11 Things You Need to be Doing Better with Your Email Marketing

A powerful tool, email marketing is employed by almost every business and is a very effective tool for communicating with customers. Whether you’ve just set up your email marketing, or if it’s been going for a while, it’s likely that you’ll go through phases where the engagement and open rates are low.

So what can you do to boost your metrics?

This blog post is going to look at 11 top tips you can utilise to help make the most of your email marketing.

1. Know your strategy

It’s no good sending for the sake of sending. You need to take a moment to think about your strategy and how this will affect your users.

Any email targeting new potential customers needs a clear call to action and maybe even a compelling offer. If your email is targeting existing customers then there are many potential objectives, for example; cross selling new products, reengaging lapsed clients, or even sending ‘how to’ guides to them to build brand loyalty.

2. Simple and to the point

If your emails are too long and clunky, people aren’t going to want to read them. They’ll become disinterested and be more likely to ignore the important point you’re trying to make. If you can say your point in one or two sentences, then don’t use five.

3. Why aren’t you using welcome emails?

You wouldn’t walk up to a stranger and start a conversation without introducing yourself, and so your emails should be treated the same way. Thank your subscriber for submitting their details to you, tell them a bit about you and get the conversation going.

Many organisations don’t understand the importance of welcome emails, but first impressions will always go a long way, irrelevant of whether that’s in a digital form or not.

4. Are you optimised?

Email is the most effective channel for maintaining communication with brands. By optimising your emails for mobile, you’re telling subscribers that your website is optimised too and mobile user friendly. More people are reading their emails via a mobile device than ever before, so don’t alienate any of your subscribers by neglecting mobile.

According to Return path, as many as 63% of US consumers delete emails if they see they’re not optimised of their mobile device.

5. There’s no such thing as too much testing

If you’re not testing your emails, why not? There’s no such thing as a perfect email and circumstances are forever changing, so you should be consistently testing and implementing changes. But don’t get caught up on the small stuff, work with the bigger picture to ensure you have more accurate results.

A/B testing is a common strategy for determining how well a different version of the email performs. This type of testing also allows you to experiment with single elements of the email to find out what works best.

6. Use automation when you need to

No-one has enough budget or resources to do everything manually. Automating some of your processes is nothing to be ashamed of. Providing it’s carefully monitored and handled correctly, automation can help to ease the pressure and allow you to work on managing other projects.

7. Build a relationship

Collecting information from subscribers and then not applying it to future emails is poor conduct. Personalising your emails to show subscribers you care about their individuality is the best way to keep their custom.

8. Learn to specialise in segmentation

For whatever reason, some of your subscribers are not going to open their emails. But why? You need to take the time to find out. Create a custom email and contact them directly to find out why they’re not interested, perhaps offer something extra to help re-engage them.

Segmenting your email list is a great way to create emails that are more tailored to the audience and therefore likely to boost engagement levels. How you choose to segment your list is entirely up to you because understanding that one size doesn’t fit all will help you to create a relationship with your audience and therefore allow you to be more strategic about audience growth.

9. Fine-tune your subject lines

If you’re sending out uninspiring subject lines, then your subscribers aren’t going to be particularly motivated to open the email. Think of your subject line as a window to the email – create something that entices them in and makes them want to know more.

10. What’s your copywriting like?

Copywriting is incredibly important as this will determine the next step taken by your subscribers. Ultimately the cost of getting your copy wrong is much less compared to the copy involved in creating a whitepaper, so it’s okay to try something new, maybe take a risk or two. And if you can, make it customer centric. Although you might be selling a product or service, a subscriber’s interests aren’t going to be about what’s best for you but what’s best for them, so be sure you’re appealing to that side of them.

11. Don’t get stuck with poor stock photography

Imagery is a powerful tool and if you’re using poor quality stock photos, your subscribers will notice. Try to think outside the box and relate your content to something that’s memorable or different.