Erika Montgomery — May 3, 2018 — May 3, 2018
Follow these 9 tips for a successful email marketing campaign.
Is email marketing part of your business’ strategy yet? It needs to be! As Emily’s article about creating a marketing budget explains:
- Statista reports there were 3.7 billion email users in 2017, and that’s projected to grow to 4.3 billion by 2022.
- According to eMarketer, email had a median ROI of 122 percent; that’s four times higher than social media, direct mail and paid search marketing formats.
- Hubspot reports 86 percent of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly.
In addition, e-newsletters are:
- Cost-effective
- Efficient
- Easy to create and read
- A way to strengthen relationships and establish brand loyalty
9 Helpful Email Marketing Tips
Are you ready to get started with your company’s email marketing campaign? Here are 9 tips to jump in!
1. Invest in an Email Marketing Platform
In addition to providing templates that make formatting much easier, services like MailChimp and Constant Contact provide a place to manage your contacts, allows customization (such as inserting a first name), and tracks analytics like opens and clicks.
2. Remember Your Branding
Most email marketing platforms have set templates you can customize; pick one that’s the layout you like and select fonts, colors, logos and images to match your brand.
3. Distribute Emails Regularly
Decide how often you’ll send out your e-newsletter and create a schedule. You don’t want to send it out too frequently, although you do want it to be distributed to readers regularly. At Three Girls, we’ve found two or three distributions every month is plenty for keeping customers up-to-date. Once you have a schedule, set up reminders on your calendar or phone so you stay on track.
4. Choose Images Carefully
Make sure you only use photos you are legally allowed to use in your email marketing messages – take them with your own camera or purchase them from a stock photo website to be safe.
5. Remember the Mobile User
Research shows 64 percent of decision-makers read their email via mobile devices. If your newsletter doesn’t load correctly on mobile devices, or is formatted in a way that’s hard to read, recipients won’t take your email seriously.
6. Plan Ahead
Don’t leave creating your email newsletter to the last minute. A strong email marketing message can’t be done well slammed together in half an hour. Allow yourself plenty of time to write the content, let it sit for at least an hour (overnight is better), and then come back to it and proofread, proofread, proofread! Spelling errors are costly mistakes and diminish your brand in your audience’s eyes. Ideally, you’ll start putting your e-newsletter together about a week before you plan to distribute it.
7. Craft a Strong, Enticing Subject Line
The subject line is one of the most important parts of your newsletter; if you don’t encourage people to open your email, you’ll never be able to hook them for a sale, no matter how great the content is. 64 percent of people say they have opened an email based on its subject line, so make sure yours is engaging.
8. Include a Strong Call to Action
After reading your newsletter, you’ll want your customers to take action in the form of making a purchase or contacting you for details about your offerings – otherwise what’s the point of your email marketing campaign? Make it clear what you want readers to do by including a strong call to action.
9. Review the Analytics
How will you be able to measure success without objective data? Each time a newsletter is distributed, take a look at how many recipients open it, which links they click, if they forward it, etc. As you look at this information, try to notice any trends you see emerging. Do your readers seem to like a particular type of content more than another? Is the open rate higher or lower when you send it in the afternoon as opposed to the morning? Pay attention to these tendencies and adjust your email marketing campaign accordingly.
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