Email continues to be one of the mainstays of any Internet marketing strategy. It’s no surprise either, with companies discovering its continued effectiveness for driving traffic, encouraging interactivity through social media, and building / maintaining buyer interest.
Once you have found your way to your customer’s Inbox, you need to maximize your time there. How will you do this?
Below are a dozen useful tips to make sure your email marketing is really working and delivering the right results:
- In order to combine email successfully with your other marketing activities, you must make it simple for anyone to sign up to your newsletter or list. A sign up box on your website and blog is a must to automate the process.
- By using an auto responder, you can also automatically gift free content to your subscribers when they sign up. A free white paper, an e-book, a discount voucher for your store, a handy How To, or a link to video content will be appreciated and help to establish your brand and value of your content from the outset. Hard sell will not go down well, so consider carefully what content to offer new subscribers.
- Once you are promoting your email list by featuring it on your websites and blog, you should consider how often to send an e-newsletter. There is little point trying to send out a daily email if you do not have unique and fresh content to share on a daily basis.
- For some, even finding sufficient content for a weekly email can be a struggle, so it may be that you send newsletters only when you have ample content to make for an interesting read, or an exciting offer for your subscribers.
- However, you should remember that content can go out of date, and sometimes very quickly so. Do not waste good content by putting off the email dispatch until your once newsworthy item is old hat, and has been done to death by your competitors. Do not bombard your readers either – this is likely to lead to unsubscribes or unread emails.
- Your emails should include a wide range of content. These could be news articles, opinions, product reviews, new product details, competitions, offers and discounts, details of events such as webinars, conferences and upcoming expos, e-books, links to video and images, and so on. You can vary the content in each email to maintain readers' interest and keep them engaged.
- Your primary aim is to drive people to your products and services rather than to your competitors or the media. Therefore, you should have the information on your own site or blog, and use the email newsletter to point your subscribers to that, not to a third party link.
- Keep emails short and to the point. Bearing in mind how many people now check their emails on a mobile device, the format and size of the email is important too. Including large images that are slow to download is a no-no. Your email should be readable on a smart phone or tablet, as well as on a larger screen. You may find that your readers prefer an email text format and not HTML to reduce the consumption of their mobile data.
- When including links in your email, make sure you offer a summary of what the link leads to so that a reader will know instantly if the item will be of interest to them. This is where catchy headlines come into play, as well as succinct but intriguing introductions.
- Always include links to your social media profiles within your emails. Often, if a reader has little time and wants to just scan your email content, they will follow or friend you, look you up on LinkedIn, or check out your boards on Pinterest instead of following a link to your website to read a single article or post. You should make it simple for your readers to find you in several locations and not just your website. Purchase and brand loyalty decisions are frequently made now based on how your company responds and interacts through social media and networks.
- Use your social media profiles to get feedback on your emails, asking your readership which links they enjoyed, were uninterested in, and so on.
- Do not forget the analytics too. Use an email program such as MailChimp which will help you to keep your list clean, track what is most opened, or ignored, and help you to create better content for your readership each time from that feedback.
All in all, email is still an extremely efficient, affordable and effective method to market your business, products and services.
Need help with your email marketing? Struggling to create email content that finds its way to your customers’ Inbox? Hire the skilled copywriters at MintCopy. Call 888-646-8003 or send us an email.