Practically everyone has experienced first hand the uninvited annoying spam email. The subject line says ==> $$$ WINNER! Open to claim your f r e e prize! or something else gimmicky, along those lines. The emails were frequent and noisy, taking up room and cluttering your inbox. These spam emails have brought down the standards of email marketing for years. Many have given up on the use of emails because of these gloomy standards set by amateurs and scammers. But now technology gives us the ability to filter out these annoying emails. You now have to earn a place in the inbox of your consumer or lead which means you must create personalized, specific, content for your readers. Spam has killed the image of email marketing but this does not make it ineffective. Email marketing is still a very effective way to communicate with your customer or lead. You have a direct channel of communication that is practically costless to use.
Now you need to learn how to send the right emails to the right people.
1. Identify a goal. Your emails should be short, consistent and to the point. Nobody wants to read a page long email about the benefits of your brand of yoga mats. People want the information they need in a couple of lines at the top. Pick a specific goal like, “To inform my leads that our premier brand of yoga mats is on sale for a limited time.” Now make sure to stick to that one goal in your campaign.
2. Don’t be afraid to add flair. Add variation and personalization to your emails. In a statistic from Hubspot, personalized emails see 14% higher click through rates and 10% more conversions. A way you can do this is by segmenting your email list into smaller lists to allow you to personalize from there. You can also add personal flair by sending the email from an actual person’s email and not just your company name. When the email is just from the company it may not seem personal or it may seem computer generated. Another way to avoid the robot-email-look is to address the reader by their first name and use ‘You’ language to let the reader know that you are talking directly to them.
3. Keep the emails professional. Use tools like Mailchimp, iContact, and Aweber. These are email creation tools that are very helpful when creating a clean and professional email campaign. Be sure to shop around because there are even more tools out there and depending on your brand you may prefer one service over another.
4. Create content for your readers. It is good to let readers know about your promotions or send out special offers but it is even more important to provide your leads with substantial content. A good email does not ask a lead to do anything, it provides the lead with something of value. For example, if I owned a yoga studio something I could do for my customers or leads would be to create a short at home yoga video and send it to my list. This would be low cost, easy to do and provide content of value.
5. Make sure that your emails are optimized on all devices. According to an EmailMonday (email marketing firm) blog post, 48% of emails are opened from a mobile device as of January 2015. This means you need to make sure to check before you send! Even if you have to send yourself a copy of the email before sending it out to your list.
6. Be aware of where your lead is in the buyer’s journey. Send content that follows the buyer’s journey. Think about who your lead is and in what stage of the journey they are in. If your lead is in the awareness stage you will want to send out easily consumable content like videos or e-books. If your lead is in the decision stage you may want to politely get in their face with a free trial offer or product demo. You can use your best judgement, just be aware.
Stolen from Hubspot
7. Offer a way for readers to manage their subscription preferences at the end of every email. This is my favorite tip from this article on how to combat the email fatigued. This is important because not everyone wants to receive two emails a day about your yoga studio or yoga mat sales but also may not want to be completely cut out of the loop. Giving readers the option to opt out of your emails all together, occasionally or just sometimes will make sure that they are taken care of whilst making sure that you don’t miss out on potential customers.
My last bonus piece of advice is to make sure and follow up! It is good to send a follow up email making sure that the reader received the first email. It shows that you care and covers your bases.
Jaclyn Celine 