Insight

5 Steps to Better Email Marketing

Email marketing can be a powerful way to engage your existing and prospective customers. But with most people struggling to keep on top of their inboxes, it’s harder than ever to get attention.
Here are five simple steps you can take to improve the results you get from email marketing.

1. Set up analytics

While printed newsletters certainly have advantages, it’s difficult to monitor what recipients actually do with them. With email marketing, especially popular platforms such as MailChimp and Campaign Monitor, you get analytics so you can see within minutes how successful your email has been.

This information should be used to inform future campaigns so, over time, you build up a picture of the sort of content your audience likes to see – and at what frequency. You can even test sending your email on different days of the week and at different times, along with different subject lines, to see what works best.

If it’s appropriate, consider setting in place a welcome email for new clients. The average open rate for an auto-response welcome email is around 50%, plus subscribers who receive a welcome note show 33% more long-term brand engagement.

2. Align your email design with your website

It’s estimated that click through rates increase twofold if you include your website menu in the newsletter design. By replicating your menu in your email you’re giving your audience a greater incentive to click through to your website, making it easier for them to get additional information about your company which may not be available in the main content. It’s also good for credibility.

3. Personalise your email

Personalised emails improve click through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. Personalisation is simple to set up – most email marketing systems allow you to store recipients’ names which are then extracted from the database and automatically added to each email.

4. Create relevant content

Is your audience looking for special offers and promotions, do they want to be the first to know about new product launches, do they want to be inspired by your latest thought leadership article? Build up a picture of the content your audience likes to see and respond to what their feedback is telling you.

Test subject lines to see what gets attention – try out factual statements, teasers or statistics and measure the response. Remember to keep it short – iPhones cut off subject lines over 32 characters.

It also pays to cut the waffle. 80% of people are only scanning your email, so get your message across in the headline and introduction. Use bullet points and sub-headings to catch the eye of someone who may be simply scanning your email. Images and icons can speak a thousand words – and this is particularly so on email.

5. Don’t overdo it

Receiving too many emails is the number one reason people unsubscribe.
Your audience has opted in to receive your email so treat their inbox with respect. If possible, segment your audience and send them highly targeted, relevant content rather than generic broadcast emails.

Make sure you schedule your emails at a frequency that doesn’t overwhelm your audience, and only send when you can genuinely demand their attention with a fantastic piece of content that gets them clicking onto your site or sharing on social media. When it comes to successful email marketing, quality is certainly better than quantity.

* Stats source: <ahref=”http://myemma.com/brainiac/stats”>http://myemma.com/brainiac/stats