Email marketing is a potent tool to incorporate into our companies' marketing strategies. It entails sending emails to our current clients and prospects to provide essential information regarding our products or services. Often, email marketing is a part of a wider program of marketing methods, which can also include outside services (like those from redesign.co, to name one example), but this does not mean it is not an important element to focus on.
For our email campaigns to be successful, we must focus on making the best first impressions. Building credibility is also vital to increase conversions, gain more subscribers, and boost our revenue eventually. This is precisely why we cannot afford to disregard creating effective emails. Here are some practical strategies to ensure that our email marketing content is compelling. You can read up on the benefits of outsourcing content marketing if you’re considering getting an outside agency to handle this for you.
Understand the Target Audience
When we comprehend our target audience, it becomes easier for us to develop great content for fruitful email campaigns. This is possible because we know our clients' diverse needs and how they want them to be met. We can tailor our email content for them.
To understand our target clients, we can research them. It is also prudent to engage them on various social medial platforms and participate in many forums where they are involved. Besides, platforms like Yahoo! Answers and Quora could help us collect data on our target audience.
As we devote ourselves to creating captivating content that satiates our target customers' needs, we should not ignore our competitors' moves. What are they doing differently, and how can we be better to win their client base?
Strive to Create a Connection
Our email campaigns tell unique stories that our target customers can only understand if they connect with us. The best way to create the required connection is by using a conversational tone so that readers feel like we are addressing them directly. Therefore, instead of writing the email marketing content in the third person, we should use the second person, i.e., "you" or "your."
Stay Relevant
The biggest mistake we can make when building email campaigns is to include poor content. Readers need to know what's in it for them as soon as possible. Otherwise, they might not read our emails to the end. Therefore, we should establish our emails' relevance from the word go. It allows us to grasp our clients' attention and maintain it until they get to the emails' closure.
While brevity is encouraged when composing relevant email marketing content, we don't necessarily have to stick to short emails. Longer ones are ideal as well, but they can only work if we keep our readers interested. One of the effective ways to do that is by formatting our emails properly using subheadings, bulleted lists, and paragraphs. We can also use videos, images, and 'deep captions.'
Personalization
Personalizing emails works like magic. In 2019, Yes Lifecycle Marketing revealed that emails whose subject lines are personalized have a 50% higher open rate. This is because they humanize communication and give customers new, more satisfying experiences. When we send out personalized emails, we stand out in our target audience's inbox and capture their attention. It also allows us to build healthier working relationships with them.
Some of the most popular email personalization techniques today are:
Customizing our greetings and subject lines
Providing practical product/service recommendations
Celebrating our customers' achievements
Creating dynamic content
Using subscriber tags
Including the client's company and location
Here's an example of a personalized email opening. Instead of writing a phrase like "Dear Reader/Client," we should use "Dear Tamara,"
When personalizing emails, avoid using the wrong first names. None of us desire to be addressed wrongly, no matter what the circumstances. Other mistakes that we should steer clear of during email personalization are:
Including irrelevant service/product recommendations
Using the wrong client information
Mixing up genders
Incorporating irrelevant graphics
Email marketing can catapult our companies to success if we create compelling content for our campaigns. We should take our time during the content creation process and ensure we have all the relevant details about our target audience. Beginners can seek the help of an experienced email marketer who understands their brands and business goals.