Email marketing works, but only if you do it right. There are lots of businesses that have tried email marketing but have failed to achieve the desired results. Even so, if you pitch your marketing emails in the right way, your emails should generate more sales than your social media advertising. So, if your marketing emails appear to be getting you nowhere, read on. Here are ten email marketing tips that will help you get more sales.
1. Understand Your Target Audience
Before you compose a marketing email, think about the people that you are targeting. Who are these people that are going to buy your product? What does your typical customer do for a living, what are their interests, and what type of language will appeal to them? If you want to sell a product to anyone, you need to understand what will drive that person to buy the product that you are offering.
2. One Size Does Not Fit All
Every one of your subscribers is different. Each person who has opted into your mailing list will have different priorities and varied interests. Because people are different, the best way to fine-tune your email targeting is to segment your mailing list. You can create smaller, targeted subgroups of your mailing list by asking a few simple questions at the point of signup. You can also segment your mailing list by demographics such as age, gender, and geographical location. When you segment your mailing list, you will be able to create more personalized marketing emails.
3. Keep Marketing Emails Short
Keep your marketing emails clear, concise, and to the point. People receive lots of emails every day, so they are not going to want to spend too much time reading a long-winded marketing email. Make your offer clear from the moment that the subscriber opens the email. And, make the call to action persuasive and easy to find.
4. Craft Your Subject Line Carefully
Your subject line is crucial because it is those few words at the top of your message that will entice subscribers to open your email. Avoid using gimmicks in your subject line because they may work once, but they may also alienate your subscribers. If you are unsure about what type of subject line will be the best for your marketing emails, try A/B testing your headlines. Send out the same email with two different subject lines and monitor the success of each subject line.
5. Make it Personal
Write your marketing emails as though you are talking to an individual, not to a large crowd. Personalize your emails by using the name of the subscriber. Use the subscriber’s name in both the subject line and in the body of the email. Research has shown that personalized subject lines increase the chance of the email getting opened by 26%.
6. Make use of White Space
The people on your mailing list are busy. They want to receive emails from you, or they would not have subscribed to your mailing list. Even so, if they open your marketing email and see a wall of impenetrable text, they are unlikely to read your message. Make your marketing emails easy to scan by using subheadings, short paragraphs, and by leaving plenty of white space between blocks of text. If your offer needs a detailed explanation, use a “read more” link to direct the reader to a landing page on your website.
7. Build Trust with Your Marketing Emails
Make sure that your marketing emails have value for your subscribers, and never try to trick your target audience. If you consistently send out useful, informative emails, you will be able to get your subscribers to trust your brand. If you spam your subscribers with misleading offers, though, you will see your prospects evaporating as they will unsubscribe from your mailing list faster than you can sign up new subscribers.
8. Review and Test Your Messages Before You Send Them
You only get one chance with marketing emails, so take your time crafting your message and reviews and test the email before you send it. Make sure that the email looks appealing on both mobile devices and desktops. Test all the links and calls to action in your message. And, if you can, get someone else to proofread your email before you send it out to your prospects.
9. Time is of the Essence
Just like any sales lead, a subscriber list can go cold, so send out marketing emails regularly and consistently. If you leave it too long before you contact a new subscriber, they may forget who you are and why they subscribed to your mailing list.
10. Split Test Your Marketing Emails
As well as testing the subject line of your emails, you will also need to try out different types of marketing emails. Split your subscriber list into segments and try sending different styles of emails to different subsets of your mailing list. When you find a winning formula for your target audience, use that same style of email again for your next email marketing campaign.
Conclusion
All the above tips will help you generate more sales from your email marketing campaigns. The most important advice that you can take away from this article, though, is that you should split test your marketing emails. Every mailing list is different, and every person within a mailing list is different. The only way that you can maximize the return on your marketing emails is to test out your ideas and then stick with what you know works.
Amber Duran 