10 Email Marketing Tips To Improve Your Campaigns

If you’re struggling to create the perfect email campaign, you might need some email marketing tips. Email is one of the most ubiquitous forms of communication in the modern business world. This can be a double edged sword, as being overwhelmed by the number of messages your receive can quickly start to outweigh the positives of fast and easy communication. Marketers want their messages to reach a potential customer’s inbox, instead of being marked as spam. If you manage to catch a customer’s attention, there’s a chance to develop a long and fruitful relationship with them. But converting a potential lead into a longtime customer is easier said than done. If you want some email marketing tips to improve your campaigns, read on.

Perfect Your Subject Line

The subject of an email is one of the first things a potential customer will see. Getting this text right can be the difference between gaining or losing a sale. If it’s particularly bad, your messages might even get marked as spam. If someone is interested in your products or feels like they’ll benefit from your services, they’ll open your email. It’s worth spending the extra time to truly perfect your subject lines.

Lead Them Into Your Content

Once you’ve mastered appropriate subject lines, it’s time to handle preview text. While it shares many qualities with the subject line, preview text gives you a few more characters to work with. This is where you sell people on opening your email, and give further hints about what they’ll see. Emphasize that a sale is one day only, or that a particular deal will be expiring soon.

Keep It Short and Sweet

Marketing copy needs to be short, sweet, and to the point. The average consumer won’t spend that much time reading your emails, so you want to maximize the value you get out of the few words they decide to read. Make sure that the structure of your email is logical, and that it’s easy to read. Write short paragraphs that make their intent clear. Using bullets or subheadings to break up your text is also a good strategy.

Avoid Shouting at Your Subscribers

The best way to make your email campaigns more annoying is to make your customer feel like you’re shouting at them. Putting text in all caps in your subject line, or overusing exclamation points can come across as overwhelming and spam-like. This can negatively affect your open-rate, but might also result in subscribers blocking or reporting you.

Speak Like a Human Being

It’s hard to connect with marketing copy if it comes across as robotic or overly formal. Make sure to keep it conversational and light. That doesn’t mean you can’t be sincere or passionate about your message, it just means that people prefer connecting with other people. Pique subscribers’ interest and entertain their imagination. If they feel like they can relate to you and are interested in what you’re saying, you can start building a relationship with them.

Send Relevant and Personalized Emails

In relation to coming across as human and approachable, make sure not to send out blanket statements to your customers. If every person is receiving the same marketing email, you’re doing something wrong. Segment your audience by interests, demographics, industry, and other factors. Send re-engagement campaigns to subscribers that haven’t opened your emails in a while. Send a thank you, or recognize customers that have repeatedly engaged with your contact and business.

Send Emails on a Consistent Basis

If you send out emails too often, you’ll be marked as spam. Send emails out to rarely, and people will forget that they subscribed to you in the first place. It’s important to strike a balance between these two extremes, and it’s not always the easiest task. Subscribers that actually want your content will be glad to have a regular schedule, as they’ll know what to expect from you, and they’ll know to look out for your messages when they check their email.

Make Your Design Clean, Crisp, and Appealing

Even if your marketing copy is written perfectly, you’ll quickly lose subscribers if your emails are’t visually appealing. You should be conveying information through a variety of channels; combining text, structure, and visual assets. Images should not be used in place of content, but rather to illustrate and support the copy that’s already there. Impressive graphic design is a sure way to catch someone’s attention; being remembered for having sleek and attractive marketing means that people bother to remember you.

Make Your Messages Mobile Friendly

A growing majority of consumers check their email on smartphones and other mobile devices. If your marketing emails aren’t created with mobile access in mind, they might not display correctly. Even if they do, mobile users won’t want to scroll through a giant wall of text during the few moments they take to check their messages. Make sure that your emails are visually appealing not only on desktop interfaces, but on mobile interfaces as well.

Make It Easy To Unsubscribe

This tip might seem counter-intuitive, but  it’s important to mention. Many customers will unsubscribe if they find your content irrelevant, but some will unsubscribe while still maintaining an interest in your products and services. They simply don’t want more emails clogging up their inbox. But if it’s hard for customers to unsubscribe from your messages, the experience can leave a bad taste in their mouth. Making it easy to unsubscribe shows that you care about your subscribers’ experiences, and want them to be in control of the content they consume.

If you’re looking for more email marketing tips, check out our Five Strategies for Reducing and Avoiding Email List Churn.