On the internet, email is like having a mobile phone, with the difference that on the internet — you can almost always get anyone’s phone number, at any given time. Sometimes, you create something and ask users to enter their phone number (email) in for you, so that they can be notified when you share and publish more of the amazing stuff that got the interested in the first place. We now it by the name of email marketing.
The reasons for creating an email list have long been known and understood by expert marketers, and we recently published a post ourselves, about the reasons why a small business should invest in an email marketing strategy, and how rewarding it can be. It’s without question the leading way of staying in touch with your customers and peers of interest.
If you’r new to email marketing, or have done it a few times before, you will be familiar with email marketing campaigns — in simpler words, it simply means to send out a carefully crafted message and/or announcement to everyone who has signed up to be on your email list. And more often than not, we want these emails to be of highest quality so as to retain the subscribers, but also to convert leads where possible.
1. Talk to Your Customers
Marketing always was and always will be about the customer, there is no denying that. These days there are countless ways of connecting with your customers, social media and content marketing being a few of them, but email is usually the one that plays on the more personal level. And there is nothing more dissatisfying than a corporate email that only wants to sell you something.
When sending a new campaign:
- Always greet your customers by their first name, which means you have to find a way to collect their name as well. It’s a nice and personal touch.
- Don’t drag the email for too long only to try and sell something at the end. Bring value to the table.
- Give them a good initiative to continue reading the email at the top, rather than the bottom.
2. Optimize the Email Experience
The mobile experience can now provide just as many features and possibilities as a full-blown desktop computer, and with that in mind, the usage of mobile devices for business and personal needs has increased dramatically over the last few years, even months some would say. And with that in mind, we need to make sure we’re catering to our mobile users the same way we are to desktop users.
A mobile device is usually going to require a responsive email design that can naturally adapt to the needs of the mobile device. The impact of responsive emails in terms of open rates, and conversion rates, is too huge to miss out on.
3. Test What Works
In development, programmers test their applications against common errors and performance optimization, in email — we can use testing to test what works best for us and our subscribers, including the email design, the titles we choose to have, and the overall email experience we provide. It’s easy to get started.
Testing allows you to compare and contrast different elements of your email campaigns to see how they impact your subscribers’ reactions to them. You can form a hypothesis about what you think will occur, and then formulate a test and find out what really happens.
4. Email Campaign Frequency
The last task on our list is actually less a task, but more of a reminder to those who are eager to build their email list quickly. It’s easy to get carried away with having access to so many people at any given time, and sometimes we may feel that sending out a few emails a week is going to increase our conversion rates significantly, that simply is not true.
Even before you begin sending out your first emails, you should get clear about the email marketing strategy that you’re going to be using, and whether sending out multiple emails on weekly basis is going to yield you the best result. It’s possible to ask your new subscribers to select the frequency of emails they’d like to receive, but then you’ve to be completely clear about the message you’re trying to convey over your email campaigns.
Sometimes as frequently as twice a month is enough to capture the attention of your customers, and customers-soon-to-be. MailChimp fully agrees that more is not always better.
Alex Ivanovs is an online entrepreneur who has been writing about technology, business and developer topics for over a decade. He currently manages CodeCondo — an aspiring community for designers and developers.