It is harder than ever to get recognition in email campaigns. Attention is at a premium, and you are fighting the noise of emails from every direction. Here are some quick tips of how to inspire opens with your email campaign.
DO
Provide something useful to the recipient
People enjoy things that are beneficial to read. Imagine how many emails you get that you don’t read before you delete. If you find value in an email, you’ll read. This can be something funny, informative, or an offer from your business. Secrets, exclusive information, and unique articles are all beneficial to the recipient.
Personally address the recipient
We’ve gone over this before, but it is worth noting again, and again, and again. Don’t send mass emails and ignore the target audience. Include first names in the email. Address the person receiving your email as well as telling them who you are. Don’t send it from some mass email name. Send it from YOU, and even sign the email if you’d like.
Provide timely information, whether it be promotions or news.
There is nothing more annoying to me than getting an email about a news story that was popular 2 weeks ago. If you can’t do more than dig up old stories that caught our attention before, please don’t send your email. If the article still has an active conversation (say, like the Apple / FBI drama), then it’s still fair game. Also, don’t send outdated coupons or discounts. That is just useless information and may cause more unsubscribes than opens.
DON’T
Offer a lot of FREE stuff and DISCOUNTS for ACT NOW clicks. It looks bad.
When your email looks gimmicky, people spam you. If it looks like it’s coming from a hacker I will delete it before I even see who it was sent from. There is nothing entertaining or beneficial about a lot of CAPITALIZED coupons YELLING at me to TAKE ACTION NOW. If you truly have a deal worth taking, and an email worth looking at, your subscribed recipients should read your email and take the offer without being screamed at. Think about it- these people are getting almost 100 emails a day. Why yell at them for choosing to read yours?
Forget to work on your subject line
I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for a punny subject line. There are several retail companies that do a great job at this. Some senders, like the NYT Cooking Email, has a small snapshot of what their email includes. It might say “8 easy weeknight recipes” or “The Best Salmon Recipe” and since I know they are true to their word, I will open almost every email they send. If the subject line says they are telling me about salmon, they’re telling me about salmon. Please, please, whatever you do, don’t try clickbait subject lines and forget to deliver what you just promised.
Miss the spell check step
Have you ever seen a magor typo in an otherwise professional email? It makes them look bad. (Did you catch that?) It discounts the validity of the email, as well as making the sender themselves look bad. I usually click “delete” when I see a typo. Not because typos are the end of the world, but because it screams “you’re not important enough for us to proof read” and that is disappointing. I have too much to look at and read on a daily basis to spend time on someone that doesn’t care about my time.
Please reach out to learn more about email campaigns with Salesmanna!
Ever wonder how you’re supposed to go from “unrecognizable startup” to a solid brand with actual leads? Follow a few simple, but time consuming steps to invest in your business and see lead generation.
Create Buyer Personas
Do you know who your target market is? If not, this is the first thing you should do. You can find buyer persona templates here and learn more about them here. If your current and interested customers are older, male, white-collar business owners, you won’t do well to advertise on Pinterest. Know your audience and know them well! Having a CRM that is
Narrow your message
With your buyer personas created you know exactly who you’re selling to and what they’re interested in. With this kind of information you can narrow down your social media presence, your email offers, and your giveaways. Spend less time trying to reach everyone, spend more time reaching the handful of people who are right on the cusp of being a dedicated brand follower.
Know what you have to offer and what you’re willing to change
Your entire team should know the passion that is driving your business decisions. Communicating this effectively will help your marketers and salespeople sell your product or service. Regular meetings with criticism and feedback will help you know if there are features you should change, routes that need to be taken, or other outlets that someone has information about. You can’t do it all, so know what you have to offer (what you’re best at) and go with it. The more you grow the more you can widen your scope but until then, stick with your expertise. When something needs to change, get feedback from others. Don’t make all of those decisions yourself because unless YOU are your target customer, you may not always know what is best.
Let your customers know you care. Get personal with them.
Showing your customers you care can produce a brand loyalty that is deep and will spread to their friends and contacts. We’ve all heard that it costs ten times as much to gain new customers as it does to retain one. There are plenty of reasons a customer can be lost and not all are up to you, but one that is entirely in your hands is customer service. You can control how you respond to, reach out to, and communicate with customers. When you’ve personalized emails and responded to their complaints on social media, you’ve shown that you’ll take responsibility for your product and that you’ll make time for them. Remember: the customer is why you’re doing what you’re doing!
Offer interesting content to your current and future customers.
Content creation isn’t something most businesses can afford to opt out of. For customer engagement, SEO, google search, etc. content is huge for anyone trying to gain new followers online. Once you know your target audience you should have an idea of what they like. With this information you can offer relevant incentives for readers and followers to engage your brand. Any time a follower shares or likes a post on social media or shares a blog post, you’re gaining brand awareness and reach. With new readers finding your page, continue to create new, fresh content they’ll want to read. Content creation is one of the most challenging and most rewarding parts of brand growth. And just like that you’ve invested in the future of your brand! Contact our team to get further help on this topic.
An email campaign can be a couple different things. A monthly newsletter is an email campaign.
However, the most useful type of campaign is what we refer to as “automated.” This is the kind of campaign where you create a handful of different emails and triggers. For example, Email 1 is sent to your entire database or a specific list. The recipients who click on Email 1 get Email 2 a few days later. The ones who don’t even open Email 1 get another version of Email 1, called Email 1a, a few days later. All of the emails are sent based on “triggers” or specific actions taken by the recipient. This is using full Email Automation how it was meant to be used.
Email campaigns are intended for recipients who are expecting marketing from your company. They shouldn’t be spammy or annoying. If you use them as such, you’ll be blocked from Salesmanna (and almost every other email marketing software).
The goal with an automated Email Campaign or Newsletter is to reach out to interested contacts, utilize inbound marketing, and identify interested leads. Once you’ve identified your leads you can provide relevant information to those who are actually interested in receiving it.
Stay tuned for more FAQ blog posts & tips for using Salesmanna to fit your business.
Wondering how email automation could help your business? Ask us here for a free consultation.
Inspired by Nathan Barry, we wanted to throw out a few quick tips to our readers about writing and sending emails that your contacts actually want to open.
One thing we’ve noticed is that small business owners aren’t the best at communicating with their customers. This is a tragedy.
Why? Because who should be better at this than small businesses, with just enough customers that they could really fine-tune their content and marketing strategy? Small Business owners, who have contact information for almost all interested clients, have the absolute best database of interested clients, what they like, and what kind of email newsletters really click with them.
Tip 1: Do your research
If you’re not already using an email automation tool that provides analytics on what or when the recipients click on your emails, start here.
If you are, and you’re not paying attention, start with realizing that you’re throwing away great market research.
Tip 2: Don’t send useless information.
Berry puts it this way:
“The best emails are the ones that provide immense value to the reader. If your entire email sequence consists of “sell, sell, sell” then you’ve entirely missed the point. Instead you want to use education to help your reader. As you write each email ask yourself, “will this content help the recipient improve their life or work?” If not, don’t send it.”
Tip 3: Keep it short. Keep it short. Keep it short.
(see tip 2)
Tip 4: Know your audience.
If you’re sending real-estate emails to a group of professionals, your tone should be professional. Think of how much “free time” your readers have when they see your emails– the answer is none. They don’t want fluff, they want information and a way to respond if they’re interested. Make this part easy!
On the flip side, if you’re sending emails about your small business success to a group of people who have volunteered to help, keep it personal. They don’t want to feel like you’re a robot and suddenly too busy to make your emails personal. Make a joke, give them some information, and keep it casual.
P.S. It’s always a good idea to use real first names in mass emails (you can do this with Salesmanna).
