Email marketing has replaced direct mail because of its ease, convenience, high ROI, lost cost of deployment and measurable results. You too can utilize your businesses marketing emails warm leads, make sales, and build customer relationships. With email you can also segment your list of contacts and better target your message for specific groups. The more you tailor your message to your target audience, the more likely it is to be successful.
Engage with Your Audience
You can use convenient data platforms to create your email marketing contact lists based on demographics like age, income, location, and psychographics based on shopping habits, leisure activities, and more. Using this data you can create content that better speaks to your target audience. With content that is more engaging to your audience, it leads to better conversions by allowing you to cut through the noise and speak directly to your customers’ pain points, objections, needs and wants.
For successful lead generation:
· Provide your audience with value-added content
· Provide a landing page to capture leads
· Keep your email concise, easily scannable
· Use graphics and keep consistent across design
For successful emails, always include:
· Subject line
· Preview text
· Header
· Bullets or numbers
· Call to Action (CTA)
Subject Lines
Your subject line is your hello and your one chance to grab your reader’s attention and get them to open your email. The subject line should be a little teaser to the content your audience can expect from your email. You have only a moment to make a great first impression, so capitalize on the opportunity by using a subject line that is five words or less and using urgent words like “today”, “act now” and “take advantage”. Your audience is flooded with emails daily, to cut through the noise and get noticed you need to speak to their pain points.
Preview Text
The preview text, or preheader, comes right below your subject line and acts as an appetizer to your main course (your email). Your preview text should include enough information to let your reader know what to expect from your email, but also leave enough mystery to get them interested in clicking to open your email. It should be a very brief summary about what the audience will gain from your email to pique their curiosity and interest.
Header
The header is your hello. This is your chance to tell them the reason for your email and what you have to offer them. If your reader is at your header, congrats! They’ve opened your email thanks to a successful subject line and preview text. But now is the time to let them know what to expect. Make your headlines short and striking. Less is more as your reader is most likely scanning your email. Make your message just the top level of what your email will be about, don’t go into too much detail, the main messaging is still to come.
Bullets or Numbered Lists
The average time spent on reading an email is 11 seconds. In order to get your content across clearly and quickly, it is suggested when applicable, use bullets or numbered lists to break down your copy. Using bullets or numbers makes your email look better and read easier. You can also make content within a paragraph stand out through using bold or italics. The goal is to make your email simple to read and understand.
Call to Action (CTA)
Your CTA is what you are asking your reader to do. This is the moment when you can capture your leads information, or get them to read more, or have them buy products. It is important that your email not contain multiple CTA’s as this will confuse your audience as to the goal of your communication. This is your chance to get them to act and make your email a success.
Why Email Marketing
Email marketing can be highly effective due to its inexpensiveness, and great ROI. But companies should be wary about bombarding their contacts with too many emails, emails that look and sound like spam, and focus on providing value-added content instead. Carefully watch your results and make adjustments to your campaigns such as the time you send, the day you send, the frequency of your emails, and types of content you include.
Ash Emrich 