Social Media Marketing for Business

So, you’re wondering how to generate more leads and convert more prospects for your business?

Are you looking for an effective way to reach your target audience?

In that case, email marketing is your answer.

You may be familiar with it already and argue that there are several new cutting-edge marketing tools such as Heroku and Radian6 that are working wonders for businesses. However, don’t forget about the traditional, yet reliable tool of email marketing. This is the one that can help you get the most of your marketing initiatives.

According to a recent study by the Radicati Group, the number of worldwide email accounts is projected to grow from over 4.1 billion accounts in 2014 to over 5.2 billion accounts by the end of 2018. Another study conducted by Salesforce in 2015 stated that 73% of marketers believe email marketing is core to their businesses.

Email, undoubtedly, has humongous potential in the current digital era. It can be tailored to customer actions so that every communication is relevant to their interest. This way you can add more value to their lives. You can cover a wide range of topics right from changes in your company to asking for feedback from your customers.

By embracing this brilliant channel of personalized digital marketing, you will be able to improve customer experiences and deliver the desired results. However, in order to have an edge over other email marketers, you need to implement the best practices.

Here are nine email marketing practices you should follow to achieve brilliant outcomes.

1. Seek Permission First

First things first. Seek permission from your customers before sending them email marketing messages.

Bear in mind the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, a law that set the standards for commercial email usage. According to this, you need to make it easy for subscribers to opt out of receiving emails. Moreover, those opt-out requests must be honored in a timely manner.

2. Personalize the Emails

‘Batch and blast’ emails are a strict no-no. Personalization can help increase the open rates and humanize your brand further. In fact, according to email marketing platform Campaign Monitor, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened and marketers have seen a 760% increase in email revenue from sending such emails.

So, make sure to create emails that are segmented and personalized. Moreover, you also need to figure out the type of personalization that will work best for your target audience. Users are used to seeing their names in the subject lines. Maybe incorporating the user’s web address or city might be able to generate some extra interest.

Remember, personalization will help you influence recipients to take the action you want them to without making it seem too salesy.

3. Show Genuine Interest

If you want to break through the noise and show your recipient that you are not just another marketer interested only in selling his/her product, then be different. Show your recipient that you want to work towards building a trustworthy relationship with him/her. Showing him/her that he/she will be receiving exclusive access to deals offered by you will motivate him/her to know more about your company.

4. Get Rid of Clutter

Remember, the rule of thumb in this case is: less is always more. So, come up with clear, crisp, and unique content for your emails. Brevity holds significant importance. Focus your message on fulfilling the promise of your subject line. Most importantly, make sure that your content is relevant.

Clutter-free content is the order of the day. Get rid of too many images. Remember to stick to 2-3 typefaces in your emails.

When drafting the email, consider the WIIFM factor which requires you to put yourself in your subscriber’s shoes and ask, “What’s in it for me?” This will help you offer more value to your target audience. Make sure to come up with a persuasive argument and convince people to do what you actually want them to do.

5. Come up with Brilliant Subject Lines

Here’s what you should take care of when working on subject lines:

• Avoid inserting punctuation marks as they are unnecessary.
• Capital letters can be quite helpful in increasing user engagement.
• MailChimp suggests to stick to 50 characters or less for subject lines.
• Use incentives in your subject lines as that can help increase your open rates by as much as 50%.
• It should create a sense of urgency, and it should indicate to the readers as to what they can expect from the email.
• Be useful, specific, and straightforward.

6. Ensure That Your Call-To-Action Stands Out

Remember, the most effective calls-to-action (CTA) always go ‘above the fold’ – the area of the message that shows up on a computer screen, without a user needing to scroll down. Ensure that your CTA is simple, bold, and direct. Also, make sure to repeat it at least three times in your email.

7. Choose Appropriate Colors and Logo Location

Don’t ignore color when it comes to email marketing. It matters significantly. According to a research conducted by MarketingProfs, orange and red are considered to be excellent choices for CTAs.

When it comes to logo, several eye tracking studies have found that people usually look for logos on the upper left-hand side of emails. Make use of this information to ensure that your logo gets maximum visibility.

8. Optimize for Mobile and User Automation

You simply cannot afford to forget optimizing your email for mobile. Its importance cannot be stated enough.

Automated campaigns can help introduce new customers to your company and inform them about what it offers. Moreover, automating emails will free up your time to work on other important tasks. You can set up autoresponders with services such as MailChimp, AWeber, or Infusionsoft.

9. Test Beforehand

In order to ensure that your email marketing campaign’s performance is up to par at all times, make sure to implement A/B testing. According to Monetate’s 2014 personalization ebook, A/B testing is one of the best methods for improving conversion rates.

These tests will also help you build effective strategies for communicating with your target audience in a much better way. For instance, you can start with analyzing the places where customers are engaging with your brand. After doing so, determine tools and techniques that can help you enhance your experience with your customers.

Conclusion

By not using email marketing, you will be missing out on a channel of communication that is used by a huge part of the world. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to implement the above-mentioned email practices to ensure a high performance campaign. These practices will help you improve your email marketing deliverability and ensure a profitable experience. Moreover, they will also help you resonate with your customers in the ever-changing digital marketing world. Being strategic about your email marketing campaign can create a solid impact on your bottom line.

Meet Michael Georgiou

Michael Georgiou is the CMO and Co-founder of Imaginovation , a full service, turn-key digital solutions company serving Raleigh, NC and Charlotte, NC. He's a dynamic business professional with proven success in creative strategy, online branding, project management and communication projects. Follow him on Twitter at @MGeorgiou22