Okay, you just started your own business and you are trying to spread the word. How are you going to do this — Pen and paper and a few days time? Door to door talking with the Jones’? Probably not. You will be using Email Marketing. Email Marketing is used for advertisements, solicit sales or donations, and brand awareness. Email Marketing is one of the most important tools a company can use when trying to spread awareness of an ad, new product or anything the company wants their market to know! It is used by almost every single company out there. Seems pretty simple right? Write up an email and send it out.. Well it’s not that easy, there are so many things that can contribute to the succcess of your email marketing and I’m going to show you how you can knock it out of the park. So let’s go!
The Subject Line.
Okay, this is key. Think about all the emails that are sitting in your inbox. They all have at least ONE thing in common, they have a subject line. Whatever you choose to put on your subject line is going to be the first impression left on you audience, it’s the first thing they see when they open up the email. Depending on your desired outcome, your subject line is going to change a little bit. Let’s look at a few styles of subject lines that are out there —
- Simple – Trying to get straight to the point with no nonsense? This is your go to. Put exactly what you are trying to accomplish and let it run. These types of subject lines can be used for order updates, anything going on on their social media activity amongst other things.
- Funny – Tired of seeing the boring and dull subject lines? Throw in something funny to get the reader’s attention, having something humorous on an email is a great way to pull people in!
- Personalized – These subject lines are meant to really connect with the specific market. Let’s say you are t-shirt business in Portland, Oregon. You could get personal and send out and email like ‘Best T’s In Portland, Oregon’. This could grab the attention of the people living there and could get some conversions!
Get Your Emails Opened.
The main goal of your emails is to have them actually get opened. I know I’m not the only one when I say that over half of the emails I receive never get opened. How can we change this for you? Let’s dive in.
- Don’t talk to the audience – What I mean by this is stop trying to talk to everyone at once. Focus your writing like you are writing to one single person. It makes the email more personal and therefore is going to increase the amount of opened emails.
- Don’t email just to email – Only send out emails when you truly have something of value to your audience. No one wants to get blown up on emails for no reason. Got an ad you want to send out? Awesome, shoot out an email! The office got a new coffee machine? Yeah, keep it in the office.
- Reward Them – They just read through your entire email, that’s awesome! Leave something at the bottom that helps them in some way. Whether it’s a quote that inspires them, a joke to make them laugh, maybe even a discount code for an online store. Just something that says, ‘Thank You’.
Use Personas.
Alright, so you want to write the best content for you audience. Sometimes this can be difficult and it can be easier to focus on a specific person. This is where Personas come in to play. Personas are fictional representations of the customers in which you are putting your focus on. After you’ve done the research, you should be able to create personas of the desired target audience. You could go as far as to make up their job, where they live, how much they make a year. Once you have certain personas created, writing the content to reach out to them is simple! That’s why using personas in email marketing is so important to success!
Ending
Now that you’ve read over some of these tips and tricks, your email marketing efforts are going to sky rocket, and with that, so is your business! Keep in mind, I only covered three topics within email marking, there’s a lot more to it and a lot more tools that can be used. Keep improving, keep learning!
Wes
Sources —
Lee, K. (2018, November 30). The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Marketing Personas: Buffer. Retrieved from https://buffer.com/library/marketing-personas-beginners-guide.
The 9 Best Email Subject Line Styles to Increase Your Open Rates. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/31/email-subject-lines.
Carter, J., Mangles, C., & Chaffey, D. (2013, November 5). Using Personas for Email Marketing. Retrieved from https://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/using-personas-email-marketing/.
