Email campaigns are an essential part of any good marketing strategy, but they are only effective when they are well-thought-out. Effective businesses consistently optimize email campaigns; emails sent just for the sake of having an email marketing campaign can end up with poor user engagement or worse your emails could be sent straight to spam folders.
Optimizing your emails is a crucial step to better understanding and generating more leads. Once you have a good understanding of your users’ buying process, you can implement an effective email marketing strategy to turn leads into conversions.
1. Segment your email lists
You may have subscribers who are interested in different types of emails, such as coupons, events, or news, but not necessarily all three. So it’s important to understand to who you are sending emails. For example, if you offer discounts for students or for retirees, consider segmenting your email lists by age group. If you have a press release, email it to a dedicated media list rather than your full one.
Providing relevant messages to your subscribers and customers can encourage higher open and click-through rates and fewer unsubscribes.
2. Make it mobile-friendly
Research from Litmus and BlueHornet shows that 71% of people will delete an email immediately if it doesn’t display correctly on their mobile devices. To avoid your email being sent straight to the trash, it’s important to focus on creating mobile-optimized email content that is eye-catching and engaging on a smartphone.
3. Get personal
64% of subscribers open an email based on who the email is from. No one likes receiving an email from (donotreply@example.com). So next campaign, have your email come from a member of your marketing or customer service teams or even your CEO – and let people know how to respond, so their reply won’t get bounced or ignored.
4. Make your subject line compelling
You win or lose with the subject line in your email, so make it as compelling as possible. Either spell out an offer that your customers will find irresistible, such as, ’50% off our most popular offer,’ or inform customers of something special that’s happening, such as, ‘Free Element is back on Tuesday!’ This is even more effective if you have a segmented mailing list tailored to the specific buying habits of your customers.
5. Personalize your email
Email blasts that clearly have no customization won’t resonate well with your contacts. But personalization, when done right, can both encourage contacts to open the emails and then interact with the content on the inside.
Start with the basics, like adding first names to the subject lines, If you have it, use more advanced data in the body of the email to offer a compelling call to action. For instance, use past purchase behavior to determine which specials might be most intriguing to certain contacts.
Whether basic or advanced, the more recipient data you can use to personalize the messages, the more impactful the campaign will be.
6. Call to action (CTA)
One of the biggest mistakes in email marketing is not having clearly defined calls to action. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving traffic to a page, getting people to call a number, or asking for form submissions. If the reader can’t determine what they’re expected to do within 5 seconds, chances are they will delete your email.
So when designing an email for a marketing campaign, test it out by showing it to a friend or your team and give them 5 seconds to look at the email then see if they know what they need to do.