Email marketing isn’t just sending your customers a weekly newsletter or selling your products and services through monthly emails. When strategically planned, email marketing can help you to generate revenue and build deeper connections with your customers.
To achieve that, here are five simple strategies you can use in your next email marketing campaign.
5 Simple Strategies for Your Next Email Marketing Campaign
- Write engaging and concise email copy.
- Offer a clear call to action.
- A/B test all your emails.
- Segment your audience to target the messaging.
- Take advantage of marketing automation.
1. Write Engaging and Concise Email Copy
Most emails are unnecessarily long, which can confuse the reader and overwhelm them with too much information. While there’s no standard limit for how many words to write in an email, I find that the most efficient emails are between 100 and 200 words.
With short emails, every word counts. When writing concise email copy, be strategic about your word choice. Ask yourself what your audience needs to know and how best you can deliver that information. This will vary based on the kind of content you’re offering, but a general rule of thumb is the shorter and clearer your message is, the more effective it will be.
With that being said, try to not be too dry. Yes, long messages can bore your audience, but if you have no personality in the message, you can also lose their interest. Make your message conversational and ensure that your use of words is friendly and direct, even if it is short. Show personality while still maintaining clarity. Your choice of words should also reflect your brand values and language.
One way to remain concise is by making use of short paragraphs and bullet points to deliver a lot of information in a small space.
2. Offer a Clear Call to Action to Gain Traction
A good email can leave pleasant thoughts in the mind of your reader, but then what? Make sure you leave the reader with an actionable item or a way for them to continue their relationship with you. A call to action (CTA) at the end of your message will help you deepen your relationship with the reader and invite them to further interact with you.
An on-brand email design can capture the attention of your audience, but use it as a way to guide the reader to your main message and CTA. If you’re selling a product or experience that subscribers need to be convinced of, move the CTA toward the bottom of the email and use the space above to inform the reader. On the other hand, if the reader doesn’t need to be persuaded, place the CTA at the top of the email. Whether the CTA is at the top or bottom of your email, ensure there is enough white space for it to stand on its own.
A high click-through rate is a strong indicator that your email marketing campaign resonated with your audience, and more engaging emails with a clear CTA will improve your click-through rate.
3. A/B Test All Your Emails
Testing different versions of your email content will help you to identify what small changes might be beneficial to your message and to increase the way you resonate with your audience.
A/B test your email by putting two versions against each other to determine which version works best for your message. This is a great way to find out how you can optimize your email campaigns. You can A/B test subject lines, content formats, and calls to action. When running an A/B test, you will have to understand which elements you would like to focus on testing to ensure that both versions are organized and well thought-out.
Variations of your email are tested on a small sample group in your contact list. Most email service providers have A/B testing available. This test usually takes between four to 12 hours. A winning version is determined based on what metrics you’re testing, such as open rate or click-through rate.
4. Segment Your Audience to Target Your Messaging
Your customers are made up of a variety of personas, with different preferences, lifestyles, and values. So why would you send all of your customers the same message? Segmenting your email audiences in groups, by sending them different messages based on their demographics (including age, gender, or income) can improve your click-through rate and help your message better resonate with your different customers.
By segmenting your audiences, you can improve the focus of your message to ensure each group of customers is receiving the information they are looking for, and it puts your customer first by keeping in mind their goals and interests.
Segmentation also enables you to make your emails more personalized with your audiences to make them feel connected to the message you’re sending them. This is beneficial because it has been proven time and time again that personalized emails drive higher engagement and conversion rates. Depending on who you are talking to, you can shift your tone or use of message, but stay on-brand as you diversify your approach.
5. Take Advantage of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is becoming a staple practice for increasing revenue. Not only does it make your workflows more efficient, but it can improve email performance and results.
By streamlining your workflow through automation practices, you can free up your time by avoiding repetitive and menial tasks, and ensure that these tasks are done accurately. Sometimes repeating the same copy and pasting actions across multiple emails or spaces can leave room for error.
In addition, more advanced ways of structuring your email campaigns can be enabled through marketing automation. This includes sending your emails at particular times to customers around the world to ensure that someone in Europe doesn’t receive the message at 1 a.m. when they’re asleep as your North American customer opens it up over their lunch break. Optimizing the send time can help ensure that your message is delivered at the right time to your different audiences.
Remember: Don’t Just Sell. Your Messages Should Offer Value.
Email marketing shouldn’t be primarily about targeting customers to sell them a product or service. You need to position yourself as a trusted and educated source within an industry to stay above your competition and generate more trust with your customers. If you are constantly selling your products and services, customers will not only be bored, but potentially annoyed. Make your messages more valuable to them.
