We shared recently why email marketing is still an effective way to engage an audience, let’s dive a little deeper into creating an effective and engaging email marketing campaign. Content is tough to produce but it’s the most effective way to impact your users so consider a few of these tips and tricks to be successful with your first email campaign.
1. Be Honest
When it comes to email marketing, honesty is the best policy. If you don't have anything to sell right now, it's best to simply declare it. Customers won’t be mad at you for it so simply focus on what you do have to share which leads us to the next tip:
2. Offer Your Readers Something That They Can Use
Your email marketing should serve a purpose. If you want to keep your readers engaged, you need to give them something that they can use. In the last tip we mentioned you don’t have to be selling them something in every single email, instead, you can offer information or your expertise. If they really appreciate your products and services they will continue receiving your email and potentially convert to customers down the road.
Think about tangential topics to your products and services. If you sell a product, consider relevant information related to that product even if it’s not something you sell.
3. Don’t Spam Your Readers
Now that you’re creating content and have an easy to use platform to send your emails, you might be tempted to send emails all of the time. Do not email them every day. Do not even send an email every week. You should only send one when you have something new to share that fits the above two tips criteria. Unlike social media, engaging your audience with email can be much less frequent.
4. Change Your Frequency, Format, Subject, and Topics
Again, contrary to other forms of marketing, changing things up helps you stand out amongst a sea of marketing emails your audience receives everyday. Change your frequency, format, subject, and topics. Your readers have better chances of reading your email if they do not see the same email repeatedly. If you have the time and platform, this is where A/B testing comes into play. You may find a subject line performs better by sending two out to your audience and you can use that information to further refine your next email.
5. Make It Easy to Opt-Out
Make it easy to opt-out. There are laws associated with spamming and as a result most email marketing platforms make it easy and standard to opt out of your email list. Before sending your email, use the preview or test function and look at the end of the email for an opt out link. You will also receive analytics about how many members of your audience choose to opt out which can help you uncover if you’re providing meaningful content.
6. Ask Your Readers to Forward Your Emails to Their Friends and Family
Asking for referrals is an excellent way to increase your email list. The more people you have on your list, the more likely you will receive email responses. You can include calls to action to share the email via social media or forward it to their contacts. Also consider how potential customers get onto your email list, do you have an email capture form on your website and in your social bios?
7. Offer a Reward for Every Referral
If a customer has already converted and won’t buy again you still want to keep them engaged. They may become an excellent referral partner so offer a small reward for every referral they provide. You can give out a freebie such as more content in the form of an ebook, or a coupon, or an instant discount. Your entire email can be centered around this campaign. Make sure to segment your email list into those who have purchased so you can gauge how well customers like your product and are willing to refer others.
8. Always End Your Email with a Call-To-Action
Always end your email with a call-to-action. While we said you don’t need to sell something every time you email your audience, you do want to get them to do something as a result of the sharing of information so again, have them re-share the content or browse your product, something to get them to engage beyond passively reading your email and moving on.
9. Personalize Every Message
Always personalize every message that you send. Don't just use the same template for your emails. Every email should be unique because every customer is unique. Personalize every email by including their name if you collect it and segmenting your audience so you can speak to them as customers who have purchased already or have not.
10. Use an Eye-Catching Subject Line
Try to use an eye-catching subject line. Make your subject simple yet intriguing enough to make them open your email. We’ve gotten used to filtering marketing emails so you need to think about something that will get your audience to click on your email over others. Again, personalization is useful here as well as the use of emojis and intriguing statements. Consider something like “I put this together for you…” or “Here is something that will really help you…”. Both of these subject lines are personalized as well as intriguing and may be enough to get your reader to click on your email.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a great strategy to sell your products and attract new clients. Remember that creating an effective process is not easy. You need to be creative and come up with meaningful ideas in order to be successful with it.
The important thing is to make it easy for your readers to understand what you're trying to say. You need to focus on every detail in creating an effective email marketing campaign. You need to make it honest, useful, engaging, and full of excitement!
If you are looking for a marketing agency that will guide you with your company’s email marketing strategies, look no further than our expertise here at Torch Digital Labs. We are here to help business achieve their digital goals by leveraging the amazing tools we have today. Call us today and let us help you boost your online campaigns in no time!
