You’ve Got Mail! Top Tips For Nailing Your Email Marketing
The all too familiar ‘ping’ as yet another email hits your inbox doesn’t always fill you with joy, particularly if it’s one of a hundred sales emails you receive on a daily basis.
“50% off sale now on!”
“Are you paying too much for your car insurance?”
“Don’t miss out on our latest promotion!”
Ringing any bells?
It’s very easy for pushy marketing emails to drive customers towards the ‘unsubscribe’ button, especially if their inbox is constantly flooded with the same, predictable promotional content. This isn’t to say that email marketing, however, isn’t valuable. In fact, a recent study revealed that 75% of marketers rate it as the most effective means of digital marketing in terms of return on investment (ROI).
Email campaigns (done right) offer a variety of marketing opportunities, including nurturing leads, raising brand awareness and promoting new products- and with four billion email users worldwide, you’re unlikely to be short on potential customers.
Making sure that your email engages and inspires as opposed to receiving an eye roll is integral to running a successful email campaign. You don’t want to end up with a mailing list full of unsubscribers. Especially, after the hard work of building up that contact list in the first place.
Before you jump into an email campaign, it’s important that you ask yourself the following questions:
What is the main purpose of the email campaign?
Although it may sound like an obvious question, it’s surprisingly common for brands to get so wrapped up in their email content that they forget the reason why they’re even sending it in the first place. The content you feature in your email should be directly influenced by its purpose- not the other way round.
If its purpose is to generate increased traffic to your website, then drawing attention to a new landing page or recent blog post is a good place to start. Alternatively, if your intention is lead generation, offering something to the customer, or promoting the features and benefits of your product/service is a good way to go.
Who are you targeting?
At the risk of sounding sinister, it’s important to ask yourself who you’re hoping to target with your new email campaign. Bombarding existing clients and customers with promotional on-boarding emails is not only likely to make them feel undervalued, but also a little bit annoyed.
As a regular customer, you want to be spoken to like a friend rather than an investment opportunity; using the email campaign as a chance to show how your company is developing and the impact that it has on existing clients is a much better way of raising awareness than promoting a new on-boarding offer.
If you’ve got the tools to do so, organise your targeted list into more refined groups, taking into account factors like location, industry, and their current stage in the buying process if you’re a B2C company.
Having identified who you’re targeting and why, it’s now time to start drafting your campaign.
Aside from writing engaging and accessible content, we’ve got a few tips to help make sure that your emails aren’t sent straight to junk.
Give your subject line an edge
A subject line is the first thing an email user will see when a message pops into their inbox, so make it count! The best subject lines are often short (no more than ten words) and eye-catching, with just enough detail to pique the consumer’s curiosity.
Here are a few great examples:
1) ‘It’s a date 💋’- To advertise its new range of lipsticks, Cosmetics giant Too Faced opted for a kiss emoji to let the product speak for itself. Letting customers know that the email contains details of their lipsticks without spelling it out was a great way to help open rates.
2) ‘Spring cleaning? Time to dust off that passport ☀️’– To entice Brits to browse/book a Spring holiday via Booking.com; a fantastic play on words that may get you thinking. The use of the sun emoji also catches your eye.
3) ‘2022 will be a year for road trips.’ – Again, another inspiring subject line. Making the user imagine and paint a picture. This could be especially convincing if opened during a miserable, rainy day in England.
4) ‘Hungry? Get up to 75% off with Uber Eats.’- Simple and to the point and with a clear incentive to the customer. Even if you have just done a food shop, you would be tempted to order in if this landed in your inbox one evening after a busy day at work.
Find the right tool
Piecing together a newsletter or promotional launch on a Word document might seem like the easiest option, but it’s not going to look professional when it slides into people’s inboxes.
There are plenty of online tools available to help you build an effective email campaign that are easily customisable and allow you to insert a whole range of media, including images and videos. Tools like MailChimp and Hubspot offer templates for email campaigns that you can simply add your content to and send to your contacts through their mailing list.
Focus on design and layout
Remember, people often read emails (especially promotional emails) on the go or when relaxing at home. The information needs to be digestible and pleasing to the eye, or you won’t grab their attention. Big blocks of text and slow loading images are a no no.
Look at this example below of the Booking.com email previously mentioned. The information is broken down into 5 simple steps with the use of inspiring imagery, headers and buttons.
Don’t Forget Your Call-to-Actions
So you’ve added your new content onto an email template with some eye-catching images and a cracking subject line- but don’t forget your calls to action! These will be directly influenced by the purpose of your email campaign, and ought to be easy for the consumer to find. Whether this be a brightly coloured button or a link to a recent blog, your call to action is ultimately what will drive traffic to your website.
Pure Gym, for example, uses a simple ‘Sign Me Up’ button in bold orange to direct subscribers to their website. For existing customers, the email also includes the member’s individual pin and a discount code to encourage monthly renewals.
Be Personal
The key to creating a successful email marketing campaign is to make your targeted consumers/clients feel like individuals, not walking pound signs. Although people are aware that they’re not being sent emails that have been crafted specifically for them, it always feels more personal when an email addresses them by name.
Which opening sounds better?
TIP: If you decide to personalise your emails, make sure you test it first. There’s nothing more off-putting to a customer when they receive an email starting with ‘Dear {name}…’. A mistake that’s easy to make, but even easier to fix by simply sending out a tester email!
Test your emails and then test them again
The last thing you want after sending out your first email campaign is for your company to go viral for the wrong reasons. A simple spelling mistake or a broken link might not sound like a big deal, but it’s not going to look good to new and existing customers, who might interpret the email as spam.
Send a tester email out to yourself and your colleagues before you contact your mailing lists, not just to check for errors but also to see how it looks on different screens. This is the perfect time to experiment and see your email campaign through the eyes of your target consumers.
Keen to start an email campaign but still got questions? Grab a coffee with our friendly team today and see how we can help you get off on the right foot.
