Email Marketing is all the rage right now. More and more businesses are sending out mass emails to various groups of people as a part of their marketing strategy. This blog post will discuss some basics of effective email marketing as well as give you some tips on how to master this important tactic.
Why Email Marketing?
In the past, people got in the habit of reading newspaper articles and getting their news from magazines and TV shows. With the advent of social media, people are now getting their news and entertainment from sites like Twitter and Facebook. Naturally, this trend has started to influence email marketing as well. Now is the time to be connected to your audience and keep them engaged with content that is both relevant and interesting.
Let’s look at some numbers. According to research, 60% of the American adults use email. In addition, 68% of those adults use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. If you’re not already using these platforms to connect with your audience, now might be the right time to start.
The Power of Personalization
There is a reason why people choose to receive emails from brands they know and trust. When you send personalized emails, you give the recipient a feeling of uniqueness. In turn, this makes them more receptive to your message.
For instance, if you’re selling weight loss products, you may want to tailor your email messages to contain only the information that is most relevant to the person reading it. According to research, when email marketers personalize their messages, they see a 15% increase in open rates and a 22% increase in click-through rates.
The Power of Scheduling
Scheduling allows you to plan out when you will send your emails. This gives you a measure of control over your messaging and lets you craft the perfect email to fit your needs.
Imagine you run a real estate business. You might want to consider scheduling a series of emails to go out at regular intervals (i.e. once a month) as part of your marketing plan. These emails could contain information about buying real estate, getting a mortgage, etc.
The key takeaway from this example is that email scheduling helps you control when and where your audience gets their news. If you need to send out a promotional email and you don’t want to end up in your spam folder, you can set up a few reminders along with the email.
Create Personas And Targeted Communities
Creating targeted communities and personas is essential to the effective use of email marketing.
To start, choose one or two key phrases that you think your audience might use to search for the type of content you offer. For example, if you’re an online real estate company, you might want to consider targeting individuals searching for a mortgage for $100k and above. The benefit of doing this is that you can then tailor your content to fit their needs.
You can also choose to segment your audience by gender, age, location, and other demographic factors. By doing this, you can ensure that your messaging is relevant to the person reading it.
Once you have your key phrases and segments, create personas. A persona is a stereotype or a fictional character used to represent a set of characteristics. You can think of personas in the same way you would think of customers—i.e. as individuals who have unique buying habits, interests, and motivations.
For example, if you’re selling weight loss products, you may want to create a female persona in your mind named “Jane Smith.” This persona might live in San Francisco and is interested in health and fitness products.
Use the information you gathered to create individual email marketing templates. These templates can be a great starting point for your next email campaign. To keep things simple, you can use a service like MailChimp to effortlessly manage all of your email marketing.
Craft Subject Lines That Appeal To The Reader
The Subject line of your email is one of the most important parts. It should be short, sweet, and straight to the point. When crafting the perfect subject line, keep in mind that your goal is to get the attention of your reader.
Subject lines that are shorter provide better open rates and click-through rates. The key is to keep it concise while still being interesting.
To test the effectiveness of your subject lines, you can simply paste them into Google and see how others are ranking. You can also use tools like MailChimp that allow you to analyze both your open rates and click-through rates. Don’t worry—you can hide this information from others. Simply click on the “View Reports” button and you can see the numbers without anyone else knowing.
Make Your Email Marketing Fun
People enjoy receiving emails that are both fun and engaging. When you provide value to your audience, they will be more inclined to engage with you. The key is to make your emails interesting, informative, and, above all, entertaining. You can accomplish this by using various techniques, but one of the most effective ways is by using humor.
Humor doesn’t have to be over-the-top or vulgar to be effective. Instead, you can use comedy or satire to draw your audience into your email marketing. If you’re not familiar, satire is a style of writing that mocks or lampoons something often considered ridiculous or stupid. For example, if you’re writing about real estate, you might want to utilize satire to make your point about the sub-prime mortgage crisis or the benefits of buying a home versus renting an apartment.
Satire can be used for serious purposes as well. For example, if you’re writing to inform your audience about the government-induced sub-prime mortgage crisis, you could use this type of writing to expose and criticize the policies that created this issue. In general, the key is to find the right balance between being informative and entertaining.
Make Sure Your Website Is Informed Of Email Marketing
As mentioned above, people are getting their news and entertainment from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Naturally, this has influenced email marketing as well. To keep up with the times, you should have a look at your website from the point-of-view of an average person using these services. This will help ensure that your site is simple to understand and easy to navigate.
If you’re concerned about your site being difficult to understand, use a usability testing service to review your web pages for roughness and errors. Once you make any necessary fixes, you can have the pages reviewed again to ensure that the changes are taking effect.
Avoid Placing Too Much Text
While shorter, snappier subject lines and a little humor go a long way, too much text quickly dilutes the power of a well-crafted email. To make your message mean more, you can utilize a number of techniques, but one of the simplest and most effective ways is to avoid over-use of text in your email.
If you’re writing to inform your audience of a product or service, the key is to keep the email concise and focused. Don’t make the mistake of filling your email with a lot of text. Instead, use a tool like Bulletpoint to make your point quickly and simply.
Use Key Word Drip Marketing
Key word drip marketing is a form of content marketing that involves planting key words and phrases in your content to attract the right audience. When you do this, you are essentially “drip-feeding” your key words to people as you produce content.
To test the effectiveness of your key word strategy, you can use Google Keyword Planner. This tool will populate a Keyword Cloud around the key words and phrases you enter. You can use this cloud to identify the most popular searches as well as searches that have the potential to convert into leads or customers.
Once you have this information, you can use it to determine which content to create and promote.
Regular Updates On The Latest Trends
Consumers expect regular updates from brands they love and trust. To keep your audience interested, create a habit of sending out regular updates on the latest trends and advancements in your industry. If you’re an online real estate company, you might want to consider sending out a weekly or even monthly email update about the industry news.
As part of your marketing plan, you can use tools like MailChimp to easily create and send out your regular email updates. Simply enter your email address and you can get started creating your first email today.