Email marketing is a great way to reach your customers where they are without spending a lot of money. But it’s a big responsibility, too—people don’t give their email addresses to just anyone. Thinking about starting a company newsletter? Here are some tips to keep in mind.
#1 Email Marketing Tips – Build an acquisition strategy
If you’ve prioritized audience growth, begin by analyzing the places where customers are already engaging with your brand. Then, determine how to enhance those experiences and drive interactive engagement with new tools and techniques. For example, always optimize acquisition forms for mobile. If a customer is on a tablet or smartphone and can’t fill out your form quickly and easily, you’re sure to lose the opt-in.
#2 Email Marketing Tips – Make it easy to subscribe
Post a signup form on your homepage, blog, Facebook page, and wherever else your customers and fans are already active. You might want to collect names and birthdays (for a special offer or gift) or invite readers to join groups, but don’t go crazy with the required fields. A too-long subscribe form might scare people off.
#3 Email Marketing Tips – Know your audience
Once you have people in your list, how do you keep open and click through rates high? The key is making content as relevant and engaging as possible. Ask yourself some important questions such as:
- What does your audience want? Are they looking for offers, news or advice?
- What problems can your email solve? Can you make your emails so packed full of helpful information and tips that they are a valuable resource?
#4 Email Marketing Tips – Your data should always be relevant
Assess your current data to make sure you’re sending targeted communications, not “batch and blast” messages. Using simple data points like gender and location can dramatically improve the subscriber experience. Similarly, on social media, use Facebook’s geo-targeting features with status updates. Strive to never regurgitate the same promotional messages on social media that you are using in email, as customers are looking for different information in each of those channels.
#5 Email Marketing Tips – Be consistent
Now you have filled your emails with content that people can’t wait to read it’s important that you maintain consistency in your content, style and sending patterns. This consistency lets subscribers become comfortable with your email marketing. Using the same “from address” and similar subject lines ensure that they recognize your emails as something they signed up for, and don’t dismiss it as spam.
Keeping content closely aligned to the reason that they signed up builds trust. And sticking to a delivery schedule (e.g. monthly Best Sellers and weekly Special Offers emails) means that your emails are expected and familiar.