Recently, email has been touted as … the new ’email’.
What does this mean ?
Simply put, despite the growth and proliferation of Social Media, email remains one of the most effective means of both distributing your message or offer, and subsequently engaging with your target market.
But many businesses seem to struggle with effective email marketing.
A recent infographic by Internet Marketing Inc provides some simple but powerful advice regarding important tips that can help your business in 2014.
Mobile or Bust
For businesses that do not optimize email for mobile, the results are stark. Survey results from market research firms such as ExactTarget and Return Path indicate that up to 75% of consumers delete emails immediately if they are not optimized for mobile.
So offer an optimal mobile experience from the beginning.
If your very first email is perfectly optimized for mobile, visitors will more likely consume your content and engage with your brand.
Keep the Designs Simple & Sharp
Unless you are adept at graphic design, and possibly HTML, it is probably best to rely on some tried and tested templates readily available from within some of the more popular email marketing services, such as Aweber, Mailchimp, Constant Contact etc.
At the very least they will provide you with a starting point. They could even provide you with inspiration for your very own layouts.
Look more closely at the commercial emails you get now. Which ones do you like, which ones match your brand and style ?
More importantly, you should try more than one, and test which are the most effective.
Like This
There was a time when sharing email content needed to be done … by email. Go figure.
Now, if you want to increase your chances of your content or offers being shared more widely, simply add Social Sharing tags.
By adding Social Sharing tags ( for social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) , you give your subscribers the means to share your Email to their own personal networks.
As a direct result, when you write compelling and relevant content, carefully targeted to your market, your subscribers will inevitably be more inclined to share.
Even if you only have one social media network, make the most of it.
Expert Advice
This is undoubtedly the hardest part of email marketing to get right.
Your content strategy should dictate what you syndicate, and how often. If you don’t have a content strategy, then create one. The sooner the better.
The right mix of content generally goes like this : 60% – helpful industry information (and related humour), 20% – your own content, 10% – promotional offers.
The majority component will be content carefully curated from other reputable sources. The offers should usually be sent no earlier than the 6th or 7th email,
Unjunk The Inbox
An excellent way to further optimise your email campaigns would be to segment your distribution lists.
The more segmented or grouped, your email lists are, the more easily you can identify the right content and offers to make.
Not everyone is interested in everything your business has to offer. And the more personal your email, the better chance of engagement.
Make The Email Signup Easy
So this sounds kind of obvious, doesn’t it ? However it never ceases to amaze me to see businesses with the strong expectation of growing subscriber lists, that muff this.
They either have their opt-in forms either below the fold, or in a hard to reach places.
Another aspect that is often overlooked, is the importance of having compelling CTAs, Calls To Action.
It is imperative to tell your visitor WHY they should subscribe, and ensure there are ethical bribes waiting for them to reward them for taking action.
Permission Only
Seth Godin is famous for coining the term “permission marketing”. It is ” the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them” .
Businesses should ideally first seek permission before sending prospects email marketing messages.
As such, you will find that the more reputable email marketing systems use what is called a double opt-in. Even after you subscribe through an opt-in form, you will receive an email asking you to confirm your desire to join the distribution list.
This not only reduces spam, but can gold-plate your domain quality score.
Then, once you receive explicit permission ( usually via a double opt-in ), the next steps include personalisation, optimisation and building a segmentable consumer profile.
Play nice, get permission !
