At first, it may seem quite daunting to become great at email marketing. It requires much patience and testing as there are so many parts that need to work together, but by using a few simple techniques you’ll be way ahead of most people. Here are 5 tips to get you started on your way towards a profitable email campaign:
1. First things first
Regardless of how good your product, service, or app is, it’s only useful when you can get it into the hands of your target customers. Research has shown that 1 in 3 potential customers will definitely open an email from a business email address. Unfortunately, most small businesses, especially startup, still use generic email account (Yahoo, Gmail etc) during email marketing campaign.
2. Engaging subject line
It all starts with the subject line. This is where you get the user’s attention and try to get them to open and read your email. While it can sometimes pay to try to make something clever, it usually works really well to just keep it reasonably short and give a hint of what’s inside the email so the user knows what to expect. Try to avoid hyping it up too much or sounding like a salesman. Think about the person on the other end as a friend, not someone you’re marketing to.
3. Engaging your reader early
Once the user opens up your email you want to hook them immediately, in the first few seconds of reading. That’s really all you have until they decide whether to keep reading or move on to the next email in their inbox. The best way to do this is to deliver the most valuable part of your email right away. Don’t drag on and on in the body copy either, but try to boil the email down to its essentials. Shorter is almost always better, and again you should try to write as if you’re writing to a friend. Casual, conversational and simple is the way to go.
4. Engaging call to action
Most likely the purpose of the email you’re sending out is to get the user to do something. You may want them to sign up for a membership on your site, or get them to purchase something. Whatever it is, the call to action is the part where you actually ask them to do it. Usually, the best way to do it is including a big button they just can’t miss, saying something simple like “Download now” or “Register free”. You can also include in-content links in your body copy to increase the chances of them actually taking action.
5. Split testing
The best way to learn what works with your particular list is making a habit of split testing things like your subject line and call to action. Simply send out different email variations to smaller segments of your list and look at your stats to see what works and what doesn’t.
