email marketing, marketing agency

EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing seems to have a bit of a bad rap as a tool to communicate with your customers.

Clients tend to be put off with the thought that they are spamming their audience and subscribers or that, too often, they are sharing information that wouldn’t be of interest to them; when used correctly this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Direct email marketing can be specifically targeted to your audience’s interests, used as a way to communicate exclusive offers and service/product launches, or as a friendly way to engage in a personalized way – just as if you were writing to a pen pal all those years ago.

So what are some ways you can create an effective email marketing campaign and avoid spam culture?

1. Campaign Goal

First and foremost, what is the purpose of the email? Is it an education tool? Are you letting your subscribers know about a new product? Are you offering an exclusive deal? Linking users to a new blog post on your website?

Whatever it is, make sure it is tailored to the audience that subscribed.

2. Content

Once the goal of the email campaign is defined, you’re ready to create content around this. Ensure you use personalized imagery, capture written content and include links that direct the audience to your website for more information.

Another key thing to remember is to plan your content ahead of time, and use a formula to make it easy.

We all have that feeling when it comes to deadlines, they can loom in the distance until they are right overhead bearing down on you. Well, if you plan things in advance they are much easier to deal with.

When it comes to email marketing you really can break it down into simple tasks. Let’s think about it….

What is the frequency of the newsletter? How often do you want to engage with your audience? Or, how often do they want to hear from you… How much content do you need? We find that you can break it up into categories to make it easier e.g. A company news story | Something relevant to your customers, possibly from a third party news source | A selling opportunity.

Directly linked to the above, where is your content coming from? Does it need to be written in full and published online or will you be pointing people to other external sources? Remember, you don’t want to do too much of this, it’s better to point them at YOUR website.

What is your Call To Action (CTA)? This is arguably the most important aspect. Let’s be honest, you want your audience to engage with you so let them know.

Give them something of value and make sure you can track it. Maybe it’s a downloadable info sheet, maybe it’s a questionnaire. Perhaps it’s a suggestion to forward to a friend to help grow your list.

HOT TIP!
Adding photos, videos, or other visual elements
will make the copy more pleasing to the viewer’s eyes. It also provides a large clickable area to direct them to additional content on your website.

3. Subject Line

This may arguably be the most important part of your email. This is what is going to capture your audience’s attention and entice them to read it. Remember, if people have signed up to your newsletter they actually do want to hear from you, so don’t feel bad about “spamming” them because you are not. Spam is sending stuff that people have not asked for.

Your subject line needs to be genuine, you are trying to build a relationship with your audience so think about what will appeal to them while fitting with your brand message.

The main thing to remember is, what did your audience sign up for? If it was promotional offers, great, you can tell them about your latest offers, but if it wasn’t, don’t try to sell to them too much.

Here are some great subject line ideas we came across:

“Uh-oh, your prescription is expiring”
“What Did You Think? Write a Review.”
“Rock the color of the year”
“Black Friday shoppers are the worst customers”
“I got Botox—& THIS is what it looked like”
“Not Cool, Guys”
“DO NOT Commit These Instagram Atrocities”
“Everything you wanted to know about email copy but were too afraid to ask”
“China Falls, Sleepy Unicorns, And The Deals Aren’t Bigger In Texas”

4. Email Builder

There are plenty of free and paid email builders online that allow you to create seamless templates, provide organized subscriber categories and provide reporting metrics. The deciding factor in the platform we recommend for use will depend on the level and type of integrations you require for your business; however, we continually see Mailchimp set the benchmark as a professional marketing tool.

Signup for a free Mailchimp account here

5. Call to Action

This is where you lead your audience to take action in what you would like them to do. The CTA will depend on the first step -, your campaign goal. In most cases, you will want to lead your audience to purchase, to view/read more at your website or to download resources. Your CTA should reflect the original intent of the email.