Top 8 Email Marketing Tips

Email marketing can be a highly effective tool for customer acquisition and retention. It allows targeting, drives direct sales and traffic to your website, and if done correctly, it builds lasting relationships, loyalty and trust. To execute a successful email campaign, consider the following:

1. Since subscribers spend eight seconds on most messages, make sure to answer their three biggest questions, ideally in a preview pane:

• What is this email about? Consider strong, clear subject lines that get your offer across before the subscriber even opens the email. In the body of your email, guide subscribers’ eyes where they need to go. Balance copy and imagery to get your message out without overwhelming the subscriber.

• Why should a subscriber care about it? Convey your value proposition above the fold.

• What should a subscriber do about it? To provide a clear action opportunity, use easy to see, straightforward calls to action that tell subscribers exactly what will happen when they click.

2. Test – different subject lines, calls to action, messaging, layout and send times can boost the performance while uncovering tactics you can build upon.

3. Segment – mining past purchases and click behavior as well as subscriber preference feedback will reveal opportunities to send the right offers to the right subscribers.

4. Performance metrics – review and analyze open, click and unsubscribe rates to optimize and improve your campaign.

5. Triggered emails – studies show that lifecycle messages such as welcome, birthday, anniversary, browse and shopping cart abandonment emails deliver revenue per email that is multifold what is generated by broadcast emails.

6. Stay “on-brand” – update your sign-up form, opt-in confirmation page as you change your logo, brand messaging or email program benefits.

7. Grow your subscriber base organically – make it easy for customers to sign up for your emails.

8. Don’t make it difficult to unsubscribe. Consumers have control over their inboxes so if they can’t unsubscribe easily, they will likely use a spam button.

As with most media tactics, you will have more success if you sustain your efforts and continue to refine your message and approach. Aside from generating immediate sales, email marketing is successful when it becomes a tool for building and maintaining brand awareness and strengthening relationships with customers, so that when prospects or customers are ready to act, they recognize your name and think positively about your brand. Delivering a variety of messages such as promotions, newsletters and invitations with links back to your website gives recipients many opportunities to remember your name and to reach out to you when they are ready.

For more tips or a customized campaign proposal, contact Applegate Media Group today at 877.515.5557 or info@applegatemediagroup.com.