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To connect or to give space?
If you connect, will they reciprocate?
If they don’t, how to get them to notice and respond?
These are only a few of many questions that keep nagging an email marketer all the time.
Every brand, every product needs a different approach. Nonetheless, there are a few basic things that anyone who is on the battlefield of email marketing should keep in mind.
Knock, Or Get Blocked
This is the most important step – ASK FOR PERMISSION.
The email recipients should be genuinely interested in what you are sending them. Nobody likes to be nagged and annoyed by irrelevant messages, and you don’t want to end up in the spam folder!
Sending unsolicited messages is not only illegal, but will also have a negative impact on your brand’s reputation, bagging you zero ROI.
Give A Way Out
Do you really think that a customer/subscriber will always be keen on receiving and opening your email? Give them an option to break away, i.e., unsubscribe. This option must be included in every email, and the effort should not take more than 2 clicks.
If you don’t include the unsubscribe option, get ready to rest in peace in the spam folder.
For Leaps And Bounds
Not only is it important to provide the recipients with an unsubscribe option, it is also necessary that you give them an opportunity to subscribe to your list. This is how you grow your list with the permission of the users that are genuinely interested.
Think Outside The Box
Why would anyone open an email with a boring subject line?
To catch the recipient’s attention, your email should have a subject line that is catchy, interesting and motivating enough for the recipient. You need to convey that the content of the mail is interesting.
That being said, avoid too many punctuations, capitals or crazy colors.
Spam Alert!
How many emails do you send per day? Two? Three? Haven’t you been unsubscribed already?
Don’t send too many emails! Being badgered by the same sender, multiple times a day, can be annoying, unless a person has all the time on his watch to read your emails.
Now, this does not mean that you lose your consistency. Sending an email or two in a week is sufficient to convey your messages without being pesky.
Little Things, Big Results
If you think that email marketing is easy- think again!
You are not writing an article. Writing an email is different. Many things have to be borne in mind. Presentation of the same content can be a deciding factor whether the campaign is going to be successful or not. The structure of the message, placement of images and links- these little things, if taken care of properly, can give favorable results.
Remember, there is no boring message- it is the way that it is conveyed.
Know Your Stats
Do you know how many people actually open and respond to your mails? No?
Ignoring the campaign reports may backfire in the long run.
Keep track of your metrics – your open rates and the size of the subscription list. Subsequently, you will also get to know the right time when people will respond to your mails and when they simply mark it as read. The open rate, delivery rate, unsubscribe rate and click-through rate will help you determine the right messaging and structure of your future emails.
To ensure that email marketing remains beneficial for your business in the long run, it is in your best interest to work with a strategy rather than using it as a way to spam your customers occasionally.
Would you like to see a few examples of successful email marketing campaigns that increased sales? Go here.
Download an interesting research on what works (and what doesn’t) in email marketing for e-commerce by TargetingMantra.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.