5 email marketing tips to help you get started
If you’re looking to get started in email marketing, or are currently communicating with your customers via email and want to make sure your efforts are worth it, take a look at my top email marketing tips.
Segmentation
When sending an email, make sure you’re sending it to the most relevant database. There’s no point sending an email to a Western Australia database with a Brisbane promotion. It’s simply not relevant. This would affect your email conversions such as open rates and click through rates, and you are more likely to be marked as “spam” by the recipient. Instead, take care in segmenting your data and create as many lists as necessary to ensure that the most relevant people are receiving your messages. Depending on your industry and your messaging, you might like to segment by location, age, occupation or another identified interest specific to you. For instance, if you have the capabilities, you might already know your customers shopping habits and send them emails specifically about those types of products.
Subject Line
Your subject line is what entices people to open your email, so it needs to be catchy, engaging and relevant. If you’re not sure where to start, have a look at similar emails that you might receive yourself, and see what the subject lines are. With the better companies, you’ll find there are trends as they stick to what works. You should also use A/B testing when setting up your campaign as this gives you a more educated idea of what subject line is the most appealing for your database, as it is a direct survey of your data. An A/B test is where you set-up two subject lines, select a portion of your database to receive them over a certain period of time (4 hours is usually recommended), then at this end of this testing period, your email marketing client will analyse whether subject line A or B performed better and send the winning subject line to the remainder of the database.
A/B Testing
If you’re sending regular emails that are very similar (such as a monthly newsletter), chances are your subject lines will stay consistent. So once you have your subject lines sorted, it’s a good idea to A/B test a different metric to further improve your email statistics. By A/B testing the actual content of your email, maybe with a different banner image, or images vs no images, you can assess what type of content is the most appealing to your audience and what encourages them to click through.
Optimise for Mobile
With technology constantly advancing and multiple screen usage being the norm, it should be no surprise that we are well and truly in the age of mobile. When sending email communication to your database, it’s crucial to make sure your design is mobile responsive. You don’t want to run the risk of losing potential customers with an email that just doesn’t look good on mobile, even if you do have a great offer.
Consistency
One of the most important things in marketing is consistency and especially so in email marketing. By keeping a consistent day and time with your email communication, your audience will learn to expect your messages and look forward to receiving their daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly messages. Of course, your actual message should be consistent and on brand too, not just the day and time.
As consumers’ technology habits advance, so too does the effectiveness of marketing. Your message and your marketing can only be effective as long as it is of interest and value to your audience. To ensure that you maintain relevance, it’s important to periodically assess your email marketing strategy and keep up to date with the current trends. Email marketing might not be dead but yours could be if you don’t stay relevant and ensure you’re following best practices. To chat about your email marketing strategy and how this works with your overall marketing communication, get in touch!
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