Is email still valid in the world of digital marketing? According to Hubspot, 4 billion people are daily email users. More than a third of brands are increasing their email marketing budget to reach them. While email is not a shiny, new way of communicating with customers, it is tried and tested and offers positive results with great ROI.
With competition for market share, you can’t just ping out a few emails and expect the world to come rushing to your website. Some best practices will help you find the right audience, get their attention, and have them contacting you for more.
Here are 9 things you can do to reap the benefits of email marketing.
Know your target audience
You can write the best email campaign ever, but if you’re trying to market your anti-wrinkle cream to teenage boys, you’re going to be disappointed.
Spammers send poorly crafted emails indiscriminately in the hope of catching one or two victims. However, a professional marketer researches their audience and creates valuable, useful, and engaging content for them.
If you’re not sure who your audience is, do some market research. This includes creating a profile of your ideal customer, considering their age, location, interests, profession, and other salient demographics.
Use Nuwber to learn more about your existing customers. This site can help you know, serve, and delight your customers.
Write to one person
When you know your ideal customer, write to them. By focusing on one person when you craft your email, you will avoid the temptation to broadcast. This will make your writing feel more personal. The reader will be more likely to feel a one-on-one connection with you or your business.
If a friend matches your customer profile, this may be even better. A friendly email that nonetheless covers all the points you wish to make can be more effective at engaging customers than a slick, cool business email.
Segment your email list
While you might be marketing primarily to a certain type of person, there are normally other types that also buy your products or services. For example, you may be writing accessible content about nutrition and how to use the equipment safely, while some of your clients will be seasoned, professional athletes that might like something more useful to them. Fortunately, you don’t need to exclude one or the other.
One of the most powerful things you can do with email is to segment your list. This way, you can identify several types of customers and write to each of them personally. You can connect with different kinds of customers and have them feel like you’re writing directly to them. Because you are.
Check your spelling and grammar
Your email may be the first contact a person has with your business. Your email marketing is an opportunity to demonstrate your professionalism and business values. Spelling and grammar mistakes make it look like you don’t care about what you do. It reflects badly on how your business operates.
Mistakes are also distracting. When competing with every other email in a person’s inbox – and sometimes every cat video on YouTube – you can’t afford to lose their attention for a moment.
Use a call-to-action
Often, people seeing your marketing material need to be told what to do. Your email will improve your brand awareness, but if you want the reader to share, bookmark, buy, or comment, you’d better tell them.
WordStream research demonstrated that a call-to-action (telling the reader what to do next) increased clicks by almost 4 times in their case. Sales increased by more than 16 times.
If you’d like to increase clicks by over 350% too, add a clear call-to-action to your emails. The best calls-to-action tend to be bright-coloured buttons, placed after your pitch, without surrounding clutter.
Agonize over your subject line
If your headline doesn’t entice viewers to click on it, your brilliantly crafted content becomes worthless. Spend as long as you can on your subject line. If possible, test several to see which earns more opens.
A well-crafted subject line is emotional and engaging without being gimmicky. It can be tricky to find a balance. Use a powerful adjective or two. And start and end on important words. When readers scan, the words in the middle can lose weight.
Be consistent
As with social media posts, having your content go out regularly can create anticipation in your readers. Like a regular TV show, people will get used to your content appearing at a certain time. If you deliver, this is great for building your audience and fanbase.
For most businesses, emailing at least once a month and up to two or three times a week is best. The frequency depends on your industry and your customers. In a fast-paced industry like fashion or news, for example, you can increase the frequency.
When you have worked out your schedule, don’t fire out underdeveloped content for the sake of meeting your deadline. Do your best to keep up the standard and offer something of value each time.
Automate your email marketing
To help you stay on track, batch-write your content and then schedule it using one of many content scheduling apps to publish the emails on given days and times.
When someone signs up for your emails, you can have your app send them a series of pre-written introductory emails at regular intervals to move them gently but convincingly through your sales funnel. Once you’ve written the content, you can automate the publishing process for all your leads.
Promote your emails
To reap the benefits of email marketing, make sure to tell people about your email marketing. Ensure that your sign-up button is engaging and functional wherever you are, including social media, your website, and other public profiles.
You can use your email to move potential customers to your social media pages or website. And vice versa. By offering more value and more ways to connect, you can improve your brand awareness and develop brand ambassadors.
Your emails are reusable branded material that you can tailor to your customers. They help people engage with your brand and become increasingly likely to buy from you and share your details.
The best email campaigns are targeted, regular, and offer real value, whether in terms of entertainment, insight, promotional offers, or identification with the brand. If you put in the work, your email campaign will become self-sustainable and go to work for you. In the meantime, you will be able to keep honing your product or service.
