How to Successfully Use Email Marketing
When you’re looking to communicate with consumers, email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to do so. According to mailchimp.com, “a 2015 study by the DMA found that for every $1 spent, email has an average $38 return on investment (ROI).” So, there are a few tips that will give you a better chance at getting this successful.
Understand Your Target Audience
First of all, and this pertains to any marketing really, you have to understand your target audience. The part that is different for email marketing, is that you most likely have a wide variety of subscribers to your email list. You want to make sure that your email content is relevant to who you are sending it out to. A good way to do so is to use email list segmentation. This is where you break your email list up into separate groups and send each a different message. According to an article by Lyfe Marketing, some ways to segment your email list can be:
Geographic
Demographic
Niche
Psychographic
By Product
Survey results
Sending frequency
Purchase cycle
Past purchases
Email activity
These are just some ideas. You should use whatever works for you and your company when segmenting your email list.
Personalize Your Emails
Have you ever gotten an email that you knew immediately it was a mass email and did not pertain to you? I bet you deleted it right away. That is exactly what you’re trying to avoid. You want to make the customer feel special and like you are sending out that email specifically for them and them only to read. If you’re able to get ahold of their name, it is very effective to address the emails to the customer. You may even want to ask questions to make them feel more relevant. According to Campaign Monitor, emails with a personalized subject line are 26% more likely to be opened. In addition, you should send your emails from a real person instead of just the company. An email means a lot more when it’s coming from your name rather than “marketing@yourcompany.com”.
Have a Good Subject Line
Your goal should be to write a super compelling subject line to the point where the consumer will think “I have to click on this and see what they’re talking about!” They should be very clear and easy to understand. In addition, make sure they are a good length so they do not get cut off my certain email providers. A good length is to keep them under 50 characters.
Try to keep the subject line natural, to show that the consumer is reading something from a real person and not from the computer. Lastly, avoid using spam trigger words.
Keep it Short
Like most things on the internet, you won’t have a lot of time to keep the consumer interested. You have to keep the email short and concise. According to Aweber, 50.2% of marketing emails are less than 300 words. Make sure you say everything you need to say but don’t go overboard with information. Lyfe Marketing even says to keep the emails Twitter length. You know when you see a lot of text and you think that it’s too much to read all of it so you might as well not even try? That is exactly what you’re trying to avoid.
Test Your Emails
When testing your emails, you should pick the factor that defines the most success for your business. For example, it may be clicks, opens, or money earned. One of the best ways to test your emails is with A/B testing. This is where you send two separate emails to two groups and see which one has the better return rate. There are many different companies that offer such testing such as Hubspot and Mailchimp. Other things that you should always test when sending out your emails should be subject lines, content, from names, and send times.
In order to successfully email market, you need to find out what works best for your company. Follow these steps and test your emails to see what works and adjust accordingly. If you found any other good tips that worked for you, let us know in the comments!