How to Improve Your Email Marketing
Bypassing email in your marketing strategies would be as helpful as disconnecting every fourth customer who called to make an appointment. You wouldn’t be making a direct payment to ignore the potential income, but it would sure cost you in missed opportunities.
In fact, according to Convince & Convert, consumers who make purchases marketed through email spend 138% more than those who don’t receive email offers – and 44% of people who received email last year made at least one purchase based on a promotional email.
So, you know you need email marketing. On the other hand, using bad email strategies can get you a slew of unsubscribes, or reported as spam, or basically just ignored and deleted – wasting all your effort and losing plenty in missed opportunities.
Wherever you are in your email marketing program, there are steps contractors can take to improve your email marketing success? Especially if you take note of the following questions:
Is your email from a real person? Don’t you just love hearing from good old [email protected]? Probably not, and neither do your prospects. Studies show that sending email from an actual person improves open rates. So send yours from a name, such as Company Prez.
Is your subject line compelling? Tons of email gets stopped right here, so spend time on your subject lines. According to Convince & Convert, 35% of email recipients decide whether to open an email based solely on its subject line. Good practices are: Keep it short. Maybe ask a question. Set expectations and tell what’s inside. Apply urgency. And make it relevant, specific and useful.
Is your email mobile responsive? If your email can’t be read on a smartphone, you’re wasting about half your opportunity, because that’s probably how many of your email recipients check email on their phones. Studies show that 71 percent of people will delete email if it won’t easily display it on their mobile phone.
What is missing in your message? Once it’s open, what do they see? Take a close look at your content. Are your messages engaging, friendly, helpful? Do they offer support, answer questions? Can you improve the offer, the writing style, the tone?
Do you have a clear call to action? This is a marketing fundamental wherever and whenever you make an offer. Don’t leave it out of your email campaign. Tell your prospects what you want them to do, and make it easy to follow through.
Are you checking the data for ways to improve? Email is easily measureable. Take advantage of the analytics tool to see which email gets the most opens, who’s doing most of the opening, who’s ignoring what and which messages are getting response. It’s a good practice to run A/B testing campaigns – meaning that you send email A to one group, email B to another group, then study the results to determine which email will work best for your entire list.
Are you sending too often? Customers who have a relationship with you do want to hear from you, but how often is subject to speculation. Create a marketing schedule based on feedback, response and your knowledge of your market, and let that be your guide.
Make it easy to unsubscribe. Yeah, we get it. You want to keep everyone on your list, so you want them to go through a few hoops and hurdles before they hop off. Better idea: Don’t irritate your prospects. Just because someone doesn’t want your email doesn’t mean they won’t want your services later on. Don’t offend them for when they do.