Email marketing is by no means a new practise, but with the rise of the smartphone the way in which consumers access their mail has changed. So how exactly do you make the most out of your email marketing campaigns? Here are my top 7 tips for just that.
1. Optimise
Smart phones have opened consumers up to a whole new way of accessing their emails. it is now much more common to check through your email on the morning commute, rather than sitting at a desktop in the evening.
In order to account for this your emails, as well as the web pages you link to need to be mobile friendly or you can bed your messages will end up in most people trash folders within a few seconds.
2. Don’t end up in the spam folder
This one seems pretty obvious, but its important to
remember, however enticing your email
may be, the majority of consumers wont see it if it ends up in their junk or spam
folder, really how often do you even check yours?
Of course this can be easier said than done, however the
clever people at woorank 2014 have put together a great tutorial on how to
stay out of the spam folder available here.
3. Start as you mean to go on
Welcome emails give a great opportunity to inspire your
customers, and most customers will open that first email, especially if they
receive it instantly after signing up.
With that in mind you should be ensuring two key ideas.
Firstly that your emails send automatically as soon as someone signs up and
secondly that your welcome email inspires your customers. If you manage to
achieve this, your chance of being one of the few emails opened on the morning
commute will increase significantly.
4. Get personal
Everyone likes to feel like they matter, so it goes without
saying that making your customers feel like they have a personal relationship
with your brand can only be a positive thing.
There are of course many ways to do this, but possibly the most
effective way is to set up a preference centre for email correspondence. Let
your customers choose how often they want to hear from you, and what they want
to hear about, knowing they wont be sent something they will never be
interested in goes a long way.
If you cant afford this type of investment, take smaller
steps. Addressing your customers by name within the email gives a personal feel
and not too hard a task to accomplish, the web is flooded with guides on how to
do this on all kinds of email services including Gmail and Outlook. You could
also send customers discounts and gift codes on their birthdays for that extra
touch.
5. Content is King
Its all well and good talking about improving your open
rates, but this doesn’t accomplish much if your emails don’t convert.
Ensure you are sending your customers well-constructed and
relevant emails; ensure you have a strong subject line that accurately describes
its content, that your call to actions are clearly visible and that you inspire
some kind of urgency in your messaging, you want customers to buy now, if they
close your email without purchasing right away, you risk your message being
lost or forgotten until its too late.
If your budget allows for it, consider signing up with a
email marketing consultancy such as Moveable Ink. By specialising, these guys
can do things you could never dream of accomplishing on your own. Giving you
options to display rich content directly in your emails such as website live
feeds and video content removing steps in the purchase process.
6. Keep moving forward
Testing is crucial to keeping your email campaigns fresh. Without
experimentation how can you ever expect to find the most effective ways of
engaging your customers?
Of course you shouldn’t change too much at once, or even
send your changes to all your customers. Be sensible, set up some A/B testing.
Trial changes on 10-20% of your recipients, if something works increase the
percentage of users, if it doesn’t try something new. No one wins big without
risking anything.
7. Add personality
Your emails are the same as any other marketing tactic, but
all to often email correspondence doesn’t have the same tone of voice and
personality as the rest of a company’s marketing messages.
If your company’s voice is funny, make you emails funny, if
it’s cheeky, make them cheeky. Every form of contact you have with your
customers should be reinforcing your brand; consumers will instantly switch off
if you lose your voice.
However, you still need to ensure you get your message across;
you are selling your product as much as you are selling the company.
Check out some more email marketing tips from these great sites:
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