Email marketing involves sending commercial emails to a business’s current and potential customers. Through emails, businesses create awareness about their latest offerings and discounts. They can be customized easily, helping you address your target audience more effectively. To reap the benefits of this form of marketing, you need to come up with an effective email marketing strategy; and that’s where we come in.
1. Build your subscribers list
The first step to designing an effective email marketing strategy is building your subscribers list. Include a signup feature on your website. Place subscription forms on different pages such as homepage and blog that is frequented by visitors. Use features that gently remind visitors to subscribe without annoying them. You can, for instance, include a sign-up box that hovers over your homepage and follows the visitor as they scroll.
Use traditional means to build your subscribers list. If you have a booth at an industry meet, provide an option for visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. To create value, point out the benefits of subscribing. To get more people to sign up, provide incentives such as an invitation to attend a webinar free of cost.
2. Personalize your messages
Bland, run-of-the-mill messages do not work anymore. The modern customer is demanding and expects nothing less than personal messages in their inbox. Clearly, the need to bond with your customers is more than ever before. To connect with your audience, use personalized messages. Use catchy subject lines. Use shortcodes that allow you to include the recipient’s name when sending out emails.
Make sure your content strikes a chord with your target audience. Within your content, use personalized tokens. Talk about the recent purchase that they made and how they can get the most out of the product. To reach your customers when it matters the most, use custom triggers.
3. Test your emails regularly
An email that doesn’t open can be a major embarrassment for any business. Before sending emails, test them thoroughly. To ensure that your messages look the way you want them to, send test emails to employees. A/B test your emails regularly. Use tools that provide screenshots of your emails.
Before sending an email to your target audience, ensure that all the links and personalization shortcodes are working. Experiment with different versions of your emails. Run tests to find which format is getting the most traction and during which time of the day.
4. Adopt email content best practices
When sending emails to your customers, you need to realize that they are not expecting long, descriptive messages in their mailboxes. More often than not long messages end up in the subscriber’s spam folder. Keep your messages sweet and short. To build interest and give the subscriber reason to read the entire message, use an intriguing opening line.
To create impact and improve readability, use bullet points and headings. When creating messages, follow a clear content hierarchy. To draw attention, use bolded phrases and highlighted texts. To improve the chances of the subscriber opening your message, use a thought-provoking and interesting subject line.
5. Ensure your emails are mobile friendly
Emails are now more opened on mobile devices than desktops. Marketers can no longer afford to ignore mobile users.Studies show that most people who use their mobile devices to view emails delete messages that do not display correctly within three seconds.CLICK TO TWEETCan you afford to lose out on such a huge opportunity just because your email does not open properly in mobile devices?
Best email marketing campaigns focus on creating mobile-optimized emails. To make your messages mobile friendly, use short images. To help users avoid confusion, use single-column templates. If readability is an issue, switch to larger font size. Avoid menu bars as they can be frustrating to use on a mobile device. Avoid stacking links.
6. Use a killer Call To Action
Using killer, impactful email content would not mean anything, if your call to action fails to impress. To create impactful CTAs, use action-oriented words that urge the recipient to act fast. You can, for instance, use phrases such as Hurry, buy now, or get started today to create a sense of urgency. Instead of bombarding your message with multiple CTAs, focus on one central action per mail.
Avoid using a text link for your CTA. Instead, use a brightly colored button image that attracts attention. Avoid placing your CTAs at the bottom of your emails.
7. Design a mechanism to track results
Not tracking your email campaign’s performance would be like walking in a dark tunnel; you don’t know how far or close you are to your destination. The importance of having a mechanism in place to track campaign performance cannot be emphasized enough. Evaluating performance at regular intervals alerts you to things that you are doing wrong. Based on your findings, you can take corrective actions in a timely fashion.
Track important data related to open rate, click rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, and opt-out rate. Keep track of how many messages were undelivered and at what time do most recipients open messages. To learn about how your emails are driving traffic to your website, tag your messages with custom tracking.
EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY – TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL MARKETING CAMPAIGN
