10 Tips: How to Succeed with Email Marketing
Do you want to succeed at email marketing, but don’t know how? Sometimes it can be hard to see the forest for the trees, and email marketing consists of several important components that all need to be taken into account before it pays off.
Let Amplify create email marketing campaigns that deliver results for your business. Contact us today and let our specialists help you.
Why should you use email marketing?
Email marketing is one of the oldest tools in a marketer’s arsenal. However, that doesn’t mean email marketing is “outdated.” Quite the opposite, in fact. There are three times as many email accounts as there are Facebook and Twitter profiles combined. That’s why email is still going strong and remains an effective strategy for converting leads into customers.
However, getting permission to send emails to people is easier said than done, and it’s actually only the first step on the path to a successful email marketing strategy. In fact, it’s largely the emails you send afterward that create value in the long run.
That's why we've put together 10 tips to help you make your email marketing more effective in every way.
1. Define Your Goal
One of the very first things you should do is ask yourself: “Why should I use email marketing at all?” If you don’t have a goal for using email marketing, you won’t achieve the results you want.
That’s why you should take a step back and consider what your actual goal with email marketing is. It could be, for example:
- Be “top of mind” so that your business is the first one your customers think of when they need help or are looking for a preferred partner.
- Educate potential customers and build trust so they realize that you are the most qualified partner on the market.
- Remind existing customers to use your products or services.
Once you're clear on your goal for using email marketing, it will also be easier to define your target audience and optimize your emails so they support your goals.
2. Find the right balance between information and sales
When you send emails to customers, it’s important to strike the right balance between providing information and promoting sales. It may be tempting to simply send potential customers a great offer, but you shouldn’t overwhelm them with offers. First, you need to build trust with them—for example, through content marketing.
A good rule of thumb is that your emails should consist of 90% information and 10% sales. That way, you won’t scare your leads away before they’ve gotten to know your business.
3. Make sure there is consistency between the opt-in text and the newsletter itself
You have to keep your promises. You’ve probably heard that before, and it applies to email marketing as well. That’s why there needs to be consistency between what’s on the page where the recipient signs up to receive emails from you and what your emails actually contain. If that’s not the case, you’ll lose your customers’ trust.
In addition, the GDPR sets certain requirements that you may only send content related to the topics described in the opt-in text in your emails.
To build trust between you and the customer, it’s therefore best to be as specific as possible in the opt-in text. Tell the recipient exactly what to expect when they receive emails from you—and, if possible, how often they can expect to receive them.
4. Give your emails an engaging subject line
Even if potential customers have signed up to receive your emails, there’s no guarantee they’ll open them. To achieve a high open rate, you need to make the subject line interesting. Your job is to convince the recipient that they should spend 10–30 seconds of their time reading your email.
But how exactly do you do that?
- First, you need to make it clear what the recipient will get out of your email. For example, you can start your subject line with: “Get the best…,” “Learn all about…,” or “Don’t miss out on.”
- Personalize your emails so they seem relevant to each recipient.
- Be clear and to the point. By that I mean you shouldn’t wrap your messages in clichés and phrases that are hard to decipher. Instead, speak plainly and keep your subject lines under 50 characters.
- Conduct an A/B test to test different versions of your subject line on a small group of your recipients to see what works.
5. Create a call to action
What should happen once the recipient has actually opened your email? What action do you want your recipients to take? These are important questions to ask yourself if you want to use email marketing to generate new leads.
You should therefore make it clear what the recipient’s next step should be. Should they fill out a form? Read a blog post or buy a product from your online store? You need to spell out what you want the customer to do with a clear call to action.
6. Keep email design and text simple
Emails appear very differently depending on whether you use an iPhone, Gmail, Outlook, or one of the many other email providers out there. That’s why you should make sure to keep your design and text as simple as possible, so your message gets across and isn’t lost in a poor design or convoluted sentences.
7. Write alt text for your images in emails
Alt text for your images is essential. Alt text is an alternative description of an image that can be entered in most email platforms and marketing systems.
The reason you need alt text is that only some of your audience will be able to see the images. Some users have disabled image display by default, so each user must take active steps to view them.
Therefore, if your email contains both text and images, be sure to describe what is in the images. Otherwise, there may be strange white spaces in the email that could confuse the recipient.
8. Make it easy to unsubscribe from your emails
Over the years, email marketing has gained a somewhat tarnished reputation—and for good reason. Although it is actually a violation of the Marketing Practices Act and the GDPR, far too many companies send emails without the recipients’ consent. And just as many companies make it difficult for recipients to unsubscribe from their emails.
Although you might think it’s best to retain subscribers at all costs, people will only become more annoyed and frustrated with your business if they want to unsubscribe from your emails but can’t do so easily. You also risk being blacklisted as a spammer by major email clients like Gmail and Outlook.
That’s why you should always make it easy for your recipients to unsubscribe by including a link at the bottom of the email that says, for example, “Unsubscribe from all emails.”
9. Test, test, and test some more!
One of the best things you can do when doing email marketing is to thoroughly test all parameters. First and foremost, you should test the technical aspects. Does your email look the way it should? Most modern email platforms have built-in testing features so you can see how your emails appear on iPhone, Gmail, and Outlook, respectively.
The next step is to test which time of day generates the most engagement with your emails. For example, you can test whether sending emails before or after lunch affects the open rate.
Finally, you need to test the content. This doesn’t just mean the subject line, as described earlier. You also need to test which calls to action work, as well as how changing the sender’s name affects the open rate.
10. Keep in mind the laws regarding email marketing
Most people are familiar with the spam rules when it comes to email marketing. However, new cases and stricter regulations are constantly emerging, so it’s important to comply with the rules to avoid drawing the attention of the Consumer Ombudsman.
BONUS: 3 Types of Emails That Work
To succeed with email marketing, you need to make sure you engage with customers at the various stages of the buyer’s journey. Your emails should be both relevant and interesting to the recipients and make sense given the timing of when they receive them. That’s why it can be a good idea to take a bird’s-eye view of your email marketing strategy and divide your email marketing into three categories:
- Welcome Emails:
Welcome emails allow you to build a relationship with the customer. This is how you introduce your brand and let the customer know what their next step should be. Welcome emails have a very high open rate, so you should go all out to create the best possible welcome email. This is when your recipients are most receptive—and you should take advantage of that! - “Complete Your Purchase” emails:
If a customer has added an item to their cart and then left the website without purchasing it, you can send them a reminder via email to complete their purchase. You can also use this type of email to remind the customer of the products they never ended up buying. - Follow-up Emails After a Purchase:
Retaining customers is at the heart of a well-run business. That’s why it’s important to maintain the relationship with the customer after they’ve made their first purchase. There are many ways to do this, including a follow-up email that says, for example, “Thank you for your purchase,” an email asking the customer about their shopping experience, or an email recommending related products.
Let our specialists handle your email marketing
Do you want to succeed with email marketing? Get help from our specialists and send out emails that actually work.
Contact us via the contact form or send us an email at info@amplify.dk. You can also call us at 70 60 50 28, and we’ll be happy to help you with your email marketing.
Learn Even More
Whether you're a generalist or a specialist in marketing, our experts have put together a number of helpful tips for you on our blog.
