Email marketing began in the year 1978 and till then it has been one of the most important components of marketing. According to Constant Contact, 66% of consumers purchase goods for email marketing messages. The reason most marketing professionals rely on email above everything is that they can interact with their customers directly and nurture the leads. Search engine marketing and social media are so powerful but email has something different, though it doesn’t matter how good your email is it will land in the sea of emails, mostly spam and promotional tabs. In this blog, I will help you to make your email better with 10 steps.
Last year 293.6 billion emails were sent and received and with every $1 investment they get an ROI of $36, It’s massive, Isn’t it? But again in order to make the best out of your email your customers need to open your email, maybe your email is not reaching the ideal customers. In this blog let’s solve all the problems you face and we will make it better. Shall we dive in?
Challenges of Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the 19 channels of marketing yet people rely on it more than others, though without a proper strategy, it is impossible to achieve the desired goals. Let me share with you 3 challenges of Emai Marketing.
Exceeding Email numbers:
People generally sign up for a lot of newsletters, and journals and this creates a sea of emails, It makes people overwhelmed. It is very difficult to make people read your emails.
Deliverability:
Deliverability ensures that the email is landing in the inbox but most emails land in spam and promotion tabs so the emails can be counted as a waste.
Spam:
Any mail tool has a filter for spam to prevent unwanted and harmful emails. When people stop opening the emails then it also counts as spam, It also counts as a waste of your email campaign.
Let’s focus on the 10 steps to make it optimized and effective.
Lead Magnet
Whenever people land on any website or landing page they notice the lead magnet and it is the reason they give their email, so you need to make it super optimized.
If you don’t focus on the optimization of the lead magnet then you’re going to lose the potential client. They receive the first email with the lead magnet, so it needs to be in a good manner so that they don’t unsubscribe at the first moment. Make sure it is super valuable and not promotional. Include the receiver’s first name or company in it. Use strong subject lines like, ‘get your free’, ‘join now’ and there are other actionable words as well.
“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches—at scale.” – David Newman.
Segmenting
It is one of the underrated suggestions, You need to focus on the segmentation more than anything. It is a way of grouping your subscribers, based on the requirements and purpose.
You can use it to work on multiple goals and multiple interests. This is a way of making the emails personalized. Segmenting helps you to build trust and authenticity as people receive what they want from you.
Personalization
It is the most important thing in email marketing, If you lack in personalization then you are already out of the game. If I send you a message “ Hey, Thanks for helping me” does this make sense? No! Nowadays it is more easy to understand that you are writing a generic message. Make sure you are writing to the point and for every single person in your email list.
4 out of 10 people mention that they are receiving something which they never asked for, as I have mentioned earlier people sign up for a lot of journals and newsletters, you have a chance to stand out and use it rather, it will be in the sea of unread emails and receivers will never open it.
Let me give you an example, Let’s say you are pitching any client for your SMM service.
You can write, Hey John saw your Instagram page has 1 million followers yet you are not making the most out of it, in the last reels you got 36,000 likes, can you imagine you can earn double your likes, excites you? Let’s arrange a call tomorrow. Here is my cal link.
Be creative and value each and every person in your audience, mass marketing doesn’t work anymore.
Sending Frequency
If I send you 5 emails per day will you open a single one from them? No! It’s overwhelming and disturbing. If I send you 2 emails in a week, will you read it? Yes, as it’s value-driven and respects your time.
It’s not possible for you to understand when your mail lists are active as there are various matters like segmentations and time zones but A/B testing can help you, try sending in different times and find the average time when you are getting the most open rate and conversion rate.
So you need to make sure that you are sending the mail at a perfect time with perfect frequency like I do. Great addition, isn’t it?
Mobile Friendly emails
Your 80% audience will open your mail from the phone so you need to make sure that your email is mobile optimized.
Mostly if you are offering any sales or product pictures, User shouldn’t have any problems with clicking the link or checking the proper message.
Try to place the important links at the top of your page and keep the graphics small. Give enough white spaces not more than needed, choose the perfect text sizes of fonts and don’t use colours other than black.
A/B testing
As I have said earlier you need to understand the perfect timing of your emails via a newsletter but this time I am talking about the content. Content is king, I guess I have said this a thousand times, now let’s implement it. Before sending an email do you ask yourself if the content is really valuable or not? If not then ask from the next time.
Well, You need to understand which content your audience accepts the most, so you need to send different kinds of content with respect to the purpose goals and expected outcomes. It’s time to perform A/B testing, track the open rate and time for 2-3 types of content, choose the best one and keep playing with that. You need to keep in mind that you are selling or providing value with your emails, so use it accordingly.
Unsubscribe button
Do you know, people never do what others ask them to do, so it’s the perfect idea behind my point here. You have to add the unsubscribe button to your emails. Wait wait, I am not asking you to do it for the reason I mentioned in the first line, there is a law of US CAN-SPAM, which is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission.
But my point here is to make you aware that your content shouldn’t be spammy or irrelevant for the people who want to unsubscribe. If people tend to unsubscribe then it will affect your email campaign. Offer the unsubscribe button in the footer and be open to it. If people want they can unsubscribe and free themselves anytime they want.
Clear CTAs
If you tell people what to do then people generally take more actions, offer the next actions to people and you will get the most out of your email. Most email campaign has no clear CTAs, Use words like ‘Check Now’, and ‘Buy Now’ to make people take action.
The ultimate goal of your email campaign is to make people buy from you or do something which drives some set of actions in favour of your goals or purpose. Helzberg Diamonds reported a 26% increase in clicks by incorporating an arrow icon in their CTA buttons.
Don’t overuse it, for every single intention use a maximum of two CTAs.
Reply Email
You have said your words, now it’s time to hear back from your receivers. Those to whom you are sending your emails, might have something to say, let them talk. Attach a reply email which will encourage them to talk with you. With this, you can understand the demands and thoughts of your audience and you can create emails according to that.
It helps to build trust, they will feel they are talking with real people and feel valued email members. It’s time to mention your reply email in the footer or header from where people can reach out with their thoughts.
Test Emails
What if you made the dumbest mistake with your email, you might think it was better if I could check the email before sending it. That’s the reason email marketing tools offer a test email feature, you can send an email to your own email to test the formatting and critically check the whole email again.
It is one of the most useful features of email marketing tools, You can make edits according to the test email and take action accordingly.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing will never fade away, If you are starting right now then it’s totally fine, if you have been doing it for a long yet you are not making any fruitful results then this blog will help you to bring the changes you want. It’s the perfect time to implement the ideas I have shared with you, apply them and make the changes to get the desired results. Marketing is incomplete without emails, use email marketing in the best possible way. Let me know how you use emails for your marketing or how you are going to use them.