In the last couple of articles we’ve been looking at how you can make the most of your email marketing. The types of emails that you send out can be wide and varied: you may be sharing information, sending offers and promotions, building your network, etc. Whatever the type of email that you send, remember what we touched on last time: have a clear objective in mind for your campaigns. A key way to achieving this is to keep it simple.
“But I don’t know what to write about,” you may say. You’d be surprised at how much you know about your own area of expertise that your customers – and potential customers – don’t know. You may have access to interesting information and statistics that would be difficult for others to find. The content of your messages doesn’t necessarily need to be original – just make sure that it is relevant to your audience and that you present it in an interesting way.
Something to remember is that you could reuse the content that you write for emails. Consider adding it as a blog on your website, post it on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, etc. That way, you’re getting multiple ‘hits’ from one piece of content.
So, your content is written and it’s all ready to go. Wait! You’ll want to build up a picture of when is the best time to send your campaigns. For informational email campaigns, sending monthly is the most common frequency. A good practice is to divide your email list into groups – three should be fine. Select three days of the week and send your email to each group on a different day. Using the same three groups, send your email out to each one at different times of the day.
You should also test variations of your campaigns. Try tweaking the layout while maintaining consistent branding. Subtle changes to subject lines and headlines can make a big difference. Try this over a few emails and you should start to build up a picture of what style of email works best with your subscribers and when they are most receptive to them. Your open rates and click-through rates, explained in the last article, will give you an indication of how enticing your emails area.
An important point to remember is to not necessarily get swayed by the number of times an email is opened. If your email is to drive sales, ultimately it is how much revenue each email generates that you need to take note of.
Some quick tips:
- On average, over two thirds of recipients will not see images by default, so don’t rely on them for delivering your main message
- Make all images in your email clickable, and don’t forget to include text labels
- Position your company logo in the top left or centre
- Test emails: send them to yourself before sending to your list
We’re not done with email marketing just yet. In the next email marketing article, we’ll take a look at how you can integrate email marketing with an online shop.
