Email Marketing Tips
You need the best email marketing tips and tricks while utilizing effective techniques to increase sales for your business. Email marketing is massive and has the potential to deliver incredible results.
The problem is that so many retailers and webmasters are doing it wrong. There are common errors that many are guilty of committing and others that are a bit less obvious and require different techniques for fixing.
Whether you are just starting to perform email marketing with your subscribers or have been doing it for a while and want to effectively increase the results of your campaign then these email marketing tips and tricks could be just what you need.
Before you get started, you will obviously need to build an email list so you have people to market to. If you haven’t done so already, then take a look at that guide. If you have a list, even if it’s a small one, then read on and try to implement different techniques for your email marketing campaigns.
Create a Goal
If you do not have an objective before starting to mount any campaign, your recipients will also not know what the objective of the communication is.
These objectives can be multiple: from completing a form to offering a discount. You must always offer different message options, call-to-actions, and links in the text so that you have several options to achieve your goal. Everyone’s behavior is different, therefore, your emails must be flexible.
There’s no point sending out an email if it doesn’t have a goal. Otherwise, you’re just sending an email for the sake of it and this could annoy your subscribers. Define the goal for each email before you start writing it so that it can be as effective as possible.
Clean Your List
Sending emails to an outdated database leads to wasting resources, high error rates, and low email opening rates. The key to the success of any email marketing campaign is not the number of subscribers, but the quality of them.
50 active and engaged subscribers are far better than 5,000 that don’t do anything.
Cleaning up your mailing list will help you make sure your messages are being sent to your active subs, reduce the chance that your emails will be marked as spam and give you a true representation of your email marketing analytics and the success of your campaign.
Be Direct
Sometimes less is more, which is why it’s important to include short and direct phrases that prevent the reader from getting bored and trying to figure out what your email is trying to convey.
Speak With One Voice
It is very important to always write in the same tone that reflects your company.
Different people have different styles, and this will come across when they write. It’s okay to inject a bit of personality, but keeping a uniformed tone across all emails can be what symbolizes your brand and makes you renowned for.
Your audience needs to know your brand in order to build trust. If your brand or your message sounds or feels different through several pieces of content, it is more difficult to establish this trusted connection. Therefore, it is important to have a solid set of guidelines on the brand to maintain and develop similar content.
Be Picky
This is one of the biggest email marketing mistakes when it comes to sending out newsletters. Before publishing something, it is essential to review it, read it again, and polish it as much as possible until it is (almost) perfect. Check spelling, grammar, keywords, everything.
The slightest error could be the difference in your entire campaign being effective or not. Even a minor spelling mistake could be enough to put someone off and not click through your email as a result, so review everything and even get a second person to look it over if you can.
Optimize Your Confirmation Email
The confirmation email is another great opportunity to demonstrate the value the user will obtain by subscribing to your newsletter.
Take this opportunity to show them around your website or even give them a freebie. You could link to the most popular pages on your website or direct them to a page where they can download something.
From an eCommerce perspective, you can offer a discount code in exchange for their email address, so this confirmation email can contain the code and a link back to your shop to make the purchasing process as easy as possible.
Adhere to Legalities
Include company information, legal disclaimers and a link to unsubscribe. It is a legal requirement to provide an unsubscribe link on all email marketing letters you send out to people.
It doesn’t matter what country you come from or the country of the people you are email marketing to, there must be an unsubscribe link in that email. You could get in very serious trouble if this link is not present so do not take the chance and always include it.
Email Service Providers such as ConvertKit and GetResponse can automatically include this link in all of your marketing communications so you never have to worry about compliance with this area.
The First Words
Readers of a newsletter tend to look at the first two or three words at the beginning of the message and as with the subject line, the area where the first words are found is the most important area.
For this reason, it is also crucial when designing a newsletter that you carry out a test to check that the most important message appears and is correctly displayed in the ‘preview panel’ of the most used clients or mail programs.
The first words that your email recipients see will be the defining factor in regards to them opening your email or not. So you should avoid clickbait titles or putting stupid characters ~ ++ { } into your subject lines or content.
Don’t Worry if They Unsubscribe
You can not please everyone!
It’s impossible to maintain the exact same list of people for years on end. Like with most things in life, people will come and go. A quality list that interacts and is receptive to your communications will be better than a large list that just takes up space.
If your subscribers mark you as spam, don’t take it to heart, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are sending spam. A lot of people will seldom mark spam because they are too lazy to follow the unsubscribe link. Just keep offering quality and value and don’t worry if you lose a few subs here and there.
Email Marketing Tips to Make Your Subscribers More Loyal
When you want to increase the number of subscribers through email, the truth is that it requires considerable work and effort. But, you can not forget that getting subscribers is only the first step; you then need to work on maintaining and keeping them as your subscriber.
This can sometimes be harder than getting the subscribers in the first place. So let’s dive into these email marketing tips and tricks for maintaining your subscriber base.
Give Them a Warm Welcome
The email market is saturated so it is vital to take care of small details because, as in everyday life, first impressions are fundamental. It is very important that from the beginning you make it clear to your subscribers that your emails will be valuable and worthy of their attention.
Make sure your initial email that a new subscriber receives leaves a lasting impression and makes them anticipate your next communication with excitement.
You could offer them a freebie or discount with your first email so they are immediately given something of value and will remember this in future.
Be Consistent
Now that you have made a positive impression, the subscriber wants to know what is to be expected from your service. You can offer a weekly newsletter which could contain useful information on what’s happening with your website.
Show them your blog posts for the week, any offers or promotions you have going on, and a snippet of what’s to come in future. They should know that every X amount of days you will be contacting them.
Also, there are certain times for email marketing that would be considered to be better than others, so make sure you know your subscriber base and when it’s most likely for them to view your emails.
Exclusivity
Offering exclusivity is another way for your subscribers to feel appreciated and for this reason, you can offer them different incentives either just for them or before everyone else.
Your subscribers have chosen to be a part of your list and they should be thanked for doing so.
Sporadic Incentives
Now that you have gotten your subscriber to know what awaits, the ideal situation would be that after about four weeks you decide to surprise them.
The subscriber already has a solid expectation of this offer and it’s time to offer them some kind of incentive. If you already have a store-wide promotion going on, you could offer your subs a coupon code that is better and exclusive to them.
Reward on Key Dates
If users remain actively subscribed to your newsletter for six months or more, it means that you offer quality content and offers that interest them.
You could send out anniversary emails thanking them for being subscribed for this long, and give them an offer as a thank you.
Ask Their Opinion
This can make your subscribers feel valued as you are asking for their input on something related to your business, which they have been a part of.
Create surveys and landing pages where they can tell you their thoughts on how your site could be better for them and then customize your website accordingly.
Be Polite and Appreciative
Do not forget to be grateful to your subscribers and let them know how much they mean to you. All your emails should be personal and address them by their first name they imputed on the newsletter sign up form.
You should always be very polite and use please and thankyous where necessary and show them you appreciate them.
Email Automation
Chatbots are becoming a standard feature on websites and increasingly provide a service that goes beyond simple customer service. They are beginning to be used to trigger automatic communication flows, which is known as marketing automation.
In addition, there are more and more platforms and programs that allow you to automate the messages of your website, which helps you in reducing costs and times.
Automation in email marketing is a key ingredient to create and maintain a long-term relationship of trust with your customers.
Why?
Simply because automatic emails are triggered by a specific interaction of the user on the site.
Therefore, when an email arrives in their inbox is relevant and logical, and will not feel like an intrusive element. In addition, automatic emails become catalysts in the conversation between the customer and the brand.
Dynamic Content
If you decide to include graphics, flash animations, audio or video in your emails there are technical limitations that may arise. Not all email service providers will allow your recipients to see the message correctly as they can block this type of content from being displayed.
You need to essentially create a hybrid message that can be understood without the need for this type of content. you can highlight certain parts of your messages, highlighting them, and you can also add links to landing pages where you can include all the graphics, audio and videos you need to reaffirm your advertising message.
Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are usually a high perceived value content for your target. In general, what you bring is the knowledge you have as a professional or company of a certain sector in a downloadable format that can only be accessed once the email address is provided.
You could offer downloadable guides or eBooks in exchange for an email address as these are very effective and proven methods for getting subscribers.
To increase the effectiveness of your strategy you can use many different types of methods and techniques.
More and more websites opt for pop-ups or exit-intent windows to capture the visitor’s attention or email address before they leave the website.
They are somewhat invasive but you have to recognize their effectiveness and they are also easily integrated into platforms such as Shopify or WooCommerce.