In this Blog I'm going to show you exactly how to use email marketing for your business and I'm going to share with you 7 tips and strategies used by the pros.
Let's get started
So the first question that may come to your mind is, “why email marketing?”
Well, first of all, people still love email marketing and spend an enormous amount of time in their email inbox. According to Adobe email survey of 2019 in the U.S, 56% of people said that they preferred to receive an offer in their inbox versus 6% via text or 4% in social media and we spend an enormous amount of time checking emails on a daily basis. (Almost 209 minutes a day on a professional account and 143 minutes a day on a personal account. That's 5 hours a day).
So that is why email marketing is important. Now, as you have understood the importance of email marketing, Let's start with the 7 tips and strategies used by the pros.
1. Using The subject line properly.
Yes, the subject line is super important if you want people to actually open your email. 60% of our decision to open an email is based on the subject line along.
Based on studies conducted on millions of email sent over the last 10 years, here's what we know for sure:
1. The subject line length doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all.
2. High performing subject line always includes a feeling like surprise, happy, frustrated or overwhelmed, etc.
3. The simpler the better. Meaning, it is much better to have a simple subject line rather than having a complex one.
By the way, if you don’t know too much about email marketing and the whole industry of digital marketing and you interested to learn more about it, we think you should do an online training on digital marketing, just click the LINK and join the training.
2. The from name
The name is actually a lot more important than you think. “70% of people said that the delete an email based on the from name alone.” So let's not mess up that one.
For starters, it will be a lot less likely to delete an email if it's coming from a real name. For example, An email in your inbox coming from Business Hammers is much more likely to get deleted than an email from Md Jawad Bari.
That also makes sense. A company name is most likely going to send you an advertisement. So you're much better to use your first and last name rather than your company name in your email marketing campaigns.
Now if you need to use a company name, here's an interesting case study from drift.
Drift tested the following from name on hundreds of thousands of emails that they sent :
1. Dan from draft
2. Dan Smith from drift
3. Dan @drift
4. Dan Smith @draft
And the results showed that the first option (Dan from drift) was 27 times more likely for someone to click then the others. So if you were me and you have to use your company name it would be Jawad from Business Hammers.
3. Having the ideal format.
The straight answer is that “less is more”. Meaning, the cleaner, and simpler the format is the better.
People don't respond well to large graphics or pictures all over the place in their email. So, the best option to go is text only with no graphics. Or if you're going to have graphics have very little of it.
First, a lot of your audience is probably going to open up your email on their mobile phone and those large graphics and images rarely transfer well to mobile.
Second, people are super busy and all those graphics and images simply get in the way. So you have to resist the temptation to use all those fancy templates that the email service providers or making available to you and though they look really fancy on paper I can assure you that if you do an A & B testing with a text-only and the heavy graphic, the one with text only will win every single time.
Now if you want to add a little bit of graphics to your email I would highly recommend adding a GIF in the body of your email and maybe 1 small picture in the bottom and that's all.
4. The content of your email.
The Don’ts.
Now in this era of digitalization, the formal “Dear Jawad” or any kind of other formal greeting is really not needed anymore.
The Do’s
Now what I would recommend for the content is to make sure that you include the word “you and your” as much as possible. Because those emails, are about them.
The font size
And the ideal font size for a title inside the body of your email is 30 PT and for the text is 16 PT.
Now, why 16? It is because it's the ideal size for you to be able to read your email on mobile phone with your arms fully extended.
The content
Now for the content itself, I would recommend value-based content. Give something useful for your audience to read. You may leverage some of your old blogs as content for your emails too.
5. Ask for the reply
A recent study conducted by email service providers showed that a reply to an email campaign shows as a super-strong signal of authority and relevance.
Now if you want to make sure that your Email marketing doesn't end up in the spam folder, I will highly recommend that in the body of your email, you include the following:
1. Hit reply if you'd like to connect. or
2. Hit reply if you have a question
and when people reply to your email marketing, it sends a super strong signal to the email service providers and that's good for you.
6. Foldering Strategy.
This is very much like to reply tip. But when people create a custom folder or move your email marketing from the promotion folder to the primary folder, it also sends a very strong signal to the email service provider that your email is highly relevant.
A simple way to make that happen is to have clear instructions when people sign up for your email marketing.
Like in the confirmation screen of them signing up or the email confirmation in their inbox, have a text that says,” To avoid having our emails landing in your spam or junk folder, simply create a rule to have it sent to your primary folder.
This will ensure, you get the latest offers and deals when they are released”.
How to grow your list?
Now if you don’t have an email list already, first, let me get this out of the way, “never ever ever buy a list”.
Not only it never works, but it's almost guaranteed to have your email campaign be marked as spam, and the reason why is because I have rarely seen an email list that is less than 50% junk.
Have a dedicated page
So, you have to work on getting the email of your customer. Now for your opt-in widget or form to collect the emails, consider creating a dedicated landing page.
Too often it is buried in the footer and it's hard to find and with a dedicated page you can simply tell someone, “go to my website.com/email to sign up”
Clean your list
Make sure, you do some spring cleaning with your email database. An email database is pretty much considered messy after 18 months.
So go through your database and remove anyone that hasn't engaged, open, or click on anything in the last 12 months. Just kick him out!! They're not opening your email!
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