When targeted emails are a piece of your marketing blueprint, you want to ensure that they’re being opened, read and acted on. Whether you are building automated email drips, a one-time eblast or monthly newsletters, there are certain criteria you can follow to make your emails engaging, impactful and successful overall.
Your subject line is the first chance you have to grab readers’ attention, so it needs to convey the big idea of the email while being concise and persuasive. If you don’t capture their attention with the subject line, then your email will most likely be marked as read or sent to the recycling bin.
Most email opens take place on mobile, so keeping your subject line short is key. According to Hubspot, your subject line should be under 50 characters so mobile users can view the entire line without it getting cut off. Focus on keywords and get rid of the fluff that doesn’t matter.
Think about adding a sense of urgency or personalization to your subject line. When you communicate urgency or scarcity, it compels readers to open the email. This is a useful tactic, but it has to be executed correctly. You need to limit urgency emails to when you actually want readers to take immediate action. If you personalize a subject line by adding the recipient’s name or a claim that this email is for them specifically, it will boost open rates and engagement. People like feeling recognized and special, which will show in your results.
Other quick tips include not using text in all caps or an abundance of exclamation points. However, you do want add numbers and statistics, start with action-oriented verbs, write concisely and avoid making false promises.
What better way to get your emails opened than providing readers with content that they actually care about and are interested in? Look at your audiences’ wants, needs, and challenges and then deliver them a valuable message that tells them how your company can help them.
Depending on who your audience is and what they are in need of, your content will take different forms. If you are targeting potential customers, highlight the benefits and strengths of your product or service, provide a testimonial from a current customer of yours, or tell them why you are a better option than your competitors.
Looking to target current customers? Let them know about new products and services you have that can benefit them or send your latest newsletter filled with updates and content they care about. Ultimately, if you don’t offer readers interesting content that is important to them, they won’t read your emails because they aren’t beneficial.
What email clients are your readers using? Gmail? Yahoo!? Apple Mail? Knowing this can allow you to design your emails to be more efficient and visually appealing, no matter where they’re being viewed.
When you send an email out, you can add a tracking code that will generate a report of when recipients open the email. This report will tell you what email client your readers are using. You can improve your testing efforts and ensure that the layout and content of your email looks the best it can in whatever inbox it is opened.
*Sidenote – Knowing what email clients your target audiences are using can also help you with ad placement. You can ensure that your ads are seen by the right people by placing them right in their email webpage.
If you are sending out an email about compact cars, someone who owns their own construction company and a boat won’t be interested. In fact, they may be annoyed. This is where list segmentation comes in.
Every lead or subscriber on your email list is not looking for the same content. Therefore, you need to segment your overall list into more targeted sections. Segment the lists based on interests, their stage in the buying cycle, “non-customer vs. customer vs. return customer” or any other defining factor. By sorting subscribers into these different groups, you can send them the email content that is most relevant or interesting to them. In turn, this will drive higher open and click rates.
With all of the different technology out there, it is now as easy as a click of the mouse to see the results of an email campaign. You can see something as simple as if a recipient opened an email to something more complex like if readers are clicking through the email and what content they are zeroing in on.
All of these results can help indicate if there is something that is not working well for your email campaign or if there is something really successful that you should implement into more campaigns. If you have a low open rate on a certain email, that could mean your subject line is not compelling to recipients. If your click-through rate is suffering, that could mean your call to action is lacking or may be broken. From there you learn from these mishaps and fix what is not working.
Just by checking the results of your latest email campaign, you can help future campaigns evolve and be more successful than the last.
Ultimately, emails are an important aspect of the marketing mix, but only if they are executed correctly. Throwing some copy into an email and pressing send isn’t going to get you anywhere. You have to think methodically about what your target audience wants and needs to see from you in order to drive results.
If you’re interested in learning more about important email tactics and how to maximize your efforts, feel free to give us a call at 864-248-0886, email jennifer@dom360.com or contact your Account Executive for more information.