Effective email marketing has many advantages. It can be an effective way to promote your business, grow your contact list, and stay in touch with your customers. However, many small business owners are not effectively managing their email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing is a delicate business. Without a good strategy, you could potentially lose customers, gain an unfavorable reputation, and ultimately lose business. With this in mind, what do you need to have an effective email marketing campaign? Follow these four simple and effective email marketing tips.
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1. Effective Email Marketing Starts With Your List
Having a strategy to collect email contacts is great. However, you should also have a process in place that checks email addresses for accuracy. Sort your list and take out role-based addresses that start with info@, marketing@, sales@, accounts@ or support@ emails. These go to groups and increase the likelihood that your email will be flagged as spam since you are not targeting a specific person. If an email is returned as undeliverable to certain addresses, see to it that those addresses are removed from your list.
2. Pay Attention to Your “Subject” and “From” Lines
First things first: your emails should be recognizable. If recipients do not know from whom an email is sent, they will likely delete it. The same holds true for your subject line. If it does not capture their attention and engage them to read further, consider your email deleted.
Avoid vague subjects like “Big Sale!” or “Huge Savings!”
Be sure that your subject line is in line with your email message. If you trick readers into opening an email with a catchy subject, then include a different topic in the body of the email, you will frustrate your customers.
3. What to Include (and Eliminate) in the Body of the Email
Your email should include a note as to why the reader is receiving the email, such as an opt-in choice or a request after a product purchase. You also should include a procedure for the recipient to unsubscribe if they choose. Effective email marketing uses strong copywriting to encourage the reader to take action.
The rest of your email body should contain your well-written message. To avoid getting trapped in spam filters, avoid phrases like:
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- Free
- Savings
- Free trial
- Special offer
- Limited time only
- Winner
- Anything regarding mortgages, bad credit, or debt
While this is not a hard and fast rule, spam filtering technology can flag messages with these words as spam and route them to the bulk email folder. Email filters have become increasingly sophisticated based on a recipient’s prior behavior with your messages. So it is possible that one recipient will get your email, regardless of the content, into their inbox and another has it marked as spam.
4. Effective Email Marketing Follow Up
Remember to continue to follow up your list after sending an email. Check again for any undeliverables, and look for complaints about your emails.
As you continually improve your email list and message content, you will find that an effective email marketing campaign with a sound strategy can bring great rewards and repeat business with happy customers.
