Even though it seems like all anyone in the marketing world today is talking about is social media, it has been found that email 
marketing is actually still a better way to reach your customers online than any social media platform.
A recent study by Custora found that no matter what age the customers are, they overwhelmingly would prefer to receive marketing messages in their email inboxes than any other way. The study also found that new customer acquisition through email has quadrupled over the last four years.
Now that you know that email marketing is the best way to get the attention of your customers online, here are a few tips to make sure your email marketing efforts are successful.
One of the first things to remember is to always get permission from every person on your list before you email them. Not doing this can result in spam complaints and people opting out of receiving future emails from you. You should also make sure that is it easy to sign up to receive your emails by putting a sign up page on your homepage, blog, Facebook page and anywhere else you are already connecting with your customers.
All your marketing emails should look professional and have a consistent color scheme that matches your brand’s existing look and feel. If your emails look similar to your website and other content from your company, your customers will feel familiar and comfortable with them.
Another important thing to think about is your subject line. If your subject line isn’t attention getting, there’s a good chance that your email won’t even get opened. To ensure your emails are getting read, make sure you put the offer right at the beginning of the subject. You should also keep your subject line short. It has been found that an eight to ten word subject line is most effective. Your subject line should also have a sense of urgency and be personalized to who is receiving the email. One last thing to remember about subject lines is to check and then double check your spelling and grammar. If you have an error, that is the first thing your customers will see. Your company will look unprofessional, and it is likely most of the recipients will delete your email right then and there.
One very important thing to remember about sending mass emails is to make them seem as personal as possible to your customers. One way to do this is to encourage replies to your email. Many businesses send their email marketing from a no-reply address, so allowing people to actually respond to your emails will show your customers that you care about their feedback. Breaking your email lists up into segments and sending separate, personalized emails to each segment is another way to make sure your emails are relevant to everyone receiving them.
The next thing to think about is the actual content of the email. Remember that your customers are probably already receiving many emails every day, so you should do your best to make your emails easy to read. One rule of thumb is to break your content up into short paragraphs that are easily scannable. If you want to send a lot of information, consider adding a “read more” link after the first few paragraphs with a link back to your website. This will allow people to get the rest of the information when it is convenient for them.
You should also remember to limit your use of images in your emails. Many of the recipients of your emails won’t even see the images due to privacy reasons, because most email clients disable images unless the user allows it. Because of this, images can just end up being wasted space. So never put an important message or call to action item in an image.
Also remember that the purpose for sending the email is to drive traffic back to your website. Your emails should always include lots of links, at least one per paragraph of text, and make sure your links look like links so they are obvious to your customers.
There are a few more things you need to consider before you send out your email. The first is to test your email on different email clients. You can set up free accounts with some of the big email providers like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail, to make sure your emails look good and also see if your emails will get stuck in a spam folder for any of the email services. You should also make sure that your emails are mobile device friendly, since it has been found that most mobile users will delete an email that isn’t optimized for their mobile device. You can do this by using a responsive email template.
While you should only send out marketing emails when you have something to say and you know the goal you are trying to achieve with the email, it is beneficial to email your customers more than once a month. If you are only sending a monthly email, it is possible that your customers may forget who you are and how they signed up for your list. In fact, it has been found that your unsubscribe rate can actually go up if you are only emailing your customer list once a month.
One last thing to keep in mind is to always make your emails easy to unsubscribe to. Make the unsubscribe link very visible, because having someone unsubscribe is much better than receiving a spam complaint.
Following these simple tips will help you create a successful email marketing campaign. If you would like assistance sending out marketing emails or creating a marketing email template, Faster Solutions would be happy to help you.
