Because of its low cost, lack of specialized expertise, ease of creation on a short lead time, and quantifiable outcomes, email marketing is appealing to entrepreneurs looking to expand their firms.
Planned, segmented, and personalized emails with clear calls to action and brief content are the hallmarks of effective email marketing campaigns.
Visit our recommended reading list and go through our in-depth assessments of email marketing software to discover more.
This article is written for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to learn more about how email marketing may help them expand their operations (in terms of revenue, potential customers, website visitors, etc.).
Email marketing campaigns provide a low-cost alternative for entrepreneurs who are unsure of how to expand their firms to reach prospects and customers.
As it doesn’t call for complex programming or graphic design abilities, email marketing offers a lower barrier to entry than other marketing channels. Email content creation is quicker than the creation of many other types of marketing materials.
Email marketing can be tailored to promote either goods or services, or both, with equal success. As a marketing strategy, it’s relatively inexpensive, easy to track and assess, and has a larger potential ROI (return on investment) than others.
We polled business owners and marketing professionals for their best practices for email marketing campaigns. There are seven pieces of advice that they provided.
If you want to reach a specific demographic, email marketing is the way to go because you can control who opens your emails, unlike billboards, which reach everyone driving by.
Indeed, 99% of consumers regularly read their email. As a result, it is an excellent platform for targeted advertising. That is to say, you can modify your pitch to appeal to specific demographics.
The optimal time for email distribution is context-specific. Emails sent at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and 3 p.m. on Thursdays are the most likely to be opened; emails sent at these times are likely to yield results, albeit little ones.
But, to achieve the best outcomes, you must analyze your unique email lists and campaign metrics. Based on comments and how customers engage with your content, divide your mailing list into smaller subsets. This primary research, not averages from the industry, should dictate when you send out emails.
Customized emails are more likely to be read and responded to, rather than ignored or deleted along with the rest of the spam in the recipient’s mailbox. Having an email come from a real person is a simple approach to add a human touch.
Once you have a solid marketing plan in place, you can turn your attention to the finer points of your messaging. The subject line is the first impression you’ll make on your consumers. If it doesn’t stand out from the other emails in their inbox and stimulate their interest, they’ll probably just trash it.
Customers won’t open your emails unless you test different subject lines to see what gets their attention. Questions and teases about the content can be used to experiment with different subject lines. Words like “contribute” have been shown to decrease your open rate by as much as 50 percent.
Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Services at Elevation Marketing Ryan Gould suggests getting personal with clients by being transparent about who you are and what you can do for them to create an attractive subject.
Consumers are more concerned with the benefits they will receive from whatever it is that your email is advertising, he added.
Subject lines that convey that information clearly and that include an element of urgency, like a deadline, are more likely to pique the reader’s interest and prompt them to keep reading.
You may also get people interested by asking them questions or bringing up recent, pertinent happenings.
Do not make email communication difficult. Be direct and engaging in expressing your ideas. Don’t bother typing out unnecessary pages of text that no one will actually read. Consider a news release rather than a scholarly paper.
Emily Sidley, supervisor of the communications and outreach unit at the Washington State Department of Ecology, advises keeping messages concise and providing a link to a blog for more information.
The vast majority of shoppers now check email on their mobile devices, making this a crucial consideration. The recipient won’t bother reading the entire email on their phone if it’s too long.
Reduce word count by eliminating unnecessary filler, which is always appreciated by readers. Keynote Search’s v.p. of marketing, Kyle Turk, discovered that by being more forthright in email subject lines, the company’s open rates climbed from 21% to 30%.
Since “inboxes have become increasingly noisy,” he warned that “if you aren’t clear in your messaging, it will just be looked over.”
When writing an email, it’s easy to become sidetracked by trying to grab the reader’s attention and end up forgetting why you sent the message in the first place.
Is it possible that you’re trying to get them to remember that they put anything in their shopping cart? Informing them of a discount?
Selling something new? While a catchy subject line might boost your open rate, you’ll want to focus on getting your subscribers to click on to your website in order to boost engagement. An invitation to take action is required here (CTA).
We’ve advocated that marketers use a deductive method, in which they evaluate new methods by comparing the open and click-through rates of previous campaigns. Yet, comparing and contrasting two approaches is another method for improvement.
According to SiteVisibility’s marketing manager, Sean Nichols, A/B testing allows you to compare the effectiveness of two different factors, such as two different subject lines.
To avoid confusing the results with too many factors, Nichols suggests testing only one aspect of the email (such as the subject line or the graphics) at a time. For more precise outcomes, this is essential.
If you conduct enough of these experiments, you might find an unusual tactic. Through a number of A/B testing, Keynote Search discovered that close-ups of people’s faces resulted in a 17% increase in click-through rate, as mentioned by Turk.
Preconceived strategies, such as the ones on this list, can be easily tested. A/B testing, on the other hand, can help you discover novel approaches.
