The right way to market your email is to send emails to people who really want to hear from you, but often your emails get lost in the hustle and bustle of customer inbox or spam, or when someone opens your email and does not click on the content. You may think you can not succeed in this area, but in this article I will present 23 important tips for small and growing businesses to improve the rate of opening and clicking on your emails and your ability to attract interested people.
1. Do not buy email lists
In the early stages of preparing a newsletter for email marketing, you need to do the necessary work to start the campaign and get people to pay attention to your business. While there are a variety of options available online, resist the temptation to buy email lists. There are many ways to buy an email list, but none of them will benefit your campaign. Since the owners of these email addresses have not agreed to receive content from you, it cannot be said that they are interested in your content or that your content is suitable for them at all. Purchasing mailing lists is a violation of data protection laws. So, buying an email list is always a bad idea.
2. Follow the CAN-SPAM rules
CAN-SPAM (Content Control and Unsolicited Marketing) is a law that was passed in 2003. This law applies to emails and messages from businesses and gives recipients the right to prevent re-receiving emails from a particular business, and there are penalties for violators of this law.
Some important points of this law are:
Enter your valid physical mailing address in all your emails.
Provide recipients with a clear way to opt out of receiving emails.
Specify the sender, receiver, and "reply" box in clear language so that everyone knows your true identity and personality.
Avoid writing the term "No-reply" and the name of the duplicate sender, as the recipient can not opt out of receiving the email newsletter.
Do not sell or transfer any email address to others.
3. Make sure your process complies with data protection laws
You are probably familiar with the Data Protection Act (GDPR), which was passed across Europe in May 2018 to better protect the personal data of Internet users. You do not need to follow these long rules, but if some of your email recipients live in Europe, you can run email marketing campaigns with the following guidelines:
When users of your website go to a page asking for their personal information, traditional marketing tells you to put a box on that page to get the user into an email campaign and receive updates and special offers related to your business. But today, using this box is considered a violation of the law. Under this law, European users and customers have the right to subscribe to your email newsletter themselves and you should not decide for them.
This may sound like bad news to your email marketing campaign, but it can actually improve your open and click-through rates. Restricting the list of subscribers to those who have applied for membership ensures that only the most interested people will receive your messages. In this way, the possibility of turning email readers into real enthusiasts is maximized.
4. Email new subscribers within 24 hours
Take full advantage of this opportunity when you have just sent an email and your company or brand name is high in the minds of potential customers. When you email people within 24 hours of subscribing to your newsletter or subscribing to a suggested product, you can easily understand how they will interact with them in the future. In addition, it is a great opportunity to brand and recognize customer expectations. If you do not have an automated email system, you will miss out on great opportunities to persuade and interact with existing subscribers.
5. Send your emails from a real person, not a company
When you send emails from a real person, their opening rate increases. simply. This is because email recipients trust the name and personal email more than the company name. Spam is so prevalent today that people are often reluctant to open emails from unfamiliar senders. So it is better to do the following steps:
… Instead:
Sender Name: Marketing Team
Sender Email: marketing@company.com
write:
Sender Name: Paul Smith
Sender Email: psmith@company.com
Our experiments have shown that personalization works well, and we have even found that combining a person's name and a company in the sender's name works well. You just have to be more discriminating with the help you render toward other people.
6. Pre-set the preview text
Email services such as iPhone, Gmail, and Outlook email applications display the first few lines of email text next to the title. In other words, this is a preview of the content of the email. The length of this text depends on the company providing the email service and the user settings. Use this preview to present your content concisely and try to be less than 50 characters long. When you do not set the preview text, the email company automatically extracts the text from your email content, which not only looks cluttered, but you also miss out on a good chance of engaging your audience.
7. Title and Write clear and clickable
As an email, you can compete with other companies in the audience inbox. The best way to stand out is to write compelling headlines for your emails. If you want your audience to open your email, the subject of the email must be:
Be very clear and understandable.
It should be less than 50 characters so that it does not halve, especially on mobile phones.
Use a kind of messaging language and method that is compatible with the personality type of the target buyers and excites them.
Use pragmatic verbs and language to convey a sense of urgency and excitement to the audience.
Have a valuable and unique offer (like a 20% discount on a product or a free e-book) so people know what the benefits are.
Avoid words like "cash, price estimation and savings" because those words will send your email to the spam folder.
If possible, send the offer on time and before the expiration date: "Wow, your version is expiring."
Sometimes it even mentions the audience's first name or even adds something about their location, because it can increase the click-through rate. (Use this method for specific suggestions to avoid duplication and ineffectiveness.)
8. Emails should be short
Everyone is busy and their email inbox is full. Why add to their problems with a long email? People prefer short emails to long emails because the essence of the story and the content of the short emails are clear. In addition, when users review all of their emails in a short period of time, they prefer to be aware of the overall message of the email before making a decision. Another important reason for keeping emails short is that excessive advertising is a kind of red flag and sends your email to spam. To make your email short and compelling, write it as if you were talking to the other person. If your email needs to be long, split it into several paragraphs to create visual breaks. This makes it easier to read.
9. Put a call to action button in each email
Many email recipients read the email in a journalistic and general way without reading the full text. That's why you need to have a clear call to action button that even the fastest readers can see. Without a call to action button, you will not be able to ask your audience to do something that will benefit them as well as grow your business. You should place the call to action button in a location that is easily visible and encourages the audience to click. For example, you could put an invitation button in the email to download a free e-book explaining new strategies for using your product in that book.
10. Add alternative text to the call to action button
Many email service companies block images, including call-to-action buttons, by default. As a result, many audiences will not be able to see your call to action. When you place an alternative text next to the button image, the audience that does not see the button image will see the replacement text and understand where to click. You can edit alternative text in the email text editor. Just right-click on the image and edit it. You can also manually enter it in the HTML editor in the email tool as follows:
<a href="HTTP://YOURLINKHERE.COM <<> img class = ”alignCenter shadow” src = ”YOUR CTA BUTTON IMAGE SOURCE HERE.JPG” alt-text = ”YOUR ALT-TEXT GOES HERE” /> </ a>
11. Hyperlink your email images
The ultimate goal of email marketing is to get people to click on a web page. One way to increase clickthrough without putting multiple links in the ad is to link the images in the email to a web page that has content related to those images. This is called a hyperlink.
For example, if you invite readers to download an e-book and embed a picture of the book in the email, you should not just hyperlink to the text next to the image, "Download from here." You should also hyperlink the image of the book. People are more attracted to images than text, so you should give them as many e-booking options as possible.
You can simply click on the image and then use the "Insert / Edit Link" option in the email tools, or you can link an image in the HTML editor using the following code:
<a href="HTTP://YOURLINKHERE.COM <<> img class = ”alignCenter shadow” src = ”YOUR IMAGE SOURCE HERE.JPG“ /> </a>
12. Put clear text links in the email
In addition to the clear call to action button, it is a good idea to place your suggestion link in several places. In addition to the call to action buttons and main images, Include one or two specific text links in the email. More links increase the opportunity for interaction.
13. Put at least one clickable item at the beginning of the email
One way to get more clicks for each email is to put one or more clickable items at the beginning of the email, such as an invite button, a text link, or a clickable image. This method is especially useful for mobile users, because on mobile they usually have to move the text up and down or zoom in on it. If you give the person a clickable option immediately after opening the email, it will cause more clicks in this environment.
14. Add alternative text to all your images د
Again, most email companies block images by default. In such cases, the images will not be uploaded unless the recipient clicks on a button to view them or change their email settings. Adding alternative text to email images helps recipients understand your message; Even if they can not see the image immediately.
You can write alternative text in practical language. For example, write "Click here to get a new content production package". Functional alternative text instantly turns any linked image into a call to action button. So, even if someone hasn't seen your latest gif, or if they've placed a computer mouse over the image that appears, the alternate text will show them where to click.
15. Avoid leaving the image in the background
This is especially important when your recipient is using Outlook email. Outlook does not recognize background images, and since Outlook is the fifth most widely used e-mail in the world, accounting for 7% of the e-commerce companies' market share, it is best not to use background images. Instead, use the background color and bring the images to your email in other ways.
16. Add social sharing buttons
As the number of people who see your link increases, so does the number of clicks on it. So extend the life of your email by adding a share button. Many email tools have ready-made templates for sharing on social networks that make your work easier. Just enter the destination URL.
Important Note: If you want to increase clicks, you need to add share buttons, not follow buttons. The share button lets your email recipients send the URL of the offer in the email to their followers. The follow button, on the other hand, only asks them to like or follow your company's social media pages.
17. Make sharing easier with ready-made tweet templates
If you make something really easy for people, they are much more likely to do it. If the recipients of the email are very lazy and do not tweet the great content that you sent them in the email, make it easy for them with a feature called "Lazy Tweet". For this purpose, you can use ClickToTweet, which creates a free tweet link.
18. Add an email forwarding option as well
Another way to increase email clicks is to encourage your audience to forward it to others. One study found that most forwarded emails had a "share with friends" button 13 times more than regular emails. Encourage recipients to share by including a "Send to Friends" button or a social media sharing link.
You can also add a caption to the end of the email ad. For example, write "Are you not responsible for your company's social media pages? "So forward this e-book to a friend or colleague in charge of social media." Link the call to action button to a pre-written email with a specific title and text. Thus, the recipient only needs to enter their colleague's email address and hit the send button.
19. Delete the text version of your emails
Not every recipient is going to see the beautiful, HTML and attractive text of your email. Some email companies do not support HTML emails, and sometimes you just want to see the messages in plain text. When you do not optimize the text version of your email, the recipient sees it cluttered and does not read it at all. So, delete extra text, replace long URLs with short URLs, and write plain text for email. By optimizing the text version of the email, you can reach more target audiences and your email will not go to audience spam. When deleting text emails, do not change the original version too much, otherwise it may be considered spam.
20. Optimize your emails for mobile users
A study of more than one billion open emails reported that in April 2016, 56% of open emails were opened on mobile, indicating an increase in the share of mobile emails. As more and more people use mobile phones to read emails and browse the web, marketers need to pay more attention to mobile users than ever before. To optimize emails for mobile, do the following:
Reduce the image file size to match the slower download speed on mobile.
Make sure the call to action button and links are larger than 57-45 pixels for the best user experience. According to a study, the average size of an adult index finger is 2-1.6 cm, which means 57-45 pixels on a mobile phone.
Use responsive email templates. Providing a responsive template may go beyond your skills or bandwidth. Sometimes the simplest solution is to buy email templates from experts in the field.
21. Check and test the email before sending it
When you're ready to press the "send" button, carefully review all sections of the email again to make sure it 's good enough. If email marketing tools allow you to do this, try to see the look and feel of your email in popular email programs and devices. Also need a trial version of Send your email to someone before sending in bulk to make sure everyone receives the correct email list. These are the final steps in checking email.
22. Do not be afraid to modify the contact list
Everyone is tempted to keep any subscribers they have ever attracted to their email list until someone withdraws from the list, but just because they did not opt out of the email newsletter does not mean that they are still interested in your work. Disabled subscribers can drastically reduce the opening and clicking rates of your emails.
To make sure that you only send emails to interested people, modify your email list to remove recipients who have not recently opened a certain number of emails. This way you can be sure that the opening and clicking rates of emails are only for interested readers, and you can get more accurate data about effective and ineffective actions in emails.
In addition, using a good email cleanup program removes other email addresses that prevent your email from entering your audience inbox. Invalid, troublesome, and temporary emails negatively affect the sender's reputation, so it is best to delete them. It's natural to want to enlarge your list, but you can not enlarge it at any cost. Sending emails to reputable and active addresses helps you reach out to people who care about your brand, and this is what all email marketers want.
23. Check the performance of each email
Items that are effective in your email campaign this month may be ineffective next month, so you should check your email opening and click-through rates and take every opportunity to improve your ads. Of course, you also need email analysis tools to do this. For example, if after one month of sending an email you find that 10 messages are twice as interactive as other messages, parse them. What different things did you do in them? Did these emails have a specific photo? Did they have a special title? Or maybe your audience is divided into several sections, and one of these sections is not interested in the current content of your emails. Based on your email performance data, take A / B tests to find out what email recipients want from your newsletters. Then, look for ways to make email campaigns more engaging. Email marketing can be difficult at times, but by sending compelling suggestions to the right target sections and paying attention to the important details in emails, you can increase your open and click-through rates and attract more people.
