Top Tips for a Strong Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is one of the best weapons a digital marketer can have in their arsenal. It is cost effective when compared to more traditional marketing, includes in-depth analytics to measure performance, allows for easy personalisation and is proven to deliver results time and time again.
But there are some key do’s and dont’s that you should take into account before you go ahead and send your campaign - here we discuss four of the most important ones.
Grow your Marketing List Organically
While buying email lists might seem like an easy route to expand your reach, and it can be awfully attractive if you’re new to the world of email marketing, it’s a definite no-no. Sending emails to lists you’ve bought is a bad idea for two main reasons. Firstly, most email marketing software won’t let you input pre-bought email lists, and will insist you only use opt-in lists. Secondly, there is no point sending e-shots to addresses that are, in all likelihood, not going to bring about the action you want. There is no such thing as a quality email list – the chances are, the addresses have been ripped to shreds already. But most importantly, rented and purchased lists are just scraped from other websites, which is a dirty way of acquiring contacts. How frustrating is it to receive unsolicited emails from someone you’ve never passed your details to? Grow your email list organically by using a sign-up form that requires subscribers to opt-in to receive your emails.
Don’t Forget Pre-Header Text!
Since 2010, emails opened on mobile devices have grown by over 30%, and more emails are now opened on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets than on desktops. This shift to mobile means that pre-header text - the short summary text that follows the subject line when an email is viewed in the inbox – is more important than ever. Along with the subject line, the pre-header text is the first thing subscribers see when they come into contact with your email campaign. These two elements will decide whether or not the recipient opens the email or not, and without an open, you won’t get the conversion you want. Different devices have differing character limits, some as low as 40 (like Windows and Androids native email apps), some around 90-100 (iOS’s native email app and Gmail’s iOS app) while some can be as high as 140 (Apple Mail on desktop). For these reasons, it’s best to keep it short – between 40 and 50 characters.
Time It Right
There is a lot of debate about when the right time is the send an e-shot out – weekday or weekend? Day or night? The truth is, it depends, and lots of studies are contradictory. But there are some general findings that seem to be consistent. The middle of the week tends to be the best time, in particular, Tuesday and Wednesday. Between 9am and 3pm is the optimal time, so if you’re sending out emails to people in different time zones, bear this in mind.
Make it Personal
Studies show that marketers who utilise personalisation to make their emails more relevant and stand out are getting click through rates up to 2.5x higher, and for e-commerce sites, generating 6x more sales. In the context of email marketing, personalisation is the act of targeting an email to a particular subscriber based on the information you have on them. In its basic form, it can involve simply addressing it to the recipient by name, but can be expanded on to include things like gender, age or location. It’s not just the subject line and pre-header text that you should personalise – try and include some personalisation in the main body, too. One good example of personalisation is from Adidas’ Originals marketing campaign, which switches the products depending on the gender of the recipient.
