Email is the preferred mode of communication for most people. This makes email marketing a strong channel for lead generation and customer acquisition. But using this highly powerful, cost-effective marketing technique for your business is not without challenges. Apart from ensuring that your emails do not land up in the junk folder, you also need to make your emails interesting enough for subscribers to open and read them. Here are five effective email marketing tips to help you get off the ground.
1. Increase Your Subscriber Base
Having a list of active, targeted subscribers is the prerequisite to successful email marketing. Begin with integrating an email subscription form into your website. This can be done by placing a piece of code given by your email marketing provider. Those using WordPress usually get to have a shortcode, plugin or widget for wordpress email marketing. Make sure the opt-in form is within easy reach of visitors on all pages of your website. You can do this by using a popup or embedding the subscription form in the sidebar.
Next, encourage as many people as possible to sign up for your newsletter. Curating great content of course will get you more subscribers but there are other ways as well, like holding contests and offering incentives (free ebook, product trial, software download, etc.)
2. Identify Your Target Audience
Users only want to receive the content they are interested in. This makes it extremely important to segment your email lists and engage the subscribers according to their interest. This will ensure better receptivity of your content and increase the click-through rates.
Subscribers can be segmented based upon various factors, most prominent being:
- Age group
- Interests and hobbies
- Gender
- Location
Cookies often help you in segmenting your audience. Previous history of users too can help you identify their interests. You can even use surveys and quiz results for list segmentation.
3. Attractive Subject Line + Short, Interesting Content
Whether a subscriber opens your email or just trashes it depends upon the subject line of your email. Be creative enough to make the subject line appealing to your readers. Keep the following points in mind while drafting the subject line:
- keep it short
- Don’t make false promises
- Give a hint of what is inside
- Avoid spammy words
The email content too should be short in length. People don’t have time to read long stories, especially when most of them check their emails on phone. So, be clear, concise, and to the point.
While writing email:
- Use simple and short sentences
- Use small paragraphs.
- Cut down fluff and unnecessary words
- Use active voice
- Use bullet points
4. Personalize Your Email
Personalization makes it easier to win over your subscribers. Addressing your readers by their name is one way to go about it. For example, instead of simply saying “hello”, if you say “hello John”, you instantly grab the attention of the user.
Using a subscriber’s name is just one tactic of personalization. Depending upon the sophistication of an email marketing campaign, you can personalize the subject line, email content, or even the product offering.
5. Measure User Engagement
Measuring email engagement helps you understand the effectiveness of your campaign. Once you get to know what’s working and what’s not, you can use this information to refine your campaign for better results.
Look into some basic engagement metrics like List Growth Rate, Bounce Rate, Open Rate, and Unsubscribe Rate to learn how well your list is growing, what percentage of emails are NOT reaching the subscribers’ mailbox, how many recipients are actually opening the email, and how many of them are hitting the ‘unsubscribe’ button.
Delve deeper into your email analytics and study some more KPIs like Clickthrough Rate, Conversion Rate, and Overall ROI. This will tell you what direction your email marketing campaign is heading and what returns your efforts are fetching on your investment.
