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Improving email open rates

08/18/202202/14/2022 by scmarketing

There’s over 306 billion business and consumer emails sent and received each day and that’s likely to rise to over 376 billion per day by the end of 2025.

So, with constant stream of emails to an inbox, how can your email about your products and services cut through the noise?

Whilst there’s no quick fix, it’s worth remembering that the subject line is the first thing that your recipient will see. So, what would make you open an email?

Whilst the content of your email needs to shine and be relevant to the recipient for further engagement, spend time on the subject line of your email as you have to get your adudience interested in the first place.

Here’s a round up of some great email subject lines that you can tailor and try in your next email marketing campaign.

Offers and promotions

Be big and bold and indicate the great offer or promotion so people can immediately see what they will miss out on otherwise.

NOW ON: UP to 20% Off
LAST DAY to Get 25% Off
FLASH SALE!
Sign up for just £10 per month

But you can also try intrigue.

Are you taking advantage of this?

Ready for the big reveal?

How can you solve challenges?

Think about your target audience and how your products and services can solve their challenges. Then create a subject line that shows that you understand their issues and you are ready to take care of the problem.

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Advocates

Case studies and testimonials you receive are priceless. Use them in your marketing from email campaigns through to social media and on your website to really showcase how you have helped customers and clients. When distributing an email, use statements in your subject line to help entice open rates.

See what our clients are saying
We’ve been named leader in customer services
Our top reviewed products from customers like you

Testing your email campaigns

What’s key is testing your email campaigns to see what works best for your audience. You can try an AvB test which sends a percentage of emails split between two subject lines. After a certain period the email platform will determine which subject line had the best open rate and will send to the remainder of the list.

Email campaign creation

Whilst the subject is a key element of your email campaign, there’s a lot of elements to piece together to create a successful campaign.

From building a list through to personalising content and avoiding spam filters, we’ve created tips for setting up your email campaign in an earlier blog.

Email marketing agency Croydon

Smart Cow Marketing can create effective email marketing campaigns for your business, get in touch, and find out how Smart Cow Digital Marketing can transform your business.

12 Email marketing tips for small businesses

02/02/202201/14/2022 by scmarketing

Everyone wants to make their business stand out from the rest, but it takes more than a creative marketing strategy. The success of your small business depends on mastering all aspects of the marketing mix or the “4 P’s”- product, price, place, and promotion.

Email marketing is part of that equation because it can reach your audience directly, wherever they are – on their desktops, laptops, tablets or cell phones, when it’s convenient for them and through their preferred channel. Not to mention that email marketing costs less than some other marketing tactics and you can use the same message for multiple campaigns.

Keep reading for 12 tips to help boost your small business’s email marketing campaign strategies.

1. Build an Email List

Building an email list of potential customers is likely one of the first things you think about when considering email marketing campaigns. In fact, email marketing is all about building that list and keeping those potential clients interested in your small business.

If you already have a list of clients’ names, great! If not, don’t worry. There are a lot of ways to build a quality email list without spamming contacts. Here are a few ways to collect email addresses:

Offer a freebie or special discount in exchange for an email address
Use social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to promote sign-up forms
Encourage customers to sign up when they check out from an online store or place an order
Promote an email sign-up link on your website
Set up auto responders, which automatically send follow-up emails to anyone who subscribes or contacts you through your website. This way you can stay in touch with potential customers without the time commitment of writing personal emails.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Before you begin strategising marketing campaigns, you must identify your target audience and their preferences. By creating different email campaigns based on the interests and needs of each group, businesses can reach out to new customers while keeping loyal fans engaged.

For example, if your business sells natural skincare products, you might want to send a campaign geared toward those interested in eco-friendly habits, including green or yoga living.

On the other hand, if your company offers business advice and professional services, potential clients may be interested in learning about new Tax advice or incentives for hiring employees.

3. Be Informative

One of the best ways to utilise email campaigns is to inform your customers about new products, sales, or updates. Customers are always looking for deals and bargains; email marketing can help you get in front of the right people at the right time.

Not only should your emails inform customers, but they should also give them what they want – fast!

4. Be Personal

Email marketing is one of the few internet marketing tools available to you that enables you to be personal in your company’s interactions with customers. You can, and should, let your voice come through when you write emails to customers.

When sending out emails from your small business, think about personalising your email campaigns to help build trust and credibility with your customers by showing them that you’re real – not some automated bot.

5. Test Your Campaigns

Before you set up your first email campaign, remember that there are no rules for this type of marketing strategy. By testing different messages, subject lines and frequency of emails, you can send out campaigns to small groups in order to optimise the content before launching a large-scale email marketing campaign.

Your business should test new ideas and strategies with a small group of clients or customers before sending them to the entire list. Consider asking for feedback from these early subscribers about which emails were most useful, interesting, etc., in order to make your future campaigns even more successful.

In addition, you can schedule different types of email campaigns to make the most of your marketing efforts. For example, you could offer a free product or service in exchange for an email address and send out newsletters weekly which include sales and up-and-coming products.

As with any marketing campaign, goals and objectives should drive the frequency and type of emails that are sent. If your small business has a limited budget, consider sending out informative emails monthly rather than bi-weekly.

6. Include Links/Buttons

Email marketing campaigns are most effective when they include links to company websites with additional information about new products and services. You can also include your contact information to encourage new business and enquiries.

Including links or buttons within the body of an email is an effective way of communicating with customers without having to worry about spam filters blocking out links that direct visitors off your site.

7. Take Advantage Of Mobile Devices

Ensure that your emails are compatible with all types of mobile devices and offer a web version if necessary.

8. Include A Call To Action

When writing emails to customers, remember to include a call-to-action within the body of the email to generate interest in your product or service. Adding a call-to-action button within the body of your emails will encourage customers to do business with you right away instead of visiting another website.

9. Remember Your Purpose

If your company is sending out emails for marketing purposes, keep your goals in mind when writing and setting up your campaigns. Your emails should be informative, easy to read and accessible to anyone who receives it.

10. Avoid Spam Filters

Spam filters are designed with the intention of keeping email marketers out of users’ inboxes, which means that important emails might end up in junk folders instead. To avoid this problem, make sure you avoid spammy words or phrases, use clean HTML and include opt-out options within the email.

11. Use A Professional Email Address

When sending out emails from your small business, be sure to create a separate account with an easy-to-remember address for your company instead of using the same one that you use for personal correspondence. This will help to avoid confusion and keep your professional email from being flagged as spam.

12. Track Your Results

Once you’ve launched and finished a successful email marketing campaign, track the results of your efforts by monitoring open rates and click-through rates. This type of tracking will allow you to discover which campaigns were the most effective at reaching your target audience.

Even after you’ve launched a campaign, keep an eye on the results to ensure that everything is running smoothly and efficiently. If certain elements are not working correctly or generating interest, make any necessary changes to improve your email marketing process. While it might take some time to perfect a campaign, the time spent is worth it in the end.

Email marketing agency Croydon

Smart Cow Marketing can create effective email marketing campaigns for your business, get in touch, and find out how Smart Cow Digital Marketing can transform your business.

Smart Cow Marketing Email Marketing Agency in London

9 Tips for your next email marketing

08/19/202209/01/2021 by scmarketing

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.

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.

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.

CRM data: The good, the bad and the ugly

10/13/2020 by scmarketing

The quality of the data that you hold plays a vital role in the success of your marketing strategy.

It’s worth noting that lists used for email marketing decay between 20-30% each year so if it’s entered incorrectly into your CRM system in the first place then you’re not going to be off to a great start. You’ll experience a reduction in email delivery which will impact the success of any email marketing campaign going forward and your overall lead generation goals.

Quality data for your marketing campaigns

It’s key that your email addresses are validated. So, that would include people signing up to receive your email newsletters from an online form, as it’s something they have requested. This is a qualified lead.

What’s important is to review data on a regular basis and cleanse it.

The fact that we are required to include an unsubscribe link on email marketing communication is actually a good thing as this helps cleanse your list too. It’s not a bad thing that people unsubscribe when you send them an email. Let’s face it, if people aren’t interested in your products or services then it’s best, they aren’t on your list. It’s much better to have fewer, quality leads eager to hear from you than a mammoth list of contacts that are never going to engage with you or provide bounce backs as they are no longer valid email addresses.

A consistent CRM process

Go for consistency in your CRM process so ensuring email addresses, names, company detail, contact number are always added and they are added correctly.

Ultimately you want your firm to adopt the CRM system you deploy. But if the detail is incorrect when team members go to access data then very soon colleagues will become despondent and revert back to, what they think, is a trusted excel spreadsheet. This then creates the ongoing cycle of silos within a company. This way marketing will never sync with sales or business development teams and vital new business opportunities will be lost in the ether.

So, take time to get the process of inputting data instilled in your team in the first instance, that way you will reap rewards in the long-term as again and again the team will find success from the contacts entered into your system.

CRM data

The basics to include in your CRM for the benefit of your marketing strategy include the contacts first and last name. An email and physical address as well as phone number and web address. As well as any social handles whether their personal LinkedIn or company related.

It’s also useful to gather data about them about their life. Following your initial networking with your contact, these are great reminders to add to the CRM about what you discussed as this will help with ongoing client relationships, future meetings and give your colleagues insight.

Using a system like Hubspot CRM can help you access website activity so you can soon get an understanding of how often people visit the website, services viewed or eBooks downloaded.

CRM for accountants

As a Hubspot partner, we can help you with CRM for your business to help make a really effective lead generation campaign.

What’s important about any lead generation campaign is to continue to be insightful with your communication, providing answers to challenges that you know your clients face. With the insight you have as a result of your CRM, this can really help you tailor an ongoing content marketing plan tailored to your target audience.

We’re a digital marketing agency based in Croydon with a specialism in marketing for professional services firms including digital marketing for accountants.

Read our blog on lead generation strategies for your business.