**If you want to maximise your marketing for 2013, you need to be integrating email into your marketing mix.**
Email marketing takes you directly to your customers, every time you have a product to sell or a message to get out there. Rather than relying on them finding you through SEO, or interacting with you on social media, sending an eshot gives you another chance to reach out to your customers on a personal level.
And with the rise of mobile internet, email marketing lets you grab your customers’ attention on the move.
Making the most of eshots
With a great message, winning design, and solid campaign; including email into your marketing mix can be hugely powerful and beneficial.
But in an age of online and email spammers and scammers, your business needs to tread the fine line between being informative, and being a pest. Your customers are bombarded with hundreds of emails a day, and you need to make sure yours withstands the spam test.
So how can you increase open rates, click through rates (CTRs), and the all important conversion rate? Here we share our 7 secrets of successful email marketing:
1. Timing is everything
As with all marketing methods, timing really is everything.
If you want to increase your open rate and get the biggest bang for your email marketing buck, you need to hit ‘send’ at the optimum moment. Send your eshots too early in the day, and they risk getting lost in a mountain of overnight messages. Send them too late in the day, and there’s a chance your recipients will just hit ‘delete’ before reading.
The optimum time to send your emails is about 11am or 3pm. People will have already worked their way through their inbox and replied to messages from the day before or lunch time. This means they’re much more likely to notice, open, and act on your eshot.
2. Targeted messages, segmented contact lists
Email marketing needs to be targeted to achieve maximum success. By sending a targeted message to a specific and segmented contact list, you will have increased success compared to sending a single message to a blanket audience.
By taking the time to tailor your marketing message to specific sections of your audience or prospect list, your eshots become more personal. The more personal your message, the more successful it will be.
Check out our blog post on (link: https://www.superdream.co.uk/email-marketing-tips/ text: creating emails your customers will love) for more tips on targeting your message.
3. Clear call-to-action
(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/3-CTA.jpg alt: email marketing call-to-action)
If you’ve taken the time to construct an eshot, you want your customers and prospects to perform a certain action. Don’t ruin a great email marketing campaign, by including a weak call-to-action.
In the body of your email, tell your customers:
– **WHAT **your want them to do
– **WHY **they should do it
– **HOW **they can
– **WHEN **they should do it by – adding in a timeframe creates a sense of need and urgency
By making it clear exactly what they will achieve by contacting you – and how you want them to convert – you can increase your CTR and conversions. It sounds simple, but this is the most important part of your eshot. Don’t rush it and ruin all your efforts.
4. Sharable content
(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/4-sharable.jpg alt: sharable email marketing content)
One of the primary aims of any marketing should be to create content worth sharing. By producing something unique, interesting, controversial, funny, cute, or usual; your audience are much more likely to share it with their friends.
The same goes for your email marketing.
Create an email that your recipients will want to forward onto their friends. Whether it contains a discount code, special offer, or something really memorable; include something your customers will want to pass on.
To make this easier for your recipients, include social sharing icons and an ‘email to friend’ option.
5. Relevant links
(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/5-links.jpg alt: Example of links in an eshot)
Driving traffic to your website is always an important element of an eshot. Be sure to include links to relevant pages, products, and blog posts on your website. This will help increase brand awareness, cement your status as an industry authority, and boost your conversion rate.
Mix the links up between anchor text links, images, and link boxes in sidebars.
6. Balance between copy and images
(image: https://www.superdream.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/6-copy-images.jpg alt: Example of an image based email)
Your eshots need to be eye caching as well as engaging.
Ask your designer to create a custom template for your email campaign that features your company branding. The problem arises though, with email providers. More often than not, images get blocked leaving your emails looking a little messy.
Because of this, your text needs to stand alone in case your readers don’t download the images. Completely image based emails look great, but they’re not exactly functional for all browsers, devices, and email providers.
7. Test, test, and test again
Perhaps the most important secret for email marketing success we can share is to always test your campaigns.
Test sending them at different times of the day, different layouts, types of copy, and different calls-to-action. You will experience different levels of success, and find that different emails will work better for different audiences.
Takeaways
Email marketing is one of the most popular forms of marketing, and it’s easy to see why. As long as you understand your audience and your message, implementing these seven secrets should really boost your success:
– Find the best time of day for your audience
– Send targeted messages, to segmented audiences for maximum success
– Tell your audience exactly what you want them to do with a clear call-to-action
– Create sharable content to increase your reach
– Include relevant links
– Strike a balance between copy and text
– Test your emails to find what works best for you.
If you’re thinking of implementing an (link: https://www.superdream.co.uk/digital/email-marketing/ text: email marketing) campaign for your business, our online marketing team can help.
As a leading marketing agency, we can work closely with you to produce a winning design, killer copy, and help you send them at the best possible time. To find out more, give us a call on 01527 573 770 or (link: https://www.superdream.co.uk/contact/ text: fill in our contact form).