10 tips: Succeed with email marketing
Want to succeed with email marketing but don't know how? Sometimes it can be hard to see the wood for the trees, and email marketing consists of several important parts that all need to be taken into account for it to bear fruit.
Let Amplify create email marketing that drives results for your business. Contact us today and let our specialists help you.
- Last updated:
Why should you use email marketing?
Email marketing is one of marketing's oldest tools. However, that doesn't mean that email marketing is outdated. Quite the opposite, in fact. There are three times as many email accounts as there are profiles on Facebook and Twitter combined. Therefore, email is still alive and well and is an effective strategy for converting leads into customers.
However, getting permission to send emails to people is easier said than done and is only the first step to a successful email marketing strategy. In fact, it's the emails you send afterwards that create value in the long run.
Here are 10 tips to make your email marketing more effective all the way around.
1. Define your goal
One of the very first things you need to do is ask yourself the question: "Why should I even use email marketing?". If you don't have a purpose for using email marketing, you won't get the results you want.
That's why you need to take a step back and think about what your email marketing goal really is. For example, it could be to:
- Be top of mind so that your business is the first thing your customers think of when they need help or need to find a preferred partner.
- Educate potential customers and build trust so they realize you are the most qualified partner in the market.
- Remind existing customers to use your products or services.
When you are sure of your goal in using email marketing, it will also be easier to define your target audience and optimize your emails to support your goals.
2. Find the right balance between information and sales
When sending emails to customers, it's important that you find the right balance between information and sales. It may be tempting to send potential customers a great offer, but don'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 company.
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 this before, and it also applies when you're doing email marketing. Therefore, there must be a connection between what it says on the page where the recipient signs up to receive emails from you and what your emails actually contain. If this is not the case, you will lose the trust of your customers.
In addition, the GDPR regulation requires that you only send content that relates to the topics described in the opt-in text in your emails.
To establish a bond of trust between you and the customer, it's best to be as specific in the opt-in text as possible. Tell the recipient exactly what they can expect when they receive emails from you and how often that will happen.
4. Give your emails an engaging subject line
Even if potential customers have signed up to receive your emails, it is far from certain that they will open them. To get 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 life reading your email.
But how do you do that?
- First, 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".
- Personalize your emails to make them relevant to the individual recipient.
- Be clear. In other words, don't wrap your message in platitudes and phrases that are hard to decipher. Instead, speak your mind and keep your subject lines under 50 characters.
- Do 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 when 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.
Therefore, you need to 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 in your webshop? 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 are displayed very differently depending on whether you use iPhone, Gmail, Outlook or one of the many other email providers out there. Therefore, make sure you keep your design and text as simple as possible so that you get your message across and it doesn't get lost in poor design and convoluted sentences.
7. Write alt texts for your images in emails
Alt texts for your images are essential. An alt text is an alternative text that describes an image and can be entered into most email platforms and marketing systems.
The reason why you need alt texts is that only some of your recipients will be able to see the images. Some have turned off image viewing by default, so the individual user has to take an active action to view them.
If you have both text and images in your email, you must describe what is in the images. Otherwise, there may be strange white boxes in the email that confuse the recipient.
8. Make it easy to unsubscribe from your emails
Over the years, email marketing has gotten a bit of a bad rap, and for good reason. Although it's actually a violation of marketing law and the GDPR regulation, too many companies send emails without the recipients' permission. And just as many companies make it difficult for recipients to unsubscribe from their emails.
While you might think it's best to retain recipients at all costs, people will only become more angry and frustrated with your business if they want to unsubscribe from your emails and can't easily do so. You also run the risk of being blacklisted as a spammer by the major email clients like Gmail and Outlook.
Therefore, you should always make it easy for your recipients to unsubscribe by placing a link at the bottom of the email that says "unsubscribe all emails".
9. Test, test and more test!
One of the best things you can do when doing email marketing is to test everything. First of all, you need to test the technique. Does your email look the way it should? Most modern email platforms have built-in testing features so you can see how your emails look in iPhone, Gmail and Outlook.
The next step is to test which time you get the most engagement on your sent emails. For example, you can test whether sending emails before or after lunch affects open rates.
Finally, you need to test the content. This doesn't just mean the subject line as described earlier. You also need to test which call-to-actions work and how changing the name of the sender affects the open rate.
10. Keep email marketing laws in mind
Most people are aware of the spam rules when they do email marketing. However, new cases and orders are constantly being issued, so it's important to comply with the rules so you don't end up in the spotlight of the Consumer Ombudsman.
BONUS: 3 types of emails that work
To be successful with email marketing, you need to make sure you follow the customer at different stages of the buying journey. Your emails need to be both relevant and interesting to the recipients and make sense in relation to the time they receive them. That's why it's a good idea to look at your email marketing strategy from a helicopter perspective and divide your email marketing into 3 categories:
- Welcome emails:
With welcome emails you can establish a relationship with the customer. This is how you introduce your brand and tell the customer what the next step is. Welcome emails have a very high open rate, which is why you need to work hard to create the best possible welcome email. This is where your recipients are most receptive - and you need to take advantage of that! - "Complete your purchase" emails:
If a customer has added an item to their cart and then left the website without buying it, you can send them an email reminder to remember to complete their purchase. You can also use this type of email to remind the customer about the products they never bought. - Follow-up emails after purchase:
Customer retention 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. This can be done in many ways, such as a follow-up email saying "thank you for your purchase", an email asking the customer about their buying experience or an email recommending related products.
Let our specialists take care of your email marketing
Want to succeed with email marketing? Get help from our specialists and send out emails that actually work.
Write to us in the contact form or send us an email at info@amplify.dk. You can also call us on tel. +45 70 60 50 28 and we'll be happy to help you with your email marketing.
Gain deeper insights
Want more useful tips on digital marketing? Then explore our guide universe where you'll find plenty of edible knowledge.
