Email marketing over traditional marketing all day long. It’s quicker, it’s cheaper and it allows you to be incredibly reactive to current affairs. Allow me to explain.
A traditional print mailer or telesales campaign can take weeks of planning and development to finally implement. Marketing emails, however, can be completed in just a few hours. You can literally send messages daily and keep up to date with real-time affairs.
Email marketing also allows you to personalise your approach. A simple “Hello Tony” or “Hello Stephanie” can really go a long way, rather than a generic print mailer.
And so, without further ado, here are 5 ways to get better results from your email marketing.
Be Personal
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I send and receive A LOT of emails. What is so special about yours that it deserves my attention? Am I sold by your subject line? …. Yes? Good Start
Have you addressed me with my actual name, rather than a generic “hello”? Yes? That’s better.
Have you asked me interesting, relevant questions that I’m tempted to answer? Yes? Brilliant!
Being personal with your email marketing approach is key. Sell yourself to me first, then your products or services.
Cater to people’s needs
We are experiencing a smartphone revolution. 60% of mobile phone users in the UK currently use a smartphone and 48% of all emails are now opened on a smartphone.
https://litmus.com/blog/48-of-emails-are-opened-on-mobile-gmail-opens-down-20-since-tabs
My points here being, don’t bother sending out emails that aren’t optimised for mobile use. This is the future, it’s how people access their accounts – so by making them mobile-friendly will increase your results from email marketing. It’s also important not to overload with attachments – again, your recipient will not be able to open more than one at a time.
Be a help, not a hindrance.
Utilise social media to increase your email list
It’s especially important to think about the people you are approaching with your emails. What do they do? What do they want? What will excite them?
Use your social media account to increase traffic to your website and encourage your followers to sign up to your newsletter. It could be with a competition, giveaway, discounts or exclusive members content.
The most important thing to remember here is that people are already following you on social. They are all relevant contacts who are interested in what you have to say. They just have to be made aware of your newsletter and need a final push to sign up.
Create custom audiences
Here’s one that was suggested by Simon Penson, Managing Director of Zazzle Media – which is again, centred around how you can utilise your social media following to drive better results from your email marketing.
“A great way to really boost your email response is to leverage the list through social. You can use Twitter Tailored Audiences or work through Facebook’s Power Editor to create a custom audience using your email list. That will allow you to push messaging to those same people while they are using their social channels. Although you will see some slight cost increases, you’ll see open rates improve and brand engagement skyrocket.”
Pick your timings and stick to them!
According to Experian Marketing Services, emails that are sent between 8pm and midnight receive the best open rates. This block not only excelled in open rates, but also saw significantly improved click through and final sales results.
It’s clear there are hotspots in the day where your customers are more inclined to open their emails and indeed act upon them. Do your research into these times to figure out when you should be sending your mailers out in order to maximise your sales.
This post has been written by Chris Rowson, Managing Director of eCO2 Greetings & Ecard Shack.
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