Email marketing is an incredible tool for businesses to communicate with their customers and promote products and services. Using email marketing the right way, however, is very important for achieving your desired outcome. Increasing brand awareness with an inbox reminder is a great way to keep up engagement with new content and announcements. With consistent, relevant emails, businesses can enhance their image and present themselves as leaders in their industries. In this article, we will address productive (and unproductive) ways to structure email marketing campaigns for your business.
Ensure your emails incorporate the following features:
Qualified Email Lists
Your contact list should be filled with customers who have consented to receive emails from your business. Your email efforts can turn into a huge liability and waste of time if they are not sent to legitimate contact recipients. A huge no-no when it comes to your lists is purchasing or borrowing email lists. Often, such lists are compiled legally but then distributed illegally. As a result, using them will cause your messages to be flagged and sent to spam. High deliverability rates correlate with well maintained and regularly cleansed lists, which reduce risk and increase engagement.
Niche Email Groups
Segmentation can be an incredibly valuable way to consider the values, interests, and behaviors of your customers when directing them to announcements and other information. By ensuring your messages will align with their needs, you can. Make your emails much more relevant, which can increase the open rate dramatically.
Email Personalization
The golden ticket to successful email marketing campaigns is personalization. Embedding recipients’ names into your content and tailoring the message to their interests and preferences increases engagement and helps customers feel like the campaign is just for them. This increases trust and makes your messages more valuable.
Responsive Design
Your email campaign strategy must fit the way people access content today. More and more people are on their mobile devices, viewing emails on the go. If your emails have not been designed to be responsive to the mobile screen, the success rate of your campaign will decrease greatly. Attention to this detail conveys a company has put their customers front of mind. When the mobile layout is difficult to read, however, the strategy will fall flat.
Clear Call-to-Action
Call-to-action (CTA) buttons present clear opportunities for users to continue in their buyers’ journeys. Whether your CTA points users to a downloadable resource, a link to your blog, or a way to sign up for notifications, it is an important way to get the most out of your email marketing strategy.
On the other hand, avoid the following practices:
Over Emailing
No one likes to be bombarded with meaningless emails. Make sure the emails you send are valuable and relevant, so they have strategic value and avoid annoying your recipients. The million dollar question is how often to send these emails, and while there will always be discussion about the right frequency - no size fits all. Take a look at your engagement rates after each send and determine if your audience is ready to hear from you again.
*Pro Tip: it probably isn't every day.
Questionable Subject Lines
Using exaggerated or misleading verbiage in subject lines can trigger spam flags and cause your emails to be lost in the junk folder. Instead, use subject lines that clearly and accurately describe the content of the email.
Foregoing Pre-Header Text
Pre-header text is the window into the body copy of your email. Using this preview to its full potential will entice more users to understand the value of your message and open your email.
Ignoring Design Considerations
Design has the power to lead readers right where you need them to go and create a hierarchy of information to more clearly communicate your message. For this reason, a well designed email campaign can boost your conversion rate and enhance your overall brand strategy.
Skipping Over the Analytics
Analyzing user activity metrics on your email marketing campaigns is crucial to your future campaign plans. Using hard data is the only way to truly understand what is valuable and what is missing the mark with your customer base.
Create, Send, Analyze, Repeat:
It takes time and effort to dial in your email marketing strategies. A successful campaign involves planning, research, thoughtful intention, and a fair amount of trial and error. By following the tips above, you can create a successful email marketing campaign that’s a valuable addition to your customer communication and business growth initiatives.
