Top 8 Email Marketing Tips

The average working-class adult receives about 121 emails daily. A sizable chunk of which are marketing emails that end up ignored or deleted. To everyone else, this is a harmless statistic. But, if you opened this article, you are most likely an email marketer and you understand that you need your mails to get opened, read, and acted on if you are going to make any sales.

Top Email Marketing Tips

Email marketing became a widely accepted marketing tactic partly because it costs practically nothing, compared to its potential benefits. Even with the advance of more sophisticated marketing methods, email marketing retains its rank as one of the most effective. With email marketing, you can make up to a hundred dollars in sales for every dollar spent.

However, success in email marketing isn’t a walk in the park. Like I said earlier, most email marketers find that their emails don’t even get opened. To join the privileged class of email marketers with high open rates, you have to apply the right methods. In this article, I have listed 8 tips that you can apply to your email marketing strategy to get the best results.

1. Segment Your Subscribers

Probably the major reason why marketing emails get ignored is that, more often than not, mailing lists are randomly compiled and recipients end up receiving emails that are irrelevant to them. For example, a 60-year-old university professor is less likely to respond to an ad for Vans sneakers than say, a high school student.

To get your subscribers to open and respond to your emails, the first thing to do is to segment your mailing list. Collect basic demographic information before adding every name to your mailing list. Then, group your recipients based on the information you have collected.

2. A/B Testing

Also known as split testing, A/B testing is a user evaluation process that involves showing two variations of the same content to different viewers. Then, you’d compare their reactions to deduce the variation that elicits the most desirable responses.

Regularly conduct A/B testing to feel the pulse of your audience. Test your subject line formats. Also, test various formats for the body of your emails. And then you can use the data you gather to develop or modify your marketing strategy for better results.

3. Make Unsubscribing Easy

As counterintuitive as it may seem, it is better for your overall success if you make it easy for subscribers to opt out of receiving your emails. Email services track responses to emails that you send. And when a high percentage of recipients on your mailing list do not open your emails, it impacts your reputation with your email provider and they may begin to flag your emails as spam.

So, you need to position the ‘unsubscribe’ button conspicuously so that recipients who are no longer interested in receiving your emails can unsubscribe. However, subscribers who are not opening your emails in the first place will not see the unsubscribe button.

In this case, it is advisable to compile a list of your inactive subscribers and email them asking them whether they want to recommit or unsubscribe. Title the email appropriately to draw their attention and get them to open it.

4. Personalize Your Emails

The best way to keep your subscribers engaged and responsive is by personalizing your emails. Every day, everyone receives a horde of random email marketing items irrelevant to them. Odds are, we are more likely to respond positively to the marketing emails that seem to address us personally.

And, no, I’m not just talking about putting names in the body of the email, although that is very important as well.

However, beyond that, using the segments you have created based on the first point of this article, tailor your emails to your subscriber’s individualities.

5. Track Your Progress and Make Tweaks

In email marketing, data is king. Not just performance data, but other otherwise unimportant pieces of data like the time of the day when most of your subscribers usually open your emails. Email providers provide tools with which you can track all of these data. Gather them and use them to track your subscribers’ behavior.

You can also track how often your subscribers click on links to your website embedded in the text of your emails, and how often those clicks lead to purchases. You can then, based on all this data, make ongoing tweaks to your marketing strategy. This is how to stay profitable.

6. Optimize for Mobile

Only about 34% of emails are opened on laptops or desktop computers. The majority of email openings happen on mobile phones. Apart from work emails that may need to be opened on PCs while at work, most people open emails on their phones. You’d be doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t optimize your emails for viewing on mobile devices.

7. Create Value

There’s no better way to build an email list with high engagement rates than by delivering value to your subscribers. Provide small tips or industry updates or any other bits of information that you think may be beneficial to your subscribers. Not only can this help to increase your sales, but it will also make sure they are looking forward to your every mail, and actually reading them.

8. Name Your Timing and Be Timely

The final tip here is to name your timing and keep to it. Create a schedule. How many times are you going to send emails in a week? On what days will you send them? And at what time of the day. For example, if you want to send emails only once a week, you can choose to send your emails every day at 9 PM. Let your subscribers know about this and they may begin to look forward to your mail.

It might be hard figuring the day and time that will give you the best results. In step 7, I mentioned tracking data on your subscribers’ behavior. Concrete data on what time of the day your subscribers best respond to your emails coupled with A/B testing will help you to make the best decision on timing.

Success in email marketing never happens suddenly. It takes a period of dedication and incremental growth. Apply the tips listed in this article and remain consistent, and you will definitely see results. If you need help with your email marketing, reach out to our team to learn and we will get you set up for success.