How do you get the most from your email marketing? Here’s a few practical tips to help.

Plan, plan, plan

Many people do marketing activities on the fly and then wonder why they did not get good results. Start with a plan, including objectives, target market, key messages, a call to action and reporting process.

Recipients

Determine who your target market is and where you will obtain a quality list. If possible, segment your list into groups so your content and call to action can be targeted.

Email design and content

• Subject line is key. Make it short, punchy and tantalising, so that your emails get opened.
• Brand and design. Make it visually appealing, easy to read and representative of your professional brand image.
• Personalise it. Include your client’s name and, where possible, make it FROM a person rather than a generic company email address.
• Make It Relevant. Put yourself in the target market’s shoes; think WIIFM (What’s In It for Me?). What will they get out of reading your email?
• Short. Keep it short and punchy with weblinks to landing pages for more information.
• Call to action. Include a call to action, i.e., a special offer, e-guide, etc.
• Additional functions. Include an unsubscribe function, ‘forward to a friend’ and links to your social media sites.

Sending, testing and measuring your email marketing

• Sending it. Use an email broadcasting system for storing your database, sending targeted emails, personalising, handling unsubscribes and tracking results.
• Test it. Send out test emails to ensure they work. Ensure to check both the text only version and the HTML version.
• Measure and review. Track the results of your email, i.e., open rate, click-throughs and so on. Review this information for your email marketing program and continue to improve it for next time.

Lastly, review the things you like about other company’s email campaigns and see if you can adopt or adapt any ideas to fit your business.

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