By Scott Cohen, Marketing Copywriter for Western Governors University
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Key Concepts: 1. Email marketing, when done right, delivers the highest return on your investment (ROI) of any marketing medium available. 2. There are certain best practices you can employ to ensure a successful campaign. |
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Email marketing, when done right, delivers the highest return on your investment (ROI) of any marketing medium available. It’s inexpensive, easy to send, and provides the quickest way for someone to see what you have to offer—provided it’s done right. Here are some simple ideas for getting the most out of email.
Establish Your Email Strategy
A crucial step towards effective email marketing is deciding how you want to use email to reach your marketing goals. What will you use it for? To reach new customers? Nurture a relationship with your best customers? A big decision here.
Respect Your Subscriber
It’s critical to remember that email is an opt-in marketing method—meaning people must give you permission to email them. It’s not just a best practice, it’s also the law.
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If you enjoyed this article, you might also be interested in this helpful information: 60 Second Videos: Articles: The Top 18 Things to Measure in Your Next Email Marketing Campaign |
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Respecting your customer also speaks to proper segmentation of your message (which I’ll go into greater detail below), and sending the right frequency of messages. Track complaints and feedback from the end users carefully and adjust as needed to ensure you keep your reputation.
Segment Your Audience Properly
A colleague of mine, DJ Waldow, wrote that the “Perfect Email is like the Perfect Meal:”
“The perfect email is like the perfect meal. In order to send the perfect email you must: Send timely, targeted, relevant emails to subscribers who have asked for them.”
The great thing about email is you can segment your audience in pretty much any way you can think of. Just be sure whatever segmentation strategy you use speaks to your overall strategy.
Keep in Mind How Subscribers Encounter Email
Subscribers view your email in the following order (provided they open and read your message):
1. Sender Name and Address
Be sure to consistently use a sender name that is recognizable. Avoiding individuals’ names is a good idea as well. Be sure your brand is clear in your sender name.
2. Subject Line and Snippet Text
Subject line length is everything. If it’s short, you’ll get opens. If it’s long, statistics say your click-through rate is better.
Snippet text is the 40-75 characters from the top of the email message that get placed next to the subject line in Outlook, Gmail, and Mobile Devices. Good snippet text can significantly improve your email metrics.
3. Images Off.
Over half of all email inboxes block images in email by default. If you’re sending a message that is just one giant image, you could be in trouble. How you bypass this suppression:
• Mix HTML text with the images. Be sure to have your HTML text carry the crux of the message—namely the call-to-action.
• Provide Alt-Text on the images.
• Use “Preheader” text that carries your call-to-action as well as possibly a link to where your completely visible message can be seen on a webpage.
4. Preview Pane.
7 in 10 use it, so be sure to view your email in preview mode prior to sending it out.
5. Full message.
By understanding the above-mentioned 5 ways that subscribers view your emails, you can ensure better results from your efforts.
Deliverability—Getting into the Inbox
You can have the best email message in the world. But if it doesn’t reach the inbox, it won’t matter. Deliverability is dependent on a number of factors. Your best bet for ensuring solid deliverability and improving your metrics in this capacity would be to use an Email Service Provider or go directly to:
Remember: It’s really easy to destroy your reputation, and a ton of work to bring yourself back, so be careful!
Test test test!
Perhaps the greatest advantage of email marketing is the ability to test. You can test based on segmentation, creative content, sending times; pretty much anything you can think of, you can test pretty easily through email.
Resources You Can Use
Here are some of the resources I use for email marketing. They’ll probably be helpful for you as well:
Blogs:
Books:
The Truth About Email Marketing (Simms Jenkins)
Sign Me Up! (Blumberg, Forman, and Miller)
Email Marketing by the Numbers (Chris Baggot)
The Practical Guide to Email Marketing (Jordan Ayan)
Author Bio
Scott Cohen is the Marketing Copywriter for Western Governors University. Scott writes and manages copy for the university’s public website, email marketing campaigns, and direct mail campaigns. Scott also writes on his personal blog and contributes his opinions and critiques on email marketing on The Email Zoo Blog. You can connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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