5 Easy Ways to Improve your Email Marketing
In this WOI 101, we cover a step-by-step guide to email marketing and why it is still a relevant piece of your overall marketing strategy.
Over the past decade, businesses and consumers have become overwhelmed with irrelevant messages clogging up their inbox. The tsunami of junk that enters our emails daily is a familiar issue to most of us. Email list fatigue, when subscribers stop engaging with email marketing campaigns, has been the outcome for many marketers. So, does this mean the end of the EDM?
Is email marketing still relevant?
Yes. Although businesses and consumers are overwhelmed with emails, your EDM remains an important and relevant activity in your overall strategy. The effectiveness of your email marketing will depend on the factors in this guide. Stay with us and we will share some tips on how to keep your EDM performing.
Through COVID-19, which prevented many traditional and offline marketing practices, email marketing saw a revival. As of 2021, Statista reports that there are 4.3 billion email users worldwide, giving businesses a huge potential audience. But this doesn’t mean that simply sending an email will lead to the desired outcome. Marketers need to continually adapt their approach to remain relevant and to drive sales.
How to get started with email marketing:
- Build a list
The first step is to build your contact list. This can be challenging, particularly for new businesses but the golden rule remains – never purchase a mailing list. Bought lists contain low quality and fake contacts. More importantly, this activity can be deemed unethical or even illegal and could land your business in serious trouble. Therefore, our recommended method for building your mailing list is to incentivise customers to sign up with their email. A great example is the popular DJ company, Crossfader which produces a free music pack for DJs in return for their email address. Another popular method is asking customers to submit an email to access Wi-Fi. Both methods are successful and effective because they represent a clear benefit for both parties.
WOI Tip: Aim to have your audience “double opt in”. This requires users to click on an automated email after signing up. This prevents the use of fake accounts but also marks you as a high-quality source of email which reduces the likelihood of any future marketing emails being sent to spam.
- Maintaining a healthy, segmented email list
We suggest that you regularly refresh and clean your email list. This means going through every 6-12 months to ensure that only genuine, healthy emails are listed. Often users may give fake emails or may block marketing emails, limiting the reach of your EDMs. It can also be useful for businesses to segment lists to engage specific groups in different types of email marketing. For example, it may not be a productive use of email marketing to send a group of students an email about an expensive wine tasting. Segmenting can be done demographically and behaviorally. Your sales team should have the required market intelligence on your customer groups to segment in a way that serves your marketing needs.
- Avoid being listed as spam
If your email account is categorised as spam, your emails will never be seen. If you are emailing people you don’t know, or who are blocking your messages, then the email algorithm may determine your emails as spam. This can also be the case if users are not opening your emails as the algorithm can see that the engagement ratio is lower. Ensuring relevant, timely, useful content to users that know and engage with you and your brand is the best way to avoid being labelled as a “spam” email account. Getting this step right is challenging but vital and requires a strong strategic approach.
WOI Tip: Several companies such as https://www.mailgenius.com have spam tests you can run on your emails before you send them out to your mailing list. We recommend that every time you send a marketing email you run a spam test.
- The 6-second rule
Email marketing starts with formulating the best subject line to maximize the open rate of your emails. You have 6 seconds to grab your reader’s attention and ensure they want to open your email. We have all received messages with clickbait titles, and whilst this can be a somewhat effective tool, we recommend that you avoid this approach. Not just ineffective, clickbait is damaging to your email marketing because 70% of spam filters block out emails based on the subject line. Your subject line should contain snappily written, relevant information that encourages users to engage with the email. The more opens you get, the better your engagement ratio, the more future emails will be seen. In addition to a strong subject title, your sub-header is an effective way to tempt readers to open the email.
- Storytelling for impact
Now for the main body of the email. WOI recommends the following formula:
- A clear, compelling story
- Simple, concise language
- A distinct, on-brand tone of voice
Use thoughtfully crafted, clear, short sentences with frequent paragraphs. Write for your audience, keeping the tone of the email appropriate to your reader. Ensure perfect grammar and punctuation and avoid spam words – email algorithms regularly check for and filter out emails with obvious spam content.
Achieving ROI on Your EDM
Email marketing can be an incredibly useful tool if used right. Often businesses find themselves ending up in the spam folder with unopened emails which are very ineffective. If done right, the Digital Marketing Association (https://www.ana.net) estimates that every 1USD spent on email marketing gives an average ROI of 42USD. In short, this is the formula for successful email marketing: maintain a clean, healthy mailing list in a compliant format and communicate with a clear, concise message.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of WOI 101 Marketing Tips. To access the full series of Marketing Tips visit us here: https://whiteorchidinsights.com/news/category/marketing-tips/.
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