It’s vital to plan your email marketing strategy carefully to get the right results and make as many conversions as possible.
What worked ten or 20 years ago won’t always be as effective today, so let’s take a look at some key email best practice tips to help you achieve your targets in the digital age.
Whatever you do, avoid sourcing your marketing lists from websites, friends or third-parties. This can actually damage your brand and result in your IP addresses being blacklisted and your reputation tarred. One of the best ways to ensure your emails are being delivered to the right people is to add a subscription form to your site.
Big numbers won’t always give you the required results, so focus on a smaller number of people that are likely to be interested rather than a larger group of irrelevant recipients.
You can encourage people to subscribe to your emails by offering incentives and reach potential clients via Facebook. Use an email verification service to remove irrelevant addresses that are no longer in use from your lists.
Double opt-in ensures clients confirm their email address via links sent out to them and ensures you are connecting with genuine people rather than bots. If you opt for single opt-in, you may face sizeable challenges with spam traps later.
Segmentation is also an effective option and ensures different parts of your target audience are met with information relevant to them. When you opt for highly targeted marketing strategies, you can expect to enjoy better click-through, open and conversion rates. By sending out relevant information to your audience, you can discourage them from opting out and boost conversation rates.
Aim for as many positive interactions as possible. Examples of positive interactions include opening and reading emails, replying to them, clicking internal links and archiving emails once they have been read.
More and more emails are being opened on mobile devices due to the increasing prominence of smartphones. Readers shouldn’t need to zoom or squint to make sense of the information contained in your email even if they are reading it on a small screen.
Testing tools are available that will ensure your email will be easy to view on a range of leading email applications. You also need to avoid sending too many emails to your potential customers as this can reduce engagement levels and cause them to opt out. However, by reducing quantities too much you can risk missing out on conversions.
You may need to run a series of tests to work out what kind of frequency is right for your business. Timing is also important – avoid sending out correspondence at the most popular times as your messages could be lost in the crowd. Again, you may need to experiment and carry out multiple tests to get the best results.
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