Email Marketing Tips for 2017

Jan 12, 2017

Email marketing is an important part of marketing for any small business.

It is a great way to stay in touch with your customers on a free or low-cost basis. You can easily update your clients on new business offerings, current deals, and more with an email. Important factors to consider for your email campaigns include the content of the email, the subject line, and the time/day you are sending emails.

The beginning of a new year is a great time to look at the email marketing strategies you used last year and what you want to stay the same and what you want to change in the new year.

Some outlets want you to believe email marketing is a lost cause but they are wrong. Huffington Post reports:

Stats show that email marketing has return of 44.25x. For every $100 you sink into email marketing for your business you can expect an average of $4,425 back.

People can easily control the emails they are subscribed to and can make their inbox one place free of distractions and clutter. If a person does not like or feel they need to read the emails from a company they might begin by deleting emails without reading them and unsubscribe from the newsletter altogether.

Newsletter Sign-Up

As a business, you want to begin with getting your email into customers’ inboxes followed by having your emails opened and read!

Google knows that most people in 2017 will be accessing the internet on their phones. Always wanting to provide the best, most relevant content Google will begin penalizing webpages with popups this year. Pop-ups can often be hard to read on a mobile device and even harder to close out making the amount of time a user spends on a certain mobile web page very short. A key factor in Google’s algorithm is the length of time people spend on a website.

This does not mean you have no way to entice website viewers to sign up for your newsletter. You can have a pop-up that only works on desktops and tablets. You can have a newsletter sign-up in a sidebar or footer on every page of your website. You can encourage people to sign up for your newsletter on your social media page. You can offer clients an enticing deal for signing up for your newsletter, ie sign up to receive 10% off immediately or sign up for a free consultation!

You can also segment your email lists. If you are a retail store you could create lists for customers who purchase specific products. For example, a toy store could create a segmented email list for customers who are interested in or who purchase LEGO to send them targeted emails about that specific brand. A service company could segment users based on the service they purchase. For example, a cleaning company could create an overall email list but then also create sub-lists for customers who purchase home cleaning versus business cleaning services and send targeted emails to these different lists.

Newsletter Content and Template

The content in your newsletter should be interesting and engaging to keep an audience coming back. The content should also be laid out in an easy-to-follow template with links to further
information if needed. The content in an email should always link back to your website as well as have social media icons to link to all your social accounts. You can easily build an audience on both your website and social media accounts through email marketing.

Businesses often become too obsessed with marketing efforts and sales when it comes to email marketing and forget about the reader. A good email campaign offers value to the reader. For a children’s clothing company, it is okay to send emails about sales and new products but also thinks about including emails on great things for families to do in your hometown or the 10 Trendiest Children’s Outfits this Season. Make sure your emails are providing value to the consumer and not only attempting to create sales for your company.

Email Subject Line

When creating a subject line for an email blast you should think about the way the title will be displayed on both desktop and mobile. Desktop email platforms will often show a much longer title than those checking email on a mobile device.

When looking at email on an Apple phone, the subject line shown is often around 40 to 50 characters long. You can utilize ALL CAPS to make a subject line or parts of a subject line stand out. The form is also in bigger font and bold when checking email on an Apple device so make sure your name is easy for a reader to identify.

The subject line of an email can be read without being opened. All the great content in the world doesn’t matter if you cannot get the reader to open the email to see the content. Your subject line should be relevant to the content included in the email and should be powerful since it is the first part of an email that the reader sees.

Email Times and Days

The best time to send an email for a high open rate tends to be early in the morning on weekdays. Often the first thing people do when they get to work and sit down at their desks is check emails. Stay-at-home parents often check email right after dropping the kids off at school at around 8 am.

However, early am during weekdays can become a very cluttered time of day for emails so you might want to send your newsletter at a different time to make it stand out from the crowd. If you have a strong email list with users who often open your emails then I would suggest emailing at the best time of day: early am on weekdays. However, if you are struggling to get readers to open your emails maybe try to send them at a more unusual time to see if your open rate results improve.

Email Marketing Tips Summary

Email marketing is going strong in 2017 and can offer your business a great marketing resource. Important factors to consider with your email marketing include Sign-Ups, Email Content and Template, Subject Line and Time and Day of the Week your Emails are Sent.

Play around with these factors. Try different templates, subject lines, and days of the week. You never know when you will hit the jackpot and your email marketing campaigns will take off! If you have had great success in 2016 with your email marketing keep at it and maybe try additional emails to send out on different days above and beyond the emails currently creating tremendous success!

 

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