If you aren’t utilizing e-mails or e-mail drip campaigns, you’re missing out on a huge marketing opportunity! E-mail is an excellent tool to be using especially because they can be automated- which means you’ll have more time to focus to other areas of business.
Before you start setting up automated e-mails there’s a few things you should and should not be doing that can make or break your e-mail open rates, click through rates, and percentage of people who unsubscribe. Let’s break some things down.
1. Treat Your First E-mail Like Your First Date
Just like a first date, your first e-mail is potentially the beginning to a beautiful relationship. And first impressions matter!
It is going to be worth spending the extra time to polish the first e-mail your subscribers will read. Make the welcome e-mail: fun, structured, easy to read, and make sure your reader understands what they are getting themselves into- what can they expect moving forward? Who knows -maybe you’ll get that 2nd date!
2. Your Subject Lines
This is arguably the most important part to any e-mail you will ever write. Why? It’s the first thing people read when they get an e-mail! Most business owners don’t devote enough energy into writing a good subject line- don’t procrastinate this step!
Here’s the thing- if someone doesn’t make it past your subject line, they never have the chance to make it to the content, offer, etc. that you are providing in the body.
So what kind of advice do we have to offer you?
-Keep it short (10 characters or less have a 58% open rate)
-Drive urgency (use words like Urgent/Important/Limited Time)
-Stay Casual (Emojis are your friend!)
3. Get Personal
You may be shocked to hear that customers and clients want to hear from you most often by e-mail. What is more shocking is that 80% of consumers also expect those e-mail communications to be personalized according to MarketingSherpa.
80% of consumers also expect those e-mail communications to be personalized
Here is the thing- you don’t need a crazy amount of data to send a personalized email. Their first name, zip code, birthday, and home purchased anniversary date are all enough to get their attention!
Birthday emails are 235% more likely to be opened and also have 300% higher click-through rates than typical promotional e-mails according to Experian white paper. Too bad you can only send those once a year!
Another simple way to stay personalized while using their first name is to use this merge field in the body of your e-mail in addition to the greeting.
Most people tend to read the beginning and end blocks of e-mails, so go ahead and close your e-mail out with their name once last time.
Going back to what I mentioned in the beginning- if you aren’t using e-mail campaigns you’re missing out on a super simple way to keep in touch with your clients! And if you are using e-mail campaigns, you now have 3 new pieces of information to apply to your campaigns! Keep making good impressions so people look forward to seeing your e-mails in their inboxes!
- Michelle, Sales and Marketing Assistant
