Email campaigns are one of the most important ways to reach customers online and can lead to more sales, higher levels of engagement, and make consumers more aware of your brand. Though, while email campaigns can be useful, making them stand out successfully can be difficult in such an oversaturated market.
Narrow Down Your Email List
The most important step for a successful email campaign is ensuring they are sent to the right people. Narrowing down your email list based on the content you are putting out makes your content more relevant for consumers and allows you to better market to them directly.
For example, emails about events with a geographical location should only be sent to people near that location and emails that are geared more toward a specific group should be sent to that group — people may unsubscribe from emails they find irrelevant for themselves.
Personalize Subject Lines and Content
Ensuring that your email list is relevant is crucial, but further personalizing your content helps your brand stand out from the hundreds of emails any customer is likely receiving. Ways to personalize your emails include using the customer’s name at the beginning and including items related to their past purchases.
Personalization uses consumer data that can be used to segment customer populations and helps emails feel less corporate while playing to customers’ individual needs.
Be Approachable
Being approachable applies to both the email’s visuals and content. Making emails visually approachable means utilizing white space, text size, and graphics to even out large chunks of text, using company branding, and ensuring that the email is accessible via both mobile phones and desktops.
Using a conversational tone also helps emails be approachable and helps build relationships with customers in contrast to the ‘salesperson’ tone that email campaigns can sometimes take. Taking a personal approach to email campaigns helps customers want to engage with you more than they would engage with an email that uses a formal tone.
Another way to be more approachable is to send the emails from a real person instead of an automated and unmonitored email account. An email with a real person’s name on it is more likely to be opened and recognized by consumers than an email from the brand name or an unmonitored inbox. However, an important caveat to this is that brands should be consistent with the name they use for emails and should think about using someone that will be at the company for an extended period of time, as employee turnover can change the name emails are coming from, causing confusion for customers.
Conduct A/B Email Tests and Track Success
Often, one word can be the difference between good and poor click rates, which can lead to confusion over which version of an email is the most beneficial for a brand. In this case, an A/B test, a test in which different versions of the same email are sent to small groups in the overall target audience, would be helpful in determining which version of the email should be sent to the rest of your audience.
Not only is this helpful for individual emails, it also helps you learn what your audience wants to hear from you and what they care about, which is important in other aspects of consumer engagements as well. Similarly, tracking email success allows you to see what has worked and what could be tweaked, which helps to create a successful campaign.
Here are some email testing tips for you to get started!
Follow Spam Mail Rules
In 2003, the Federal Trade Commission passed the CAN-SPAM Act to set standards for commercial emails like ensuring companies give email recipients the option to opt out, stating that the email is an advertisement, and not using misleading subject lines or content. Not complying with these laws can get your emails restricted or result in a fine from the FTC, so being aware of these regulations is integral to a successful email campaign.
Final Thoughts
Creating a successful email marketing campaign can often feel difficult when customers are receiving emails from hundreds of companies on a weekly basis, but these tips can help you stand out. Personalizing emails, narrowing down your email list, and following commercial email laws can improve campaigns and build lasting relationships with customers, boosting future engagement as well. Happy emailing!
Sources:
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/email-marketing/
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/testing-on-social-media/
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
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