Did you know that it takes on average 7-13+ touchpoints before a lead turns into a sale? Customer touchpoints are your brand’s points of customer contact. Effective email marketing can serve as one of those crucial touch points in addition to seeing an online ad, visiting your website, reading your reviews, calling sales, shopping at your store. In addition, consistent email marketing can remind your prospects and idle clients of the valuable products and services your company offers when a need arises. After all, it is much easier to sell to warm leads and short term lapsed clients than cold leads. Email marketing can also increase web traffic and page views thereby improving your search engine rankings. The average e-newsletter only gets viewed for 15-20 seconds so here are some tips to more effective email marketing.
Getting Permission
Email marketing begins with building a quality subscriber list by telling people what they are registering for and why they are getting emails from you. You need to ask all recipients for permission before you send any emails by having them subscribe through a mailing list signup form or asking them explicitly. By following these anti-spam regulations, you will reduce spam complaints and improve open and click through rates.
Engaging Subject Line
Your subject line should be short and engaging to grab your target market’s attention. It should be funny, witty or pose an interesting question. For example a subject line with “10 Foods that Boost your Metabolism” will most likely get more views than “Food Newsletter”. Avoid excess punctuation, all caps or phrases like “Free” or “Act Now”. Most importantly, the subject should support the message you are delivering. Readers who feel like they have been tricked will unsubscribe or trash your future e-newsletters.
Mobile-Friendly Design
With mobile users having surpassed traditional laptop and desktop users, your e-newsletters have to be responsive just like your website. Single column layouts are ideal because they are easily pannable and navigatiable on mobile devices. It is also helpful to have large images and buttons that can be easily tapped to lead to other mobile-friendly webpages.
Don’t Be a Yapper
Don’t overwhelm your subscriber base with too many emails or you risk lower open rates and people unsubscribing. It is better to send less frequent emails that are more personalized and relevant rather than bombarding your subscribers all the time. Unless it is time-sensitive information like limited time promotions, you should air on the side of sending less emails. How often will depend on your target market and how they respond which you will discover through testing.
Be a Friend
No one likes to hear from a sales person but everyone wants to hear from a friend. It is important to think of how you can give to your readers rather than what you can get from them much like our blog you are reading. If you provide value and maintain relationships with people, sales will come eventually. Since each person’s experience with your company is different, it is imperative to segment your users and customize your content to make it personalized and relevant.
Clear Call-to-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) tells your target market how to respond using phrases like “Call now” or “Complete this form for a free demo.” The CTA needs to be large, obvious and text-based so if images are blocked, readers can still click.
Be Informative, Valuable and Brief
If you do not create value, users will unsubscribe, junk or ignore your future emails. Email marketing should be used to educate people about your services and why they need them. You can include information like upcoming events, product launches, sales and promotions and summaries of your blog posts or press releases. Remember that the average email if it gets opened, only gets scanned for 15-20 seconds so keep it short with bulleted lists, uncluttered and images with ample white space.
Be Responsive
Putting a do-not-reply email in the “from” field completely defeats the purpose of email marketing in the first place. You want your users to respond so that they can connect and build a relationship with you so you should always list an actual person in the “from” field. If they respond, it gives you a chance to convince them into buying from you.
Test, Test and Test Again
There are many different ways to achieve successful email marketing. It all depends on your target market and how they respond so try different layouts, subject lines and sending times to see what works for you.
In Conclusion
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