Let’s say you’ve got an email marketing campaign in the works. Maybe you’re promoting a new product or service, or maybe you’re just trying to get people to sign up for your newsletter. Either way, you’ll want to send out a bunch of emails to your customers and prospects to build interest in your offering and encourage them to take action.
What would you put in those emails? People usually think about content when it comes to email marketing. But beyond just having interesting content, you’ll also want to consider how you want the email to look. When you’re designing the email, you’ll have Aweber or MailChimp lay out all of your emails perfectly lined up in rows on a page. But you’re the boss. You get to decide how each email should look and which links should be included.
Use Proper Etiquette
Whether you’re sending the emails from a personal or business account, always assume good intentions. Polite language and appropriate etiquette go a long way. Remember, too, that people who receive your emails might be offended if you don’t adhere to good etiquette – even if the offense is unintentional, you don’t want to offend anyone, especially in a place of business or social contact.
For example, instead of saying ‘Hello,’ start the email with ‘Dear.’ This is known as ‘formatted’ email and is used when sending the emails from a computer. When you’re sending them from your phone, you’ll simply type a greeting.
Avoid Clutter
Avoid sending lots of unnecessary email. If you’re just communicating to say ‘hello’ or ‘thank you,’ that’s all you need. If you have further details that you think people might be interested in, you can include them in an attachment or in a footnote at the bottom of the email. But don’t make the email overly lengthy – people have limited attention spans, especially when trying to work through their emails on a mobile device.
Include Calls To Action
If you’ve got a lot of content in your email, it can be hard to know where to stop. But you’ve got limited space, and you don’t want to bore your readers. The key is to keep things relevant while not overwhelming your audience with a lot of unnecessary information.
Wherever possible, include a call to action in your email. This could be a request for more information, a link to a specific page on your site, or an offer to subscribe to your newsletter. The call to action should be clear and pertinent, and it should drive the reader to take the desired action.
Avoid Plagiarism
Plagiarism is copying and pasting content from one place (usually a website) and including it in your work without proper attribution. This is a fast way to lose credibility with your audience. If you think someone might have plagiarized one of your articles and you’re not sure where the content came from, contact the site owner to get the proper attribution. You could also reach out to the community manager of the site, and they can help you figure out where the content originated.
Check For Grammatical Errors
Grammar can be the difference between a poorly written email and a brilliant piece. Even if you’ve written a bestselling book or you’re an expert in your field, you’ll still want to proofread your work before sending it out. You don’t want to ruin the effect that your writing and compelling arguments have by misspelling a word or using bad grammar. And if you’re sending the email to a lot of people, you’ll want to make sure that it’s properly spelled and punctuated. Spell check and grammar check are great tools for identifying errors before sending your email.
Formatting Your Email
When we’re talking about email marketing, most people think about the content that they’ll use to lure people in, hook them into their email list and then entertain them with informative messages about products and services. But there’s a lot more to designing an effective email than putting interesting content into it.
Depending on how you want the email to look, you’ll have to format it accordingly. You can do this using either Aweber or MailChimp, each of which have dedicated areas in the dashboard where you can customize the look of every email.
Familiarize Yourself With AWeber & MailChimp
If you’ve never used these platforms, it might be hard to know what to expect. But you’ll want to familiarize yourself with them quickly and then use them to their full potential to create your perfectly formatted, linked email marketing messages.
In the Aweber and MailChimp world, every email looks the same. But you, the marketer, decide which ones should have content in them, links to pages on your site, or calls to action and which ones should be blank. These platforms do all the heavy lifting, meaning you don’t have to worry about sending out a high volume of emails and keeping them looking fresh. Familiarizing yourself with these platforms will help you take advantage of their capabilities and create the best possible experience for your readers.
Design The Email To Fit The Purpose
You’ll start by putting together a detailed plan before you begin creating your email. Why are you sending the email? What action do you need the reader to take? This will affect the way that you format the email, the content that you include, and the links or calls to action that you choose.
For example, if your goal is to build a list of subscribers who will then sign up for a free trial of your CRM software, you may want to create an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. Alternatively, you could start with an incentive like a free ebook or a discount code for your website or online store.
Avoid Over-Use Of Links
Too many links can break an email’s formatting, so it’s best to only include a few in each email. But even then, make sure that they’re relevant and connected to the topic of the email. If you’ve got a lot of links in one email, it can distort the message completely.
For example, you may want to include a link to your blog in every email you send out. But if the focus of your email is how to increase your social media engagement, you may not want to bombard your audience with too many links to other sites.
Use Short And Sweet
Shorter emails usually get better engagement. Your email might only be a few paragraphs, and that’s enough to keep your reader’s attention.
People are getting more attention deprived. With so much content coming at us from all angles, it can be hard to find the time to really focus on a single subject matter anymore. Keep your emails short and sharp to encourage people to read and engage with your content.
Formatting A Linked Email Marketing Campaign
Linked emails are common these days. When someone subscribes to your email list, you’ll usually get a notification telling you that they’ve joined a network, which may also include other emails from your network that they’re connected to. You can use these emails to send out content that’s not directly related to your product or service.
The important thing is that you continue to build and grow your email list. Use the emails that you receive to engage with your audience, and stay connected to them so that they continue to see your messages when they’re published.