You don’t need a refresher on the benefits of email marketing. If you market directly to consumers, you’re no doubt aware of its importance.
Whether you’re getting enough out of your current email marketing framework is another question entirely.
You know enough to know whether you need to make a change (or changes). These seven simple fixes will help you do just that, fast.
1. Get Prospects in Your Funnel ASAP
You need to let every new site visitor know right away that you want them on your email list. Don’t wait for them to make an affirmative decision: Hit them with a mobile-friendly on-screen prompt—not a separate popup window—as soon as their browser finishes loading the page.
Though most visitors won’t sign up on the first go, you’ll have planted the seed. Once they’ve had a chance to look around your site a bit, they’re likelier to take it upon themselves to join your mailing list—or actually respond to the sign-up prompt next time they visit.
2. Ditch the Overly Generic Campaigns
Overly generic email marketing campaigns are all too common—and entirely preventable.
You don’t have to look far for successful case studies. Back in 2012, Canadian e-commerce company Beyond the Rack hired ExactTarget, now a multibillion-dollar subsidiary of Salesforce, to deliver personalized marketing emails to the retailer’s 15 million subscribers. ExactTarget used each prospect’s past browsing and buying habits to populate marketing emails with two dozen or so unique image links, then added generic but snappy copy and CTAs to seal the deal.
Nothing’s stopping your organization from doing the same.
3. Make Your Emails Mobile-Friendly
Resist the temptation to stuff as much content as possible into your marketing emails. Sharing every last promotion, new product, and company news item doesn’t actually help your prospects at all. If anything, it overwhelms them.
Good news: You can fix this. Make fonts and buttons larger, spread out images, reduce the number of discrete elements, and write copy that gets to the point quickly. Moving forward, never forget that marketing emails themselves don’t sell anything. That’s your website’s job. The emails just have to get your prospects in the door.
4. Use Personalized Copy
In an email marketing context, “personalized copy” means “first-name basis.” A few well-placed geographical references don’t hurt either. Your prospects should feel like you know exactly who they are—which, if you’re doing your job, you should.
5. Think Twice About Image-Heavy Messages
Don’t rely too heavily on in-message images. Some popular email platforms, such as Outlook, block images by default. While there are legitimate ways around image blockers, it’s a safer bet to design marketing emails around text elements, rather than risk sloppy or uneven presentation.
6. Test Subject Lines Relentlessly
The “ideal” subject line is a myth, but there are some formulations that work better than others. If you have the resources, consider developing a subject line-writing algorithm in-house or using a trusted solution to iterate faster than your human team can.
If you’re doing things the old-fashioned way, remember to watch out for words that trigger spam filters. In either case, pay close attention to open and click-through rates—they’re your campaign’s lifeblood.
7. Send from a Real Address
Prevent your marketing emails from falling down the Promotional folder black hole by sending them from legitimate addresses rather than “noreply” accounts. The ideal sender is a senior marketing employee or executive.
Have another way to improve email marketing efforts? Please share in the comments section below.
