If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner and you’re interested in the benefits of email marketing, you may not be sure how you can build an effective, profitable email marketing strategy.
What’s the best email marketing strategy?
You could write a book on email marketing – and lots of people have, so you may want to check these out if you want to really deepen your knowledge of email marketing. But if you just want to learn about the basics, you’re in the right place. In this blog, we’ll provide a few simple, actionable tips that you can use to build better email marketing campaigns.
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Top 10 Email Marketing Tips For Better Results
1. Use A Modern & Powerful Email Marketing Service
First, it’s important to understand that you don’t have to manually build and send emails. There are a lot of modern email marketing tools out there that let you do things like:
- Build emails with HTML templates
- Create emails that work on desktop and mobile devices
- Track open rates and conversion rates
- Get an at-a-glance look at performance with campaign monitor service
- Integrate multimedia like pictures, videos and GIFs into emails
The first thing you should do – if you haven’t already – is sign up for one of these services. Which one is the best? We don’t have the space to get into it here, but this guide from PC Mag is a great overview that will help you get started.
2. Collect As Many Email Addresses As You Can
The more email subscribers you have, the more effective your email marketing campaigns will be – so try to get customers to give you their email addresses whenever possible. There are a few different ways you can build up your email list:
- Give away business cards
- Host events like webinars
- Put out a sign-up sheet at industry events
- Organize giveaways on social media
- Use direct mail to connect with potential customers
- Give away eBooks or whitepapers on your website with an email signup
- Provide a coupon or discount to customers who sign up with their email
- Use pop-up ads on your website
- Invest in content marketing & encourage sign-ups through your blog
- Get signups from social media websites like Facebook and Instagram
That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Think about which options may work the best for your company, and start collecting more email subscribers today.
3. Implement Transactional Emails For Your Products & Services
Transactional emails are emails that are automatically sent to your customers after they take a specific action – like buying an item, getting a shipping confirmation, confirming an appointment or payment, and so on.
Transactional emails are a valuable way to build trust among customers. They let them know that their order, appointment, or other such transaction has been confirmed – and they are a great way to touch base with a customer or client.
4. Know How To Write A Great Subject Line
Subject lines are tough to write for emails. They can be a maximum of 60 characters to fit on all devices – that’s about 7-9 words. There are a few ways you can optimize your subject lines:
- Build urgency with terms like “act now!”
- Pique curiosity by being a bit vague about the subject of the email
- Personalize emails to cater toward individual recipients
- Provide offers like a giveaway or discount
- Be timely and relevant
- Tell a story
- Avoid making false promises
5. Understand The Rules For Writing High-Quality Email Copy
Writing great email copy is an art, and if you’re not a writer by trade or passion, you may find it difficult. Here are a few quick guidelines to follow to make sure you write high-quality email copy.
- Write for the web by using bullet points and breaking up information in different chunks, avoiding a “wall of text”
- Avoid caps and excessive use of exclamation points
- Know your audience and what tone they’ll respond to
- Write naturally, like you’re speaking to another person directly. Read your emails before you send them. Does it sound like you’re talking to a real person?
- Prioritize clarity above all else. What message are you trying to get across?
- Include a specific call-to-action (CTA) in each email. For example, “Buy now,” “sign up,” “get offer,” “enter today,” or some other such CTA depending on what you’re providing in the email
- Establish relevance and authority. Position yourself as an expert in the market, and consider using statistics when possible
- Integrate media like pictures and graphics when possible to improve the overall appeal and style of your emails
- Be brief. Your emails should always be short, sweet, and to the point. If they’re too long, nobody will read the whole thing
6. Don’t Email Clients or Customers Too Much
Just because a customer has provided you with their email address doesn’t mean you can email them as much as you want. If you’re emailing customers, clients, or leads every day, you’ll seem “spammy,” and they’re less likely to take your emails seriously.
This can lead directly to customers unsubscribing from your email list. If your unsubscribe rate is above 0.5% – the industry standard – you may be sending too many emails. 69% of people say they’ve unsubscribed from a mailing list due to “too many emails” being sent.
How many is too many? Well, it depends on your industry. But most marketing experts recommend sending 1-2 – and no more than 3 – emails per week, and that’s a good place to start if you’re sending out useful, high-quality emails.
7. Choose Email Templates That Work On Mobile Devices
Nearly half of all emails are opened on mobile devices like phones and tablets. That means you need to make sure your emails work on these devices as well as desktops.
If you’re using a modern email marketing tool, you won’t need to worry about doing this manually – these tools use “reflowable” templates that look good on both mobile and desktop, and usually let you preview how the email will look on mobile so that you can optimize accordingly.
8. Use Split Tests & A/B Testing To Measure Email Optimization
This is another feature that’s usually included in top email marketing software tools. Split tests, also called “A/B tests” let you track the effectiveness of two different email marketing campaigns and compare the results.
For example, you can create two similar emails, but tweak things like the subject line, copy, layout of the email, CTA (call-to-action) and other on-page elements.
Then, you can send them both out, and as customers open your emails and view them, you can track the effectiveness of each email, and how well it appeals to your customers.
This lets you gain insights that can help you create better emails in the future. For example, if one email had a more effective CTA, resulting in a higher conversion rate, you may be able to use a similar CTA in future emails to boost overall email performance.
9. Invest In Content Marketing & Combine Your Marketing Efforts
Content marketing works very well with email marketing. You can use emails to promote your latest blogs, podcasts, or other content, and even use content written for your blog to create email newsletters.
But don’t stop there! Email marketing and content marketing also work very well with social media marketing and have a lot of overlap – and if you can create a unified email marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing strategy, you’ll likely be head-and-shoulders above the competition.
10. Follow A Few Email Marketing Blogs To Stay Updated On The Latest Trends
If you want to keep learning and deepening your knowledge of email marketing, we definitely recommend following a few blogs. Naturally, we recommend the AIAD blog – which you’re already reading right now! On our blog, Australian Internet Advertising often discusses email marketing, PPC marketing, eCommerce and similar subjects.
There are some other great resources you can check out, too – here are a few of our recommendations.
- The MailChimp Blog
- The Hubspot Blog
- The Campaign Monitor Blog
- The MailBakery Blog
Don’t know how to do email marketing?
If you’re lost when it comes to email marketing and digital marketing, Australian Internet Advertising is here for you. We specialize in SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, content writing, and so much more.
If you need a responsive, professional marketing agency to handle email marketing or any other marketing and advertising services for your small business, we’re here to help. Learn more by giving us a call at 1300 304 640 or contacting us online to schedule a free, no-commitment consultation.
