While email marketing is renowned for its impressive ROI, there’s no guarantee it will produce those returns.
If your company is like many, you may actually struggle to see any results whatsoever.
If that’s the case, don’t give up yet. You’re just four email marketing tips away from turning things around.
4 Email Marketing Tips Your Company Should Use ASAP
While there is no shortage of email marketing tips out there to help improve your campaigns, the four below have proven to produce results for companies of all sizes, across almost every industry.
To start with:
1. Nail the First Impression with Your Lead Magnets
None of the other email marketing tips on this list will amount to much if you don’t nail the first impression you make with your prospects. As you’ve probably heard, you only get one chance at making the right first impression, and you almost never get another chance to make up for a bad one.
This is especially true with email marketing.
The average person receives nearly 90 emails a day. So, if your recipients aren’t bursting with anticipation to open yours, there’s a good chance they’ll ignore them altogether.
One of the easiest ways to impress them is with your lead magnet. This is a piece of content you’re providing leads in exchange for their email addresses. It could be anything from a case study, to a webinar, to an eBook.
However, one thing it absolutely cannot be is underwhelming. If a lead provides you with their email address and you send them with a piece of content that they could have found on one of your competitors’ sites for free, any future emails will go unopened.
In fact, try to overdeliver with that initial lead magnet. For example, say your lead magnet is an eBook entitled, “10 Ways to Save for Retirement.” First, make sure the 10 tips you provide are actionable and will really help. Then, include a bonus tip or two.
By doing so, it will be clear to recipients that emails from your company are always worth opening right away.
2. Focus on Providing Value Over Trying to Close the Sale
Another way you can lock in a higher open-rate for your emails is by consistently offering value to your list without regularly asking for something in return.
Aside from creating lackluster lead magnets, another mistake most email marketers make is that every single message is essentially a pitch. No matter what the subject line promises or the body of the email covers, the message always ends with a call-to-action.
This may work if you have a very short buyer’s journey, which means your prospects are essentially ready to buy right away.
However, the vast majority of companies don’t have this luxury. They depend on a series of emails to close the deal, which means they need each of those messages to get opened.
If that includes your business, take a page from the content-marketing playbook where the goal is to continuously provide prospects with value until they decide it’s time to make a purchase.
While good subject lines are important, the key to impressive open rates is giving your audience plenty of reason to look forward to your next email.
3. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel When It Comes to Content
After you’ve sent a certain amount of emails, it might begin to feel as though you’ve run out of valuable topics to cover.
That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea to start testing new ideas, though. One bad email could be enough to alienate many of your subscribers.
This is one of many reasons to have a blog, where one unpopular post won’t cost you much.
Of course, if you don’t have a blog, you can review your competitors’ to see what kind of content will work best with your market. You should also double-down on whichever topics your market responds to based on open rates, clickthrough rates, and responses you receive.
It’s a good idea to acknowledge this strategy, too. By telling your recipients that your email is about a certain topic because of the feedback you’ve received, you’re accomplishing two things:
- Showing you really care about giving them the information they want
- Displaying social proof by subtly referencing how valuable your emails are to others
This email marketing tip should make it much easier to regularly create winning content instead of taking shots in the dark.
4. Create a Segment for Recipients Who Don’t Respond
Even with amazing lead magnets – and the other email marketing tips on this list – it’s inevitable that some of your recipients will simply quit opening your messages at some point.
It could be for no other reason than that they’re simply no longer a part of your market. Maybe they’ve changed industries or the problem they needed help with resolved itself.
Whatever the case, create a separate segment for leads who are no longer opening your email messages and consider removing these recipients from your list.
This is because their unresponsiveness may make it look like your emails need adjusting when, as we just touched on, the recipient may have simply lost interest for all kinds of reasons that are completely out of your control.
You could end up changing some of your emails – which were working perfectly well with leads who were interested – only to find that doing so actually hurts your funnel.
So, once you’ve identified someone who isn’t responding, put them in their own segment and send them a reengagement email. As the name suggests, the point of this email is to politely tell the recipient that if they don’t respond, you’ll manually remove them from your list.
There’s literally no drawback to reengagement emails. if they don’t respond, they were never going to anyway. If they respond by reengaging, fantastic! You still have a chance to convert them.
Making the Most of These Email Marketing Tips
You now have four of the top email marketing tips that other companies have used to transform this channel into a valuable asset.
But remember, don’t expect results overnight. Like other forms of marketing, email requires a little patience at the beginning. But, if you stick with it, you’ll soon see your investment repaid many times over.