How to make email marketing easier and more effective.
Email Marketing takes time, but it is worth the investment. However, we could all use a few ways to make our email marketing a little more efficient and effective. Here are several ways I make my email marketing work smarter, not harder.
Use a template.
Using an email template gives you several advantages. It makes your life easier, and it helps your subscribers know what to expect. For example, I send out a weekly marketing tip. By using the same template each week, it saves me time when designing the email and laying out the content. It also lets my readers know what to expect from the email, and where to find the information they are looking for quickly. If you don’t have someone to design professional email templates for you, try looking for free ones online that you can use to create simple html emails.
Schedule emails whenever you can.
Most email systems allow you to schedule emails. This will make it easier to send emails at optimal times without being required to log in and create or send the email.
Try email automation.
Like scheduling emails, email automation is a great way to save time. Automated emails triggered by a user’s action is also much more likely to be clicked on. Send a thank you after a purchase or when they fill out a form on your website. Use drip emails, or emails that can be scheduled to send on a schedule after the user performs a certain activity. Birthday campaigns, weekly inspiration, or automatically sending a new blog post are all some examples of email automation at work.
Keep your emails simple and mobile friendly.
Designing a complex email can be time consuming. Keeping a simple email design can help save you time, and it can also ensure your emails are friendly to all those mobile users. Mobile is important because it is a main way many people check their email. Make sure to check your own emails on your mobile device to see how they are looking to your subscribers.
Get more clicks with video.
Videos or animated gifs can drive your click-through-rate up. Try including an animated gif or embedding a video in your next email to test it out. You might be pleasantly surprised. One company found a 109% increase in their clicks after including an animated gif in their email.
Grow your lists with pop ups.
For some time, “pop up” was a dirty word. (Ok, technically it's two words.) But pop ups are making a comeback. Done correctly, a pop up on your website can really help to grow your subscriber list. See the example below of the form we use to collect emails on our website:
Keep your content relevant.
People unsubscribe most often because of content that isn't relevant. But you can’t be all things to all people. So how can you be as relevant as possible? Tell people what they are subscribing to / signing up for. Then send them THAT. Don’t use tricky methods to get subscribers – they probably won’t be that valuable, and you don’t want to anger your audience. Because that is going to hurt your brand overall, not to mention put you at risk of spamming. On your sign up form, be clear about what they are getting from you: “Tips, tricks, and special promotions from our company and our partners”. Are you going to share their information with your marketing partners? Then tell them. Be transparent, and live up to your marketing promises.
Segment your audience.
The best way to keep your content relevant is to segment your audience. Depending on your email software, you might be able to tag or filter your contacts. Did they inquire about a specific product? If you collect demographic information, you might be able to tailor your emails to specific groups, like moms of young children or college students, for example. The more you can segment your audience, the more relevant your message is going to be.
Don’t have the time or right information to segment? That’s ok. Just keep your message relevant to your entire audience. Or try segmenting your email results. See who is clicking most or opening emails based on different content.
Create a content schedule.
Some days it is really tough to come up with creative emails or good promotions. By creating a content calendar for your emails (this also works for blogging), you will already have some good ideas when you sit down to write. This will also allow you to coordinate your content with upcoming events, holidays, or promotions your sales department might be running. It also lets you re-purpose old content from time to time in an effective way (for example, if you wrote a great article about Mother's Day Gift Ideas last year, you can quickly update and resend that for this Mother's Day.
Email marketing works. If you don't already use it, you should! What email techniques have you found to be most effective?
