Email marketing is the one activity that no marketer can afford to pass up.
Especially Now.
It opens a direct line of communication between you and your lead.
So, you owe it to yourself to put your best foot forward here.
Email Marketing's Greatest Strengths
Email is an excellent channel for marketing.
That connection first forms out of genuine interest. But like any relationship, it requires upkeep.
Everyone has a lot going on in their lives and on their minds. Over time, your brand might fade from their memory.
And this is normal, but not desirable.
Email marketing solves this problem.
Every time you send a message, you bump your brand up once again.
You also have a chance to bring knowledge and joy.
There's no more natural way to bring wayward leads back into your brand.
At the same time, this medium of communication comes with certain expectations.
People want to receive emails. And to read your emails and engage with your content, you'll want to cater to their tendencies.
Your engaging practices need to be quick, attractive, to-the-point, and caring.
You can make the most of every email you send by applying some of the 6 top elementary.
Crafting Optimal Emails
A lot goes into making the perfect nurturing email marketing campaign.
For now, we'll go back to the basics.
You're familiar with them but somehow you still miss out on one or two when preparing your campaigns.
And it's normal, there is always a lot to do.
So pause for a few seconds and ran your basics checklist.
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Watch Your Subject Line
When do you open an email?
When you know the sender and/or when the headline speaks to you.
Right?
Before anyone opens your email, the first thing they'll see is your subject line.
This element of your email carries the burden of making a strong first impression.
Basics #1
Aim for subject lines that are 50 to 55 characters long.
|Headlines 55 characters long tend to earn the highest number of click-throughs.
|Headlines with 6 words tend to earn the highest number of click-throughs.
An email marketing subject line needs to draw your recipient's attention right away.
It competes with everything else in their inbox to grab their attention.
It also communicates substance so that they open it.
Basics #2
Choose your headline type (how-to, lists, question).
Balance your words and show positive sentiment.
|Headlines that convey positive emotion tend to perform the best.
Put your effort into the first and last words. When skimming content, most readers tend to read the first and last three words of a headline.
Check Coschedule and EMV headline analyzers to test your subject line performance.
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Focus on Hard-Hitting Content
Basics #3
Emails campaigns are quick exchanges that take a few minutes at most to read.
When you open a message and see endless content, you might exit. Right?
|In most cases, leads respond best to emails with 200 words.
With so little room to work with, it's best to pick out one or two key points.
Use the rest of the message to highlight them.
Basics #4
Write short and workmanlike for the most part. It's not a dissertation.
People are looking to learn, enjoy and explore new frontiers. Show them that your writing is worth reading.
If you wonder at any point if it is too long, then it is. Trim it because you can.
You can keep things minimal in the message itself and provide links to external content.
|Your email is to entice people to engage with you and grow closer to your brand.
You can use Grammarly and Hemingway Editor to review and improve your writing.
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Keep Your Designs Attractive, But Minimal
With few words on the page, you might need to bulk up your email with some complementary elements.
You can be creative with your design.
You've got some beautiful email designs out there.
Basic #5
You need to add something to set your message apart.
You'll give extra character to your messages.
And reinforce the things you say in the text to leave a stronger impression.
Yet, restraint is important.
You don't want your emails to be too busy.
Or to have poor mobile compatibility and sub-standard loading times.
A little colour and a picture or two can go a long way.
They add to the copy without competing with it and don't overwhelm the viewer.
|Design your emails well. And they'll stick longer then after they're read.
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Use Segmentation
Do you send one generic email to everyone on your list?
Or you use segmentation to target your audience?
Basics #6
Email segmentation has been around for some time now.
You target specific personas or groups with the same messaging.
They have similar factors in common, or what we geeks call similar "data points".
Differences between personas can be small.
So, you need a bit more work than a one-email-fit-all.
You need to narrow down the separate segments in the first place.
And, you can feel confident that it'll be worth it in the end.
|Segmented emails can drive 9 times more revenue.
What's a little extra effort compared to that kind of payoff?
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Plan Deliverability
Email marketing offers a high ROI, but only when it's done right.
You want to maximize your reach. And you should.
Basics #7
Verify your email list.
Remove bad and invalid emails.
Restore valid ones that might have bounced before.
Update non-valid ones.
|When you maximize your deliverability, you maximize your open and click rates.
You'll be able to see if your content is working or not.
When you compromise your deliverability, you weaken your reach out. You also risk your sender reputation and valid emails might bounce.
Manage email data quality, and you can focus on producing high-quality targeted campaigns.
Check your email data quality with ebCard.
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Measure Your Metrics
|“you can't manage what you can't measure", Peter Druker
Basic #8
Track engagement.
Your key metrics are deliverability, open, click and bounce rates.
Each metric helps you work better.
Deliverability rate helps you determine how fresh your email list is.
It's your first metric to make sure that the other ones are correct.
|If you're less than a 98% deliverability rate, chances are that some of your valid emails are bouncing.
You jeopardize your sender reputation and open/click rates.
Open and click rates help you determine if your content is well crafted.
And provides value to your recipients.
|If you're getting below 20% open rate, then something is off.
When you manage your email quality, your bounce rate will be minimal (<2%).
Make sure to recheck the quality of the bounced emails.
You'll be surprised how many valid ones you can restore back to your campaign.
As for the non-valid ones, update their data and re-opt-them in.
They already know you and your brand.
The cost of opting them again is very little and they might bring you new opportunities when the timing is right.
Double-Down on Your Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most critical activities to perform today.
It's one of the most intimate ways to connect with your community.
And have an immense potential return when you apply your best efforts.
When you apply these basics of email marketing, you can run perfect campaigns.
You'll harness the power of email to drive high-performing campaigns every time.
