Have your clients/customers heard from you lately? If not, you’re forfeiting potential business to your competitors. Maintaining a presence in subscribers’ inboxes is crucial to converting leads into profits. Maybe you’re thinking, “Email? People get a billion emails a day. That seems like a waste of time.” Well, you’re close to the first part. More than 300 billion emails are sent every day, which is why you may be stunned to learn that email marketing returns $36 for every dollar you spend on it. It’s still the most cost-effective way to reach customers. While social media marketing gets all the attention (and it definitely has a place in your marketing plan), it doesn’t even come close to the ROI of email marketing.
Now that we’ve sold you on the benefit of email marketing, let’s talk about how to do it.
First, let’s talk frequency. We all know from our own inboxes that getting too many emails can be a turn-off. But you might not realize that not getting enough emails from a brand or business is also not good. You want to keep your subscribers “warmed up” and ready to receive emails from you. A random email asking for business after months of silence might get you sent to spam. Instead, let your audience know how often they should expect to hear from you and then stick closely to that schedule. If you are consistently sending weekly emails, subscribers will be primed and ready when the email announcing a big sale, new product or other important news arrives. Whether it’s daily, weekly or monthly isn’t as important as the consistency and the content. Deliver compelling emails on a regular schedule to get the best return.
What’s compelling? That depends on your business, your industry, and your readers. If you have events that you want people to attend, teasing the most exciting aspects of the event – entertainment, big-ticket items, door prizes – will build interest and help drive ticket sales or registration. If you provide a service (tech support, financial services, etc), you may want to send regular emails highlighting news and trends from your industry that your clients need to know about. Sometimes saying less is more, but don’t be afraid to send out a long email now and again if you have important information to convey. Not every email needs to have a sales pitch, but they all need to have a reason for people to open them.
Engaging subject lines can help increase open rates. Keep them short and powerful. Most email clients only show 33-43 characters of a subject line in mobile view (depends on the app), so get to the point quickly. Use keywords. Do not underestimate the power of words like FREE, NOW, NEW. Take advantage of preview text to help paint the picture.
Oh yeah, pictures. What about graphics? Not every email can be a work of art, but you can employ graphics to do some of the heavy liftings in getting your message across. Additionally, using a header image can help brand the email so it will be immediately recognizable as yours when opened.