Email marketing has long been a popular form of customer communication on-line, and many on-line businesses are making strong returns from investing in this particular form of marketing. As with all forms of marketing, the complexities of getting the most out of your email campaigns are many and varied. Unfortunately that means that many businesses spend too much time worrying about the minutia of email marketing and miss the big picture; limiting their chances of success before they’ve even begun. So, to help you get started on the right foot, here are five tips for successful email marketing.
1. Content is King
Always remember what your mailing list are really interesting. Don’t just use your email marketing campaign as a tool to send out junk mail, it is likely to be ignored. Think about how you can provide real value to your subscribers – give them a reason to look for to your next email. Exclusive special offers are a great tool for ecommerce websites where as lead generation sites can build strong relationships by providing useful and entertaining educational material.
Before sending your email ask if you would want to read it yourself. Whether you are really ready to click that send button or not should be obvious from your answer.
2. Relevance is Key – Don’t Blast Your List
The first mistake that many budding email marketers make is to assume that everyone who has subscribed to their mailing list is interested in everything you have say. This is rarely, if ever, the case.
Think about who is the real target of your communication is. If you run a hairdressers it is unlikely that a male is going to be excited receiving an email about discounts on women’s cuts.
Most email marketing platforms today allow segmentation of your subscriber list. Think of the different categories of subscribers you have and tag them appropriately. If your emails are specifically relevant to their recipients, you can expect much greater subscriber retention and response than the scatter gun approach of blasting your entire email address list.
3. Be Consistent
An easy mistake to mate, many people will start email marketing at a great rate for the first few months and then, as other interests start to intervene, run out of steam. It may seem like a minor thing, but in reality you have built up your subscribers expectations and then failed to deliver on them. It not only sabotages any future attempts at such a program, but can provide a sense of unreliability.
4. Be Concise With Your Message
People rarely want to engage with an email for an extended period of time unless they are given a very good reason to. In other words it is critical that you get straight to the point with all of your marketing emails. Even if the email needs to be long by necessity, be sure the recipient can understand very early on what the overall purpose of the email is. If the reader has to spend too long reading irrelevant content or extended fluff they will lose interest very quickly and all your efforts will be for naught.
5. Sell With Your Subject Line
Most people get many emails a day, and they decide what they should read and what they should ignore based largely on the subject lines of the emails. If you use boring or non-specific email subject lines you risk the email never being looked at in the first place. Be specific with your subject heading, let the email recipient know what is in the email and why they should read it. Don’t just use sales terms like “Special Offer”. If it is a special offer email then let the reader know exactly what the offer is about. Make them want to read your email – don’t just cross your fingers and hope.
