are many other types of digital marketing in the current market and new trends are emerging at a rapid rate, e-mail marketing is still very relevant. E-mail marketing offers a direct channel to your recipients and ensures you make the most of this by keeping the layout and content clear, concise and easy to understand. Use a personal and engaging tone and make sure all content is optimized for mobile.
