Enhancing Your Email Marketing Campaigns

So you have now made your campaign plan and sent a couple of emails out, you have some results from those sends and you want to make more out of your next set of sends. The following is a checklist of things to bear in mind when sending your email out.

Resist the temptation to over send to your list!

In our experience we find a campaign is most successful when the customer is contacted fortnightly and in some cases once a month. Sending out any more than this not only annoys people but they stop reading them as the view is that the email will simply contain more of the same. This takes the impact away from your emails when you have a good offer that customers will likely want to take up but don’t get to even see it as they think it’s another one like the last.

This equates to having a valuable email address wasted or they could unsubscribe and leave the list altogether. When you think about the lifetime value this customer could bring to your company you have to question whether it is really worth over sending and losing lots of these potential customers.

Is the content of the email relevant to your customers in the email list?

Legally you can only email people on your list a similar product or service to the one they bought when they transacted with you (if you signed them up in this way) but there is a much bigger incentive to make the email targeted. In our experience click through rates and conversions have been up to three times better when the email has been targeted towards the customer base it was sent out to.

Are your emails always just about the hard sell?

If you want customers to engage with you more (which you should) you need to do more with them than shove your products and services under their nose every time you talk to them. Break up your selling emails with ones offering “tips and tricks” and “how to guides” about products they have bought recently or on areas they have expressed interest in. This will give customers a reason to read all of your emails and not be always expecting the sell. It also helps build a relationship between them and your brand.

Finding the best subject line!

Getting the right subject line is key to getting people to open your email. A good subject line will vary depending on the industry you operate in. The best place to start is to look at previous campaigns and which subject lines have worked for your list before in relation to the emails content. For example it may be that your product is time sensitive and adding an element of urgency to the subject line encouraged people to click through and act. Others may find a much more subtle subject line works for a more considered purchase.

The subject line should inform but not mislead, you don’t want people clicking through to then only be disappointed by the offering on the website and subsequently leave. Lastly remember to summarise the emails content with key information first as this may be the only words a potential customer glances over amongst many others sat in their inbox.

Sending at the best time and date!

Getting the email out to customers at a time when it will be most effective is one of the most important considerations when improving an email campaign. As with an effective subject line this will vary greatly depending on your list and the type of product or service you are promoting. You can look at industry best days or recommended days but this will unlikely help you at all. You need to consider when people should get the email and how this links in with the website.

If the email is promoting a time sensitive offer that is soon to expire, the email simply needs to go out as soon as possible. If on the other hand it is promoting a sale on a fixed day, give the customer a good amount of notice and on a day that has traditionally given you good open rates then follow this up with an email the day before to remind them.

Final Thoughts

Each of these areas in itself is worthy of a full post and the next set of email articles will start to address these in turn to inform you in detail good tips and tricks to get the most out of your email campaigns. Keep checking back to the blog over the coming weeks for these updates and in the meantime if you have any questions please feel free to contact us.