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9 Tips for your next email marketing

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Email marketing is a great inbound marketing tactic to help generate leads. Each distribution is all about increasing your open rate and click through rate. This is helped by creating engaging and relevant content to your target audience. Here, we cover some of the things for you to do in the future to help improve engagement for your next email send-out.

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1. What’s the story?

Ultimately you want people to read your email. So, make your subject line clear, short & snappy and something that will grab attention so that recipients are enticed to open it. This is the first thing that will be seen. Tell people what’s on offer in the email to give them a reason to open.

2. People like people

We all like to think we’re talking to someone we know. So, make sure that the email sender is someone from the team rather than an ‘admin’ email address.

3. On brand

Keep your design and messaging on brand. If you’re starting to regularly send out e.g., a round-up of news on a monthly basis then make sure that you create a template in keeping with your brand and stick to that format. People like familiarity and it helps to build trust.

4. Keep content relevant and original

Keep content relevant, original and regular. Once your recipient clicks on your email you need to get to the point quickly. What is the main message of this email?

Maybe it is an interesting business update with statistics. Perhaps you have an offer they should know about but make sure that you explain how this offer can truly help them to encourage click throughs.

Try and make sure that any email you distribute points back to a blog post on your website, offer or download. In fact, you can save time by re-purposing content based on the many blogs you have already created.

5. Calls to Action

Once you’ve decided on the theme of your email, you need to let the recipient know what to do next. This is where you need a bold call to action (CTA). Be clear on what you want the recipient to do, whether to ‘download now’ or ‘register today’ adding a link back to your website.

6. Links

Include links back to your website as well as all your social icons to encourage people to follow and share on social.

More on Link Building

7. Be image led

You’ll often hear us talk about being image led which is really important for email marketing. It’s eye-catching, helps to break up text on the page allowing the recipient to easily read through the content.

8. Unsubscribe

You always need to give the option for a recipient to unsubscribe. Add a link to this at the end of your email, it’s a necessary requirement so don’t miss it off. Whilst sad when someone does unsubscribe, look at it positively as it means that your email list is much more targeted.

9. When to email

Once you’ve got the email set up, send it at an optimal time. According to Hubspot the highest click-to-open rates for an email are 10am midweek. We would suggest Tuesday and Thursday’s as a good option.

Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is an effective way of working out the best day to send an email marketing campaign. Send out groups of emails on different days and compare performance, with the best performing group giving you an indication of when clients are willing to receive emails.

Email marketing agency Croydon

If you need a helping hand building an email marketing strategy, get in touch with us at Smart Cow Digital Marketing for expert advice on how to conduct an effective digital marketing campaign! As email marketing experts in Croydon, we can create your initial email template, write content and distribute to your database.

Other digital marketing tactics we offer include web design and development, SEO services, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media management through to CRM and marketing automation.

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4 Email marketing tactics for effective campaigns

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With 3.9 billion daily email users and 59% saying marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, email marketing is a digital marketing tactic not to be dismissed. So, we thought we’d give you a snapshot of four key points to consider when embarking on an email marketing strategy to help make it truly effective.  

Personalise emails 

Analysing your insights from email marketing campaigns can really help you to customise your emails to answer the needs or your potential customers. Learn when the best time of day to send emails to your target audience is. Know when they open their emails.  

Make sure your tone of voice resonates with your target audience. And, understand what articles are proving most popular with your audience by looking at the click through rate.   

We appreciate that this may take a little time to hone, especially if you are starting out, but if you have a GDPR compliant list of email addresses that have subscribed to hear from you then use your contacts.  

Subject lines 

This is what is really going to entice a subscriber to open your email. What keywords will encourage an open rate? Don’t be clever, sometimes keeping it simple and factual will be more beneficial. Emojis have also proven popular for open rates.  

Remember that you have a warm lead as people will have subscribed to your email list. So, make sure that the title is something that your audience will want to learn more about, people are less likely to open something that they are unsure about.  

Be insightful 

We often talk about the importance of content marketing as part of your inbound marketing strategy to position you as a thought leader in your field.

Use email as your news feed. Bring the latest industry insights to your email subscribers. It’s not just about sharing posts on social media, repurpose your content for emails too. Therefore, add snippets of your blogs with bold call to actions in your email with links back to your articles on your website. Remember an email campaign forms part of your overall lead generation strategy to drive people back to your website.

Create an email template when you start out as this will help you to easily populate it with future content. The format will become familiar to your avid readers which helps with retention.

AVB testing  

Conducting a split test of your email campaign will allow you to get your messaging spot on for your target audience. Experiment with topics, types of downloads or offers so you can understand what works and what doesn’t. 

Email marketing agency resources 

Email marketing Croydon

As a digital marketing agency in Croydon, we’re able to offer businesses across London with inbound marketing support for improved lead generation. Using a suite of tactics including web design and development, email marketing, SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media management through to CRM and marketing automation we provide digital marketing for accountants, professional services firms and local businesses.  

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How to use email as part of your marketing strategy

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With a flurry of marketing activity and communication with existing clients when lockdown started, you could be forgiven for thinking that you can start to ease up on your communication. However, now is not the time to stop your marketing.

It’s so important to keep up the informative messages of support that you shared with clients and prospect at early lockdown stages. If your last email or social message was about closing your business or working remotely, you really need to start thinking about sharing up to date news to encourage client retention and new business.  

This is where email marketing can be so effective. With so many people working remotely, email acts as advertising for your virtual shop window. Rather than strolling down the street looking at a shop or business window, the billboard is coming to your email inbox.  

Here’s three tips when considering email marketing as part of your communications strategy.  

1. Targeted email marketing content  

When you write your emails always write to your target audience. It’s always a good idea to think that you are sending your email to one person so you can make content really personal. With relevant content it will help with open rate for a more successful email marketing campaign.  

Our blog on creating an online persona for your business can help you with getting your content really targeted to your audience.  

Remember to offer useful tips and advice, industry insight as well as highlight any relevant offers you are providing that may help their business. 

2. Cleanse your email lists 

With huge changes to businesses due to COVID, cleansing your email distribution list should be high on your agenda.  

If you’ve distributed emails during this time then you’ll be aware of a higher bounce rate then perhaps you have done previously, this will be due to businesses changing staff, furloughed staff and unfortunately companies having to reduce employees.  

Monitor the bounce rate and make changes accordingly. It’s better to have a smaller mailing list of qualified and quality contacts than a large list of emails that don’t reach their recipient.  

All the while you must make sure that your emails are GDPR compliant. Ensure that you have a visible and clear unsubscribe option in the footer when you distribute your email.

If you have a pop-up box on your website to gather email addresses then ensure that you are transparent in that you are using their email for your e-newsletter updates and nothing else.  

We can help you with adding this pop-up call-to-action function to your website to encourage potential customers to sign up to receive your e-shots.

3. Keep in regular contact  

As part of you content marketing plan factor in a weekly or monthly e-newsletter. However regular is up to you. It’s about what you think you can manage to ensure that you remain consistent. If you send a monthly round up of news, then make sure you send this on the first working day of every month.    

As part of this consistency ensure you have a branded email template that you can update each time, this helps with brand awareness, a professional look and recipients become more familiar with you.

A great time saver for content is to repurpose blogs that you write throughout the month. You can edit content down for your e-newsletter. Then add a link with a click through back to the full article to read more.  

Email marketing agency London

We’re a digital marketing company with offices in London and Croydon. We offer a range of inbound marketing tactics for businesses including email marketing for accountants, professional services firms and SMEs.

Book a free consultation with us to chat about your next email campaign, growing your email distribution list and using email as a lead generator.

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What to check before you send your next email marketing campaign

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An email marketing campaign can be an incredibly effective way of reaching your target audience. Whether you’ve captured data from an email newsletter sign up box on your website or because a visitor downloaded a document, by showing this engagement your email subscribers are interested to learn more about your products and services. So, a regular email marketing campaign is a great way of keeping your potential clients informed. 

However, email marketing can be daunting. There’s pressure to get your content right and with so much to review little things can be missed which could affect click through rate, engagement and worse – lead to unsubscribed.  So, here’s our tips on what you should check before you hit send so you have a great email campaign.  

Proof-read 

Even though you will have automatically done a spell check, you still need to take time to thoroughly proof-read the content of the email. Check for spelling, grammar and the overall flow.  

Try and read it as if for the first time and check whether your message is getting across clearly. If you can get a colleague to look at it too, even better. If someone who hasn’t been close to the content up to this point looks at it, they can usually spot things quickly that you may have overlooked.  

But, don’t just read the body of the email. Always double check the titles and footer too. We’ll cover these in a little more detail.  

What’s the subject of your email? 

You want people to open your email so remember to check the subject line for typos. Also check it not only makes sense but will it entice people to open it? A good benchmark is to work to 50 characters. Succinct and to the point. Remember that 47% of people open an email based on the subject line.  

[FIRSTNAME] 

If you’re adding in the recipient’s name using dynamic tags then you need to check that these are working correctly. You want their first name showing not another field from your database! Generally, you’d only be using the dynamic tag for a first name so make sure that this is working correctly. 

When you send yourself a test email, check that all links work including social media handles and that they lead to the correct page. Fix any that are broken.  

This means checking the links in your footer too, especially that the unsubscribe link works. While you don’t want people to unsubscribe, it is inevitable. For someone wanting to unsubscribe they will find it rather annoying to then not be able to complete this function all because it wasn’t on your round of checks before distribution. This could then lead to bad reviews.  

Call to action 

You’re sending an email for people to engage with and ultimately take action. Whether that’s to read more, book a consultation or watch this video. Having a bold call to action button will entice people to click, this makes this a crucial button to ensure that the link is not broken.  

Social media 

We’ve already mentioned that you need to check these links work but this is also a note that if you have icons in your email that they need to be clickable. It’s just natural that we want to click them. So, don’t just think you can have an icon and assume people will go to Twitter and try and search for your business. You need to make it really simple. Cut out unnecessary steps to keep your prospects engaged for longer. 

How’s the formatting? 

Check that the layout of your email is not affected on the test and fix any issues. Look out for call to action buttons or bullet points – are they positioned correctly?  Is font colour and size consistent and easy to read?   

Responsive 

Check your test email on all devices. Does it look OK? Are the images replicated well on each device? It’s worth doing that last check on your mobile. Let’s face it 81% of us open our emails on a smartphone – so make sure it looks good as that’s a lot of potential clients you could lose. 

Unsubscribe  

If you’ve previously sent emails to customers in the past, then you’ll know all about GDPR compliance. Ensuring you have a clearly visible unsubscribe link is essential. It needs to be very simple for people to stop receiving your emails. It’s usual to include this in your footer of the email but just because it forms part of the template does not mean you shouldn’t check it each time. This is a definite to do on our email marketing checklist of actions before you click send. That’s why we’ve mentioned in twice! 

Email marketing agency Croydon  

Email marketing offers a great Return on Investment – 42% of B2B organisations say email is one of their most effective lead generators.

Or email marketing service forms part of our inbound marketing services in our suite of digital marketing tools to help businesses grow through online lead generation.  

Depending on your business goals, we can provide email marketing strategies as a standalone service or as part of a digital marketing package as email marketing consultants in Croydon. Why not get in touch for a free consultation and we can discuss the best approach for your business.  

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