In today’s competitive landscape, email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach out to your existing customers as well as potential leads. An email marketing campaign is considered successful when the email recipients take the desired action and interact with your website.
Using smart email marketing tactics, you can grow brand awareness, spread the word about your content offerings and company news. However, not every email marketing campaign will be successful. It is not as simple as sending a communication message to thousands of people. There are a few email marketing dos and don’ts that you need to keep in mind to be able to reap the maximum benefits from your campaign.
Dos for Email Marketing
Create an Exciting Subject Line
The subject line creates the first impression of your email. If it is not engaging enough, users won’t be compelled to open the email. About one-third of the recipients open the email only if they find the subject line intriguing and worth the time.
Always remember to keep the subject line short and sweet. It must clearly incentivize the target audience to click on the email. Besides, it must directly appeal to the needs or problems of the recipients. You can personalize the subject line with the recipient’s name to capture their attention instantly.
Be Direct with Useful Information
Your email recipients are in a hurry and don’t want to read long stories. They want to quickly understand your message and gather whatever value they can from it. So, after you have created an engaging subject line, make the body clear and succinct. Let it convey the information that is vital for the customer to know. It is recommended that you keep sales emails up to 150 words. If you’re unsure of how you can fit your message in that word count, take the assistance of a digital marketing company.
Use Different Calls-To-Action (CTA)
Every email must include a specific call-to-action towards the end. The strategy serves as a method for potential customers to establish a connection with your business after they have read your email.
For instance, if you’re launching a sale, you can include a CTA at the bottom of the email redirecting users to your website.
Generally, CTAs are buttons with the required copy, but you can also experiment using different button colours, text messages, and other features. Users respond differently to different messaging. You can analyze audience response to understand what resonates with them and what helps to attract the most engagement.
Pay Attention to the Email Recipient List
You might have created a fantastic email with great content, but if you’re sending it out to the wrong people, the entire campaign is a fail. This guideline is one of the most essential dos and don’ts of email marketing to keep in mind.
Spend some time to put together a targeted email list. This list must contain addresses of existing customers, website visitors who have shared their details, industrial professionals, social media connections, and any other potential leads.
While cold emailing is a way of reaching out to people, it also tends to annoy recipients, and chances that they open your emails are low. Start by investing your efforts on those who have expressed an interest in your company and your offerings.
Use Spell Check
Spell check is vital in the dos and don’ts of email marketing. Prospects will not take you seriously if your emails contain typos. Poor grammar, typos, and broken links are all elements that can spoil your brand image and cause buyers to tick your business name off their list.
Don’ts of Email Marketing
Avoid Spam Filters
Email providers have set some spam filters. If you want to overcome these, avoid using words that trigger spam filters. This includes overly promotional language with words such as ‘sale’, ‘cash’, ‘free’, etc. These words will send your email to the recipient’s spam folder. As a result, the user will not even get a chance to read your message.
Avoid the Use of Promotional Messaging
Many companies forget to pay attention to this important guideline of email marketing dos and don’ts. Your emails aren’t solely for your company’s promotion. Users hope to learn something more about the industry, your offerings and receive relevant updates through your email. So make sure you write according to the reader’s expectations and avoid making sales pitches.
The crux of your email is to let customers know what you can offer to them and how you can fix their pain points. To effectively execute this strategy, it is essential to know your audience and accordingly create lists.
For instance, if someone expressed an interest in one of your blog posts, it does not mean that the user is ready for purchase. Identify where the user stands in your sales funnel and send out messages that are in-sync with that particular part of the buying process.
Avoid Generic Email Addresses
When it comes to email marketing, your first impression is everything. You need to be as professional as possible. Therefore, it is advisable to use a real name behind the email instead of marketing@companyname.com or sales@companyname.com. Such generic email addresses appear fishy, and recipients are not convinced to click on the provided links.
Don’t Forget to Optimize your Emails
Always double-check how your email appears on different email clients. Check on Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird. The formatting should not get disturbed. Also, remember that half of your contacts will access the emails on a mobile device. So make sure that your messages are optimized for all types of email clients and devices.
An experienced digital marketing company can help you optimize the email across all email platforms.
Option to Unsubscribe
Allow users to unsubscribe. If you don’t provide a method for people to opt-out of the email list, you are creating a negative impact in the minds of the users. Besides, according to various consumer-protection regulations, it is unlawful to prevent people from unsubscribing.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing is a powerful tool that can significantly help to gain new clients and improve brand awareness. However, if you don’t plan out a strong game for your emails, it will not benefit your bottom line.
