Email remains a potent weapon in the digital marketing armoury because it offers such consistently high conversion rates.
Simple to use and cost effective, email marketing campaigns target promotions at an already engaged audience - people who have signed up to receive communications from your brand. Research has shown that email is one of the biggest factors in securing repeat business online.
But what are the necessary ingredients to make sure your email campaign is successful? Here are 10 features we think are essential.
Clear Call to Action
Brands often use email subscriber lists to send out newsletters and so on. But simply communicating with your customers will not drive conversions - you need to include a call to action to get your audience visiting your site and, ideally, purchasing.
Inbound links
These should relate directly to your call to action. Whatever it is you want your customers to do - look at a new product range, take advantage of a special discount, sign up to take part in a special ‘first look’ new product trial - your email should contain a direct link to a landing page on your site.
Engaging subject line
People receive a lot of email and will often make instant decisions whether to open a message or not based on the subject line - especially if it is not from a personal or business contact. Marketing mail outs therefore need to establish interest and relevance in the message subject.
Personalised greeting
Using mail merge features, it is straightforward to set mail outs so every message refers to the recipient by name. This establishes a connection with your customers, and increases the likelihood of them reading the rest of the message and responding to your call to action.
Use an address people can reply to
It is still common for brands to use ‘noreply@’ email addresses for marketing mail outs, but we think this is a missed opportunity. If customers want to contact you or ask questions, this is something you should encourage. The more genuine connections you establish, and the more personalised the service you offer, the more repeat business you will get.
Keep text short and succinct
An email is not the ideal medium for lengthy communications, not for marketing purposes anyway. To maximise the likelihood of recipients responding to your call to action, you want to get to the point as quickly as possible, and not lose it in unnecessary detail.
Avoid over-using images
The trouble with images in email is that their appearance alters in different email programmes, and it is easy to upset the whole layout of your mail. Also, over-using images can push your message above the maximum message size of some accounts.
Follow guidelines for avoiding SPAM
Technically, any unsolicited email from a non-contact can be treated as SPAM by an email account’s filters, regardless of whether the recipient has signed up to receive messages from you. If you want to keep legitimate messages to subscribers out of their junk folder, it is important to follow anti-SPAM steps, like these from Kissmetrics, carefully.
Make unsubscribe options obvious and clear
With the GDPR now in force, this is no longer an optional feature - to remain compliant with data protection and privacy laws, you must make it easy for subscribers to opt out of receiving future communications.
If you would like to discuss how e-mail marketing could boost customer engagement with your business, call me, Claire Treloar 01565 651589
As Head of New Business at Ultimate Creative Communications, my aim is find and engage with businesses who want to remain ahead of the game. I pride myself on being pro active and bringing fresh…
Post articles and opinions on Cheshire Professionals
to attract new clients and referrals. Feature in newsletters.
Join for free today and upload your articles for new contacts to read and enquire further.
