Email Marketing: Efficient, Effective, and Engaging
Email marketing is a modern tool that business owners must use to keep their business and brand front and center. Everything is a powerful opportunity to build a connection with your audience when done properly. Email marketing done poorly will tarnish your brand.
Here are some tips for success:
Make it Personal.
Have you ever opened up a business email it feels like the content and products are speaking to you?
Spoilers: This email was not created ONLY for you. The fact that you thought it meant the marketers are doing it right. There’s a reason that people occasionally jokingly call Emails, “electronic letters”, and that’s because a personal touch goes a long way.
Pick a certain client to write the mass email to. Make sure to keep the tone neutral enough to have it easily relevant to anyone reading. Get familiar writing this type of email as well as utilizing the tools of your respective platform. Nearly all email campaign services will have built-in tools for inserting client information into the email to make each one personal to the targeted recipient.
Don’t overkill it.
Nobody likes spam. You do not want to be a business known as an inbox spammer. You will likely have a large number of recipients who mark you as spam and you can find yourself getting the boot from your email campaign provider. Seriously, some providers give the boot for anything over a 1% spam complaint rate.
Your content hungry subscribers will be much harder to scare away with content as long as you keep it relevant to their interests.
Avoid clickbait.
“One weird trick to lose 4 inches off your waist in 4 days!”
You’re marking that as spam. Everyone is marking that as spam.
Those email tags I mentioned earlier for client information can usually be inserted into your subject lines. Don’t be afraid of the OCCASIONAL name drop in the subject line. Don’t abuse this. It becomes less personal if you do it too often and this is an ace up the sleeve that you do not want to lose.
Simple subject lines.
Your subject line should be exactly that, a subject line. Give them a reason to click on your email. They can see the first sentence of the email before clicking on it so don’t oversell the subject. It displays poorly on mobile devices and you are more likely to get slammed by automated spam programs.
It’s not free, even if it’s free.
We all know the saying that you “get what you pay for,” email campaign and automation software isn’t an exception to this rule. As someone who has used well over a dozen different email campaign and automation systems in their time, want to know which ones are the best?
I’ll give you an objective top 3:
Campaign Monitor (Cheaper version of MailChimp Essentially)
The most cost efficient one of those with a moderately sized database is going to run $100 plus a month.
And, it’s worth every penny. Every. Single. One.
A year-long email drip campaign in one of those programs once you’re an expert can build complete with A/B testing, link backs, and social media plugins in an afternoon.
This is a tool, not the shed.
Email marketing is just ONE piece of your marketing. Traditional word of mouth, social media, etc. Also, play key roles when it comes to the advertising of your small business. Growing your presence without years of operation requires you to play smarter AND harder to legitimize your brand.
Done strategically, email marketing can be a massive boost to your business and once it’s going well, one that doesn’t require much micromanagement.
You’ve got other things to do, like figuring out where your next office space will be 😉
Want to have us discuss anything in particular on our next blog? Curious as to what Plemmons Industries can do to help you grow your business?
Get in touch with us: ContactUs@PlemmonsIndustries.com