Email marketing is the most effective way to stay in touch with customers and create new ones. Because 91% of consumers check their email daily, that is indicative of a clear audience. Not only can you ensure that the content reaches your consumers, it is proven to drive sales. 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email-marketing message. Did you know that email marketing provides an average of 4,300% return on investment? And this is the preferred method of communication for 74% of consumers! So email marketing provides the highest return on investment, boosts sales and customers prefer it? It is a no-brainer to get into email marketing, but that does not mean that just any old email will work and create engagement. There are ways to market this way effectively. Here are five of those ways.
Build your subscriber list
You may already have an email of list of clients and prospects, but you should always be working to build upon this list. First, make sure it’s easy to subscribe to your email list through your website. Put subscribe forms on your blog page and on your blog articles since people already reading your blog might want to start receiving more content from you. Also, creating incentive for providing an email address with purchase is another way to get more subscribers.
Track and test your data
They say that data beats emotions and this is absolutely true. It’s crucial to look at all the data you can collect from your emails to see what is and isn’t working because that can change quickly. Most email marketing tools provide information on open rates and click rates. These are a great start, but with the appropriate setup, you can learn even more about your email performance. MailChimp and Constant Contact provide much more in-depth statistics that allows you to make strategic decisions about content, offers, time/day the email is sent and more.
Make it mobile-friendly
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? For many people, after turning off their alarm, the first thing they grab is their phone. In fact, 66% of email opens occur on smartphones or tablets. If your emails aren’t optimized for viewing on these devices, you’re potentially missing out on a huge number of clicks. 25% of all emails are opened on iPhones in particular. Being flexible on many different formats and mobile friendly is absolutely crucial. 69% of mobile users delete emails that aren’t optimized for mobile. That is a huge chunk of anyone’s subscriber list that is not seeing the content you have crafted.
Test your emails and avoid getting spam blocked
Don’t send anything without making sure it’s working. Test internally, at the very least engaging all the major providers: Outlook.com, Gmail, and Yahoo as well as the most popular mobile devices. For more robust testing, check out Litmus, a tool that tests and provides screen shots of your email in dozens of different email tools. Phrasing is incredibly important. All spam filters are slightly different so an email that might pass in some filters could be flagged as spam in others. For a more comprehensive look into how spam filters work and how to avoid them, check out this guide by MailChimp.
Create captivating content
Creating a catchy subject line is important as this is what the audience uses to determine whether or not they will open the email. There is however, a difference between catchy and vapid. A few key things to avoid are using all caps, too many exclamation marks, hyperbolic phrases like “Act now before time runs out!!!!” or using poorly formatted HTML in your email templates. Not only is this something users are tired of seeing but it can also get your email marked as spam. Make sure the content is relevant and interesting and has a distinct purpose.
