Top 10 Tips for Effective Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most popular advertising methods on the internet, involving using email to send ads, request business, and solicit sales or donations. Since it used a pretty personal approach-utilizing the customers’ inbox-it showed to be a good way to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.

With abundance of new technological advances available, such as a myriad of social networking sites appearing almost every single day, writing emails, and by association, email marketing, gets the reputation of being a little outdated. However, this couldn’t be further from truth. Email marketing provides you a direct way of communicating with your potential customers, and has very high rates of turning ads into sales. However, in order to get the optimal use of email marketing, you need to employ specific strategies and know exactly what will work on your customers. In this article we have compiled several useful tips for your email marketing strategy to be as effective as possible.

1) Build your email list
You cannot advertise successfully over email if you do not have a smart email list containing those who will be interested in what you have to sell. So, the best email list is the one that has your target customers, since it increases your chances of interesting them in your content, and consequently, making sales.

2) Use transactional messages for email advertising
Transactional emails are those emails companies send to the customers after they have already completed an action by the company. Their primary purpose is to convey a message about an already completed transaction, but since their opening rates are a lot higher than other email marketing methods, they provide a good way of further advertising your business. It is a great opportunity to engage your customers. You can use these messages to include promotional content, provide useful information, or cross-sell or up-sell products or services. Transactional emails are a great venue to show your customer your appreciation, and to ensure their loyalty to the company.

3) Personalize content
People seem to respond better to content that seems to be developed to fit their specific needs and desires. Thus, personalize your email offers and ads. Depending on the type of your product or service, you can create your message in accordance to your customers’ preferences, using such tools as search engines. Make sure the wording highlights that the message in this email is intended primarily for this specific customers.

4) Catchy subject line
Your subject line is the first thing that draws your customers’ attention, and what gets your email opened or thrown into virtual trash. Thus, make sure to make your openings interesting. You could offer a piece of information that your customer might need, but in order to receive it, they need to open the email first. You can use questions, warnings, or a hint of promising content or a reward. Devise a smart marketing strategy, put good content in your email message, and give them a taste with your clever subject line. That sure is bound to get them clicking!

5) Offer promotions and discounts
Promotions and discounts are a great way to make sales. When using them in email marketing, make sure to mention in the subject line that the email contains special promotions and offers they cannot get elsewhere. This will increase your chances of the email being opened, and thus increase your chances of making a sale, and gaining a new customer.

6) Provide good content
Your subject line can be the most interesting thing in the world, but poor content will destroy all your hard work and efforts in building a good email marketing strategy. Make sure your email message is interesting, clear, and offers the customer something new and/or unique that will ensure that they will read your emails again, instead of tossing them into trash bin.

7) Show you value their time
In order to distinguish yourself from all those annoying email newsletters and/or spam your customers get from various companies, you have to make sure you include valuable information in your email pitch. This will show your subscribers that they can trust you with their time and that they can keep on maintaining a good email communication with your company.

8) Wow them with design
Humans are visual beings. Especially now, in the times of modern technology and shortened attention spam, visuals are invaluable to catching people’s attention and making them interested in your content. Make sure you have clever and clean designs that will make your potential customers want to see more of your product.

9) Keep your message short and sweet
It is very important to be clear and concise in your messages. With short attention spans and busy schedules, people do not have the time nor the will to go through long, elaborate emails from advertisers. Keep it short, simple, use lists and bullet points.

10) Use referrals
If you have a good product or a service that fulfils the needs of your target customer, included in your email list, and the customer happens to share those needs with similar population, your email messages will indubitably inspire referrals and word-of-mouth advertising. However, this is more likely to happen if you make it easier for your customers to remember their friends who share their needs by including a “Share with a friend” section, or reminding them to share the information with others who might find it useful.

To summarize, with a strong content marketing approach, your email marketing can be a great source of revenue, if you utilize the tips provided here wisely. With many claims that email marketing is dead, one could falsely assume that using this method won’t bring any benefits and turn to alternative internet marketing strategies. However, if done correctly, email marketing can indeed be very alive and bring animate and engage your subscribers, bringing in profit and new customers.