Email marketing campaigns are an absolute staple of marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes, but while they may seem simple enough, they can sometimes prove difficult to execute efficiently. A well-targeted campaign can increase the public’s perception of both your products and the entire brand by providing interesting and relevant content that entertains and promotes. On the other hand, everyone knows how annoying flaky emails are. If an email from a business does nothing more than try to sell, your readers may consider it spam. This guide will help you create an email marketing campaign that will keep readers interested and engaged with your brand, increasing your online reach and increasing sales.
1. Nail the subject line
One simple factor of email marketing schemes that can really make a difference in who actually reads instead of just receiving your emails is having an effective subject line. For those who don’t know, a subject line is that little sentence or preview that appears in your inboxes, giving the reader information about the content of the email. Obviously this is an essential part of your email and should not be overlooked as they often are. The subject line acts as a headline or ‘headline’ for your email, and just like with a newspaper, the headline should entice the reader into spending some of their time reading the email. It’s also worth staying away from topics that could be read as spam. For example, subject lines that rely heavily on words like ‘Free’, ‘Offer’ and ‘Deal’ can have the ability to instantly turn off potential readers and condemn your email to the confines of the mailbox. not wanted.
2. Keep content relevant
To be effective, email marketing campaigns must offer something to the reader. In exchange for reading your promotional material, the recipients of your emails will want something that benefits them in return. This can be anything you think will be interesting and relevant to your customer base. An example of this in practice is that many online fashion retailers refrain from sending out simple alerts about price drops and new ranges, instead choosing to include these aspects as part of a seasonal style update or ‘look book’.
3. Layout and Design
As with all marketing campaigns, online or otherwise, the way your content is presented will play a big part in determining how well it’s received. While email marketing design practices could take up an entire article, there are a few key points worth sticking to. Font size is an important factor in getting it right. Too small and people may struggle to read, too large and it may not work well on smaller screens. As a general rule of thumb, a font size of around 30 points works well for headings, while the main body content should be no smaller than 14 points. Images should be used sparingly, as many email clients do not display images by default. Emails should be just as accessible in plain text format as they are in a full CSS-styled document.
4. Go mobile
More and more people are using their smartphones as their primary device for reading emails, especially when on the go. For this reason, it’s important that your email marketing is as readable on mobile phones of all sizes as it is on a desktop computer. While it’s easy to make sure your text is accessible on mobile phones, feature-rich emails may require a bit more attention to work well on mobile devices. For example, contact forms and calls to action should be optimized for touch screen use.
5. Do it right
When your customers receive your emails, it will undoubtedly have an immediate effect on whether they read them. Too early in the morning and they can get lost in a storm of daily emails that some choose to subscribe to. Too late in the day and they can be ignored in the post-work dropout. The optimal time for your emails will depend to some extent on the demographic you are trying to reach. A combination of experimentation and speculation may be the most efficient way to determine what works best for you.