Email is an economical and effective way of reaching your existing customers, prospects, staff, and people generally interested in updates from your organisation. Email can be accessed by anyone, anywhere at a time that suits them. Unlike traditional print ads, you can see who viewed your email and the actions they took.
While every audience is different it’s important to keep a few key factors in mind to ensure that you’ve optimised your email communications as much as possible to encourage opens, click-throughs and conversions. Here are 10 tips to remember to level-up your EDMs.
1. Create an interesting subject line
Make your email king of the inbox by creating short, interesting subject lines. Your email subject line should entice the reader to take whatever action it is you’re suggesting. Time-bound subject lines can work well (‘Don’t miss out on this February-only offer’, ‘This tool will save you time – and is on sale for 24 hours‘, ‘Today only: 20 per cent off all items’). Emojis can also be used in the subject line to draw attention if they are used authentically and fit with your overall branding but test before you send to ensure emojis come up correctly. It is important to A/B test subject lines with each email send to learn what sparks curiosity among your audience.
2. Make it mobile-friendly
If you’ve ever had trouble reading an email on your phone there’s every chance that the sender didn’t check it for being mobile-friendly. Making your email mobile-friendly is easy and so important, with up to 60% of people opening their emails on their smartphone.
3. Design details
Your email is an important piece of your digital marketing strategy. It should use the same colour palette, fonts, writing tone, branding and logos as all of your other communications. This looks professional and allows readers to see at a glance who you are and what you do. A well-designed email is also less likely to be sent to spam by email filters.
4. Data is your friend
Emails provide a wealth of information that can be used to optimise almost every aspect of future comms, including send time, type of subject lines, email length, use of video vs graphics and types of calls to action that drive click-throughs. Email automation services make accessing this data super easy, so don’t overlook it.
5. Personalise where possible
People want to feel like more than a number, and using names in the ‘to’ and ‘subject’ fields is shown to increase open rates by up to 35%. Another way of increasing personalisation is emailing the recipient on their birthday – if you have that data – with an offer.
6. Give your landing page some love
Every email you send needs to direct readers to a relevant landing page related to your message. If there’s a promotional offer, create a landing page with the offer, T&Cs, and products included. If the email is about a particular product on your website, link to that category page. Linking every email to your website’s home page causes customers to become disengaged. People don’t have time to search for more information so put it in front of them.
7. One email, one message
Make it clear what you are selling: if there’s a special offer, only talk about that. Have a big event coming up? Stay on message. Readers are bombarded with so much information from a multitude of emails from businesses each day, so aim to keep your messaging and call to action crystal clear. Having one message will make it easier to create a relevant landing page, too. If you do have multiple messages to include, add short snippets with a link to a landing page that holds all the information.
8. Keep staff in the loop
Ensure your staff know the details of all emails you send by including them on the distribution list. Customers get understandably annoyed when they call a company about an emailed offer and staff have no idea what they’re talking about. This simple step does wonders to improve the customer experience and creates better cohesion within your team.
9. Make it easy to contact you
You may be surprised how many companies go to the trouble of creating and sending an email then neglecting to include contact details – especially when the email was sent from a ‘no reply’ address.
Insert clickable links in your logo and website that lead to a monitored email address, and also add a contact number and website. Adding contact details in your email banner and footer ensures people can easily get in touch.
10. Don’t forget the call to action!
So, you’ve created an email and led your customers on a journey. Now close the deal! Tell them what you want them to do next. Call now? Buy now? Visit this page? Contact us? Get creative with the wording of your call to action buttons and conduct testing to find out what works best for your customers.
