Early on in your business, it is crucial that you find ways of marketing your company that allow you to reach a wide audience, without spending too much money. Cost-efficiency in your marketing practices is the key to ensuring that you are not spending the early days of your business spending most of your profits on advertising.
Email marketing is one of the oldest and continuously profitable methods of online marketing and has stood the test of time for a reason. According to research, 92% of internet users have at least one email account, and at least 75% of users are active on their email accounts. Email has a higher conversion rate than social media marketing too.
So how can you finesse your email marketing campaign to ensure that you are using your email list to the best of your ability?
Target Your Emails Strategically
The first thing to be clear on is that you are targeting your emails to the right recipients. Your email marketing campaign can be as perfect as you could possibly make it, but if it is going to the wrong subscribers then you aren’t likely to see much of a return. Most email marketing software offers the opportunity to segment your subscribers into groups, so that you can send appropriate and relevant email content to each group and ensure that you aren’t pestering subscribers with irrelevant news.
Segment your email list by things like:
- Interests
- Buying habits
- Geographical location
- Age/gender
Make Your Emails Personal
This ties in with the idea of segmenting your email list. Once you have more specific groups you can tailor your emails so that they fit the interests and personalities of each group. Most email marketing software will have a shortcode for calling each customer by name, so that from the first line they know that this email is meant for them specifically. Use appropriate language in emails, but keep them informal in order to breed a sense of familiarity that should have recipients letting their guard down straight away.
How To Decide What To Write
Marketing emails shouldn’t always be about what you are selling or how the customer can help you. To make sure that your emails don’t go ignored, or unsubscribed, you will want to provide recipients with useful and interesting content, that is different every time. Some general content types that you can cycle through when creating your email marketing campaigns are:
- Upcoming events
- News
- Popular posts and new posts on social media
- Guides and instructions
- Details of new products or services
- Recaps from previous events
Email Copywriting Tips
When it comes to creating an email, you want to ensure that each email sticks to a number of rules that will make them interesting and engaging and encourage recipients to take the time out to read them. Some basic copywriting tips for your emails are:
- Set a goal. Know what you want to achieve with this email, and make sure that every part of the mailout is geared towards this.
- Include a call-to-action. Your email should include a clear call-to-action, with a clickable button that allows users to click through to register their interest. This will show you how many people have engaged with your email, as well as potentially upping your conversions.
- Use unique and relevant content. Everything you write should be totally unique (not even copied over from your own previous content) and should offer the reader something interesting and of value.
- Keep it short and concise. For a person to take the time out of their day to read your email, you want to make sure that you get to the point quickly, and allow them to get what they want from the email as soon as possible.
Make Sure Your Content Is Useful
Internet users rarely open emails unless they know that there is something in there that will be useful to them, so you need to think about what makes you want to open an email, such as information which you do not already have, or something that will benefit you such as a discount or freebie. This is the sort of thing that your email must include, and you should make note of it in the subject line so that the subscriber knows that they want to open this email.
Display Personality
It is important to remain professional when sending out a marketing email, but if you want to catch your subscribers’ attention and get them to keep reading then you must have some personality. Don’t be afraid to use humour, or a vibrant tone that matches your brand identity. Customers become much more engaged with companies that they feel have a distinct personality, and an email is the perfect forum to show yours off.
Do be aware, though, that your email marketing personality needs to match the one you’ve set up for your brand elsewhere. If your social media personality is wise and staid, and your emails come off wacky, you risk customers losing trust in your business.
Keep It Short
People receive hundreds of emails every day, and only direct a few moments of their attention at each. If they open an email to find a wall of text, chances are that they will just click away and never look at your emails again. Say everything you need to say in just a couple of lines, if you can.
Use A Simple Layout
Whilst it may be tempting to make your email look flashy and interesting, with lots of graphics and moving parts, this really isn’t the right place for you to flex these skills. The more graphic elements you have in your email, the harder it will be to load and read, and the more likely it is that your subscribers won’t engage further with the email.
It is far more productive for you to put your energy into making the email interesting, useful and funny, and keeping the layout as simple and easy to read as possible, in order to appeal to internet users. Don’t be tempted by the fact that there are so many fun design elements available on email marketing software. Just because you can use it, doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.
Want To Know More
Email marketing has been around for decades now, and from a marketing perspective, has truly stood the test of time.
The team at MaxWeb can help you with all aspects of your email marketing. Our professional copy writers work hand in hand with our in-house tech team to ensure your emails are vibrant and engaging and are delivered to the inbox of your chosen audience.
Why not give us a call on 0151 652 4777 or email info@maxwebsolutions.co.uk to find out more.
Posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2020 in Digital Marketing.
