Some companies don’t put much effort into their email marketing campaigns. The companies send out information about sales, new products, and operational hours without much emotion or excitement. The emails are well-written, however they become almost formulaic, and not in a great way.
There’s something missing in these campaigns. The emails are not engaging users and businesses are losing conversions because of it. Copy on its own is not enough to produce results; the entire strategy needs to work well together with the formatting and copy to drive sales, sign-ups, etc.
Email marketing has become one of the most cost-effective forms of digital marketing over the years.
However, learning how to use this marketing tool effectively is often more difficult than most marketers expect. Some business strategies that work for one company may not work for another company.
You can only learn what works best for your business by testing your approach multiple times. You will eventually see results from your efforts, which will show you where you need to improve and what your customers like to read.
There are some email marketing practices that are universal for most industries, although there are some exceptions. The following practices have been shown to be effective across different types of businesses.
1. Keep it Short, Sweet and to the Point
The subject line, that is. It is best to have a short and informative subject line that will create peak interest. You can’t improve your email campaign results if you can’t get recipients to open them in the first place.
Your email subject line should be under 41 characters, or around 7 words, for the best chance of getting a good open rate. What is the most interesting or useful thing that your audience can gain from the information?
2. Leverage Scarcity to Create Urgency
There is a limited supply of something that the reader may want, and this supply is running out. If you can create a feeling of scarcity, urgency will follow and drive users to take quick action.
This is a good sales tactic. This is a reliable technique that is guaranteed to be successful if you have a few customers who are thinking about buying but are undecided.
3. Remember to Reengage
Our customers are very busy and their attention is constantly being pulled in different directions. Sometimes someone may open an email with the intention of converting or learning more, but then get distracted. Some people may just need a reminder that you have new products or a referral program.
Email is a great platform for reconnecting with customers, something that too many brands overlook. Design several campaigns targeted at winning back the business of former customers in order to lure them back into the sales process.
One way to do this is to mention referral programs and offer discounts for their next order. This not only generates referrals from sources you wouldn’t have otherwise tapped, but also gets customers back and buying again.
4. Focus on Exclusivity
People like feeling special, and you can use that by making people feel like they are exclusive.
Many businesses, for example, may have tiered loyalty programs. If you shop a lot, you can get access to new products before anyone else, special discounts, or other benefits. An example of this would be Disney, who allow hotel guests to enter the park an hour before everyone else, or to stay an hour later on certain days. This actually encourages people to pay hundreds more just to get that extra benefit.
If you want to sell more, make your product exclusive. This will show that it is very valuable and not something that everyone can have.
5. Remember the Sales Funnel
When you’re planning your email campaigns, it’s important to keep the digital sales funnel in mind. The messaging that is most effective for users in different stages of the funnel will often differ.
You will not get any results if you show a referral email campaign to a warm lead. They haven’t even tried the product or service themselves, so why would they recommend it to anyone else?
Audience segmentation is the term for grouping together certain subgroups of your audience based on your relationship with them. This can be done through your email software in order to send email content that is tailor-made and relevant to each group. If someone only views a product page but doesn’t purchase the item, you can follow up with a campaign.
6. Use Fast Faux-Personalization
It would be exhausting and inefficient to write individualized emails to every customer in your database. Faster, more personalized communication is a great email marketing tactic to use.
In these cases, you’re using simple coding tricks to insert the client’s name or their business’s name to capture their attention and assure them that the information is relevant to them specifically.
7. Get Your Timing Right
Timing is everything, right? That goes for email, too, of course. The best way to get a conversion from an email is to send it when the user is most likely to be able to pay attention to it and has the time to convert.
This will vary based on your industry and audience, but in general, the following best practices compiled by CoSchedule are a good place to start:
- Late morning emails sent around 10AM were typically best received.
- Tuesday is the best day for email open rates, and Thursday was the second best.
- After 10AM, 8PM, then 2PM, then 6PM were the second, third, and fourth best times. This varied slightly by day.
You should try to send your most important emails on Tuesday through Thursday at 10 AM, but you should test this first to see if it works for your campaigns.
8. Incorporate Social Proof
Regardless of how you are using social proof, it is valuable. Nowadays, people are more likely to trust their peers’ reviews over brands’ or marketing platforms’ claims.
There are several ways to incorporate social proof in your email marketing campaigns. You can list the highest rated products and include the ratings and number of reviews for each one. You can also use a reviews as headlines, or place reviews next to or under product images.
9. Get to Know Your Audience
How successful your email marketing campaign is will be directly related to how much value you provide to your audience. You can serve your email subscribers better by surveying them to find out what they need. You can easily do this by using your automation sequence and a survey tool.
10. Automate Your Email Personalization
Digital marketing is becoming more and more personalized to the consumer because more businesses are making the shift to digital marketing.
Browse Abandonment emails, which remind customers about products they recently viewed, help keep marketing tailored to the individual buyer. As more and more companies send out mass e-newsletters, personalization is key to standing out and increasing conversions.
11. Try Plain Text Emails
Plain text emails are more effective than image-heavy emails, as they have higher deliverability rates, load quickly on mobile, and allow readers to get the message straight away without having to scroll down on mobile.
12. Test Test Test
Testing is a proven way to engage more people with your emails. Although A/B testing is a popular method for testing the effectiveness of different variables, testing two subject lines at a time will produce fewer results than testing more subject lines.
Marketers who want to improve their chances of success should test three, four, or ten subject lines.
13. Be Consistent
If you stop showing up in front of your list, they will forget about you. You can do this however often you want. I suggest sending out more than one email a month. To increase your chances of getting a response, try sending your messages at the same day and time each week. This sets the expectations for your list.
14. Use Segmentation
Every market or business has multiple customer segments they cater to, even if they aren’t aware of it. There are different segments within the market that want different things from your products and services. Psychographic and behavioral segmentation specifically allows you to target your message to individual’s goals rather than using one message for everyone.
15. Summarize Your Newsletter at the Beginning
Think about your mobile viewers here. The people who open their emails on their phones don’t want to scroll through a bunch of images, so it’s better to summarize your message and highlights in a few paragraphs at the beginning of the email, before any graphics or images. It is also recommended that your logo be placed at the bottom of the email rather than in the header. This way, readers will not have to scroll past it.
16. Show Up More
There is so much noise on the internet and so many experts that it is easy to get lost. It’s important to remind your subscribers periodically or they will forget about you and unsubscribe. Keep emailing them frequently so they don’t forget about you.
17. Ask Questions
You can learn more about your subscribers by asking questions, such as if they need help with anything or what topics they would like to learn more about.
For example, you could include this in your welcome message after someone has subscribed to your email list. Asking questions shows that you care for your subscribers. It is also a great way to build trust.
18. Write Them Like Social Media Posts
80% of emails are opened on a mobile phone. People are increasingly using mobile devices and scrolling quickly through content. You need to grab their attention right away.
Your headline is important because the average person receives over 200 emails each day.
19. Use an Email Verification Tool to Improve Deliverability
Email deliverability is a huge challenge. Spam traps and emails that are sent to incorrect addresses can have a significant impact. Mailfloss is a tool that can filter out spam emails automatically so you don’t have to do it yourself.
20. Let Your Subscribers Know What They’re Signing Up For
It is important to be clear about what people are signing up for when using any list building tactics. Make it clear to your readers that they will need to sign up for your newsletter if they want to receive the free download. Include it on your forms, confirmation email and thank you page. Of course, make it very easy for people to unsubscribe from your emails.
Email has a lot of potential and you don’t want to waste any of it. Email marketing can be improved by following certain best practices, such as developing stronger strategies, formatting designs better, and writing more effective campaigns.
Additionally having a diverse set of tools can make a big difference in the success of your marketing campaigns, even if the messaging is similar. You can achieve both long-term and short-term goals if you adopt a particular course of action and put it to the test.
What do you think? Which of the following strategies do you think would be most effective in getting more results from your email campaign?
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