A Content Overview – How to ‘Do’ Email Marketing
By Felicity Kay
Felicity@allthiscontent.com
When it comes to generating leads and client retention nothing beats email marketing. For the past 10 years, email marketing has been the most effective and cost-efficient method to connect with existing clients and attract new customers. Far more people use email than social media, and it’s a better long-term solution for engaging customers than any other platform.
All About Email Marketing
Email marketing can refer to sending out mass emails to a huge group of people, or an individual email to one customer. Essentially, every email you send to an existing or potential client is considered email marketing.
The most important part of an email is the subject line. This determines whether the recipient presses ‘delete’ or ‘open’. Good subject lines are:
- Catchy
- To the point
- Personalised
- Engaging
- Asking a question
- Creating urgency
The body of the email should address the reader by name, get straight to the point and make them feel privileged to be receiving your offer.
Email marketing is used to promote new offers, generate new leads and to engage with existing customers. Marketing emails often contain “Call To Action (CTA)” buttons that send readers to a landing page.
Best Practices For Using Email Marketing:
Email marketing is very competitive. The average consumer receives 90+ emails per day, so unless you have a truly eye-catching subject line, chances are your email is going straight in the trash without being opened.
So how do you run an effective and profitable email marketing campaign?
- Keep it simple: Don’t babble on about your company/product etc. Keep the email text short and sweet and encourage recipients to click on the CTA button/link.
- Segmentation: If you have a varied consumer base, then you must ‘segment’ your emails. This means creating different emails for each demographic, i.e. one for males under 30, one for women over 50 etc. Segmentation helps you get far better click rates.
- Personalise: Emails should be human-to-human communication. Address the recipient by name, use “please” and “thank you” and try to make the recipient feel as though they were singled out for this promotion.
- A/B testing: If you have two different email marketing strategies, i.e. two subject lines, then send out a small batch of emails, half with one subject line, half with the other. Record which emails received a higher click rate and then double down on those.
Common Mistakes In Writing For Email Marketing
- Not mobile-friendly: More people read emails on their phones than on a desktop.If your email content is not mobile-friendly you will lose a lot of potential customers.
- Sending “Do-not-reply” emails: No-one likes communicating with a robot. Send your emails from an address that customers can reply to.
- No value for the recipient: If your email promotion screams “give us money now”, you probably won’t get good results. Your email should highlight the value for the recipient, i.e. what they gain from this promotion and why they need it.
- Spammy subject lines: Your subject line must match the email content. If you use a spammy subject line that just gets people to click on the email but does not relate to the offer, people will lose trust in your company.
