Email marketing campaigns can be an effective tool in growing your business . Research has shown that 66% of online consumers check their email multiple times a day. Going even further, 13% of people check their email every hour. That’s one of the best reasons why marketing through email is so effective. With that in mind, here are three tips to help you make the best campaign possible.
1. Write a Good Subject Line
When a person receives an email from you, they should be able to tell what it’s all about without even opening it. What you don’t want to do is craft an ambiguous or misleading subject line. True, a vague or alluring subject line may get more people to open the email, but what are the long term results? It’s likely most people who open the email won’t find what they’re looking for and they will quickly delete it and possibly unsubscribe from your email list. Even if they do click through to your website, they’ll probably be less likely to buy.
You want your subject line to be concrete, and aimed squarely at your ideal customer. This will result in less people opening your email. However, the people who do open it will be more engaged and more likely to actually buy a product or service from you. This ties into a well known line of Seth Godin’s: “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”
2. Create a Chance for a Dialogue with Your Customers
To create a really successful email marketing campaign, you should adapt your campaign to your customers. Picture this scenario. A number of your customers have commented on a product or service that they would like to see your business offer. Being a savvy person, you create this product and then offer it for sale. Don’t just leave it at that. In your next email, mention to your customers that you’ve created this product and then ask for their feedback. Instead of just trying to sell something, you’re opening the door for a conversation with the people who support your business.
You can take this even further by encouraging customers to interact with your business through social media. For example, if you have a carefully written email that’s about to go out, time some social media releases to go with it. That way if a person gets your email, and wants to learn more about it, when they go to Twitter or Facebook they’ll find several posts on the subject.
3. Use A/B Testing
To find out what kind of emails resonate best with your customers, you should send out several different tweaked campaigns until you stumble upon the perfect design. This is called A/B testing and it’s an effective tool used by most email marketers. When you send two (or more) different emails, you’ll be able to see which ones get the most opens and click throughs. This is an essential tool in creating a successful email campaign.
While you don’t have to A/B test every email that you send out, it’s always a good idea to do it when you’re just starting a campaign. That will give you a feel for which email style works the best. Once you have that information, then you can use it to run the most effective marketing campaign possible.
Bonus Tip
Make sure that your email campaign actually gets to your customer’s inbox, don’t let spam filters take it down into oblivion! To ensure your emails get delivered, avoid cliched words like limited time, free, opportunity, offer and click here.