E-mail marketing is a powerful, cost-effective and measureable channel for marketers. An email can add greatly to your campaign and is relatively quick to create compared to other, more on trend, mediums such as infographics and videos. The beauty of email marketing is that results of your effort can be measured instantly.
1. It’s all about the subject line
If the subject line is not good enough your email will never be opened and read. Be relevant and engaging. Know your audience and make sure it is meaningful and fits the content of the email. Good strategies are to ask a question or highlight a benefit. Also do not use words such as “free” or “sale” and stay away from using capital letters and exclamation marks in order to avoid your email being blocked and going straight to your receiver’s spam folder.
2. Less is more
Unless you are a big brand and people know you (we are talking about the likes of Nike, Harrods,…), it is a good idea not to use a lot of pictures in the email header as they won’t be displayed automatically in many email clients. This means unless a recipient clicks on view pictures she/he will not know what the email is about and most likely delete it. Additionally, having a big picture as the email header will only display as a white empty box in a preview pane and therefore the email will most likely be deleted. Often less is more and a simple text heading explaining the nature of the email has been proven to be more successful.
3. Don’t use red
Colour matters. Strong, contrasting, colours generally perform better than colours that blend in with the background theme. It is proven that conversion is often improved by a third just replacing a green button with a red one. But red should never be used in emails as spam filters will most likely block emails that use red text which means that the our carefully drafted message will never be read by the receiver.
4. It must work on mobile devices
Often people check their emails on the go or in lunch breaks. Make sure they can easily view and click your email on the go. If you email includes a call to action (which it should) such as buy a product or download a white paper, the receiver must be able to have a mobile experience all the way through the end. This also includes paying via the phone.
5. Test, test, test
Every audience is different. Do not just assume that you know what your audience wants. Test it! By testing subject lines, from names and different preview panes as well as different times and days you can steadily improve your email marketing campaigns and achieve greater open rates and click rates and therefore the highest number of conversions.
The five points are a good start to optimise your email marketing and get better results.
Happy emailing!
You might also be interested in:
How to accelerate from traditional marketing towards digital marketing http://ow.ly/hxDZR
Seven tools to optimise your email marketing for mobile http://bit.ly/VL0TKg
Mailchimp Resources http://bit.ly/XRYdrY
Dear Maria, Thanks for your informative article. I found the tool for email marketing mentioned in the link above to be most useful. Looking forward to your next post