No one wants their email box to be cluttered up with advertising, so it’s your job as an email marketer to send your reader something they actually want. Informative, interesting and even entertaining emails should be your goal, but how do you achieve that? Continue reading to find some excellent tips from experts in the field.
To get people to opt-in and give permission for you to send email marketing messages to them, offer an incentive. Offer a discount or a coupon on one of your products or services. Include a whitepaper or newsletter about your niche or market. Give your prospect something in return for access to their inbox.
Send your opt-ins a link that they must click on to confirm their subscription to your email list. This way, you ensure that it is something that they want to do, and it will protect you from getting complaints about spam. Let your opt-ins know in your pitch that they will need to click on a link.
Do not use dollar signs in either the subject or the body of your emails, unless you are using just one to denote a specific amount of currency. This will strike many recipients as being spam my behavior, and many spam filters will automatically trash emails that include character strings like “$$$.”
Color is important, even when it comes to email! Your email messages should have a consistent color scheme that is both professional and easy to read. This is especially important once you start designing more advanced, HTML rich messages. If you are unsure about making your own selections, a little Internet research can point you towards excellent color schemes.
Remember that many people today are utilizing mobile devices to check their email. These mobile devices have lower screen resolution than traditional computer screens and provide much smaller screen size. Find out how your messages look on these devices, and make any changes necessary to make them easy to read on small phone screens.
Tell a story with your email marketing campaign. You must think about how to grab the readers’ attention. How better to grab their attention than to tell a story that involves success in your business niche. This gets them intrigued, and it gives you an opportunity to get new customers.
Personalize the messages you send in your email campaigns. Customers respond more favorably to these kinds of messages over ones that are more impersonal or bland. Messages from someone powerful in your company will make a much stronger and more lasting impression on the people receiving the emails.
Do not add the email addresses of customers without informing them and receiving permission. Padding your list with subscribers who have not directly opted into receiving your email marketing can build ill will towards you by both the email owner and your potential clients. You also run the risk of being barred by your service provider for violation of their rules.
You might want to send a follow-up email to your clients that includes a caution if your products or services supply is running low. You could include a link that tells them to click here and begin. The ending postscript could tell them to act now before your supply runs out.
Test and design your messages to be readable and functional even if the images and graphics get blocked. Many email clients do this automatically. Make sure that any images you do use have descriptive text substituted via the Alternative attribute that should be available in your email composition software interface.
Keep mobile users in mind when choosing the size of your message. You might be composing your emails on a monitor that has four or even five times the available pixels that a smartphone user has. Send your messages small or scalable so that everyone can read them easily and quickly.
Use plain text and hyperlinks in your email messages, and save the images and Flash animation for your web page. Many email services now filter out images and animations in the name of consumer safety, meaning that your lists may not even see your carefully-crafted images. Plain text messages are guaranteed to go through intact, and then the images on your website will catch your viewers.
Check your email messages across different email providers to see how they look. By doing this, you’ll be able to ensure that your emails are standard enough to be compatible with the most popular email readers. Be as thorough as possible when doing this, so that you don’t miss any segment of your customers.
Try getting inspiration from your competitors or other people in your niche. Try signing up for their email campaigns to see what is working for them. This can give you a better idea of what you’re up against and why something may or may not be working for your own campaign.
Show your subscribers respect by not sending them tons of unwanted emails. Two or three email messages a month should be all that they receive from you. If you are flooding their email boxes, not only it will not be appreciated, but it will be highly unlikely they will buy anything that you are selling.
Be honest and upfront when your readers subscribe. Let them know how often to expect emails from you, and what type of information will be contained in them. It is important to be truthful here, you don’t want your customers to be annoyed if they end up with more emails from you than they expected.
Someday you too may be an expert in your field, but for now you need to learn as much as you can to hone your skills and provide you with new ideas. This article is a great stepping stone, but don’t stop here – practice what you’ve learned and continue reading and success will be within your reach!
