7 things you need to know about email marketing
Email marketing, if used properly, is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business online, however, it can easily go from productive, to just plain annoying to it’s receivers. Keep in mind these 7 tips when thinking about your email marketing campaign.
- Get the right frequency. Depending on your business, the timing and frequency of the emails will differ. Say you have a website for a restaurant, the best time to send out emails would be every Wednesday or Thursday giving people time to plan their weekends or if you have a business site, Friday would be a poor time to send out a newsletter, whereas Monday may be better.
- Give something valuable. If you want people to pay attention to your emails, create valuable content such as advice, tips or discounts. It is pointless to just send links to your website, with an average email opening rate of 10-30%, you have to do more than this.
- Make subscribing or opting out as easy as possible. Too many companies make this simple mistake, if you make it difficult for people to sign up or cancel the subscription, they will not sign up in the first place.
- Set up a ‘Reply-to’ email address. When creating your newsletter, make sure the reply field has the email of the person who can deal with questions about the site, rather than just an email that has been set up for the purpose of sending out the newsletter. This is also important in forming relationships with prospective clients, which is the reason why businesses use email marketing anyway!
- Test your emails on different platforms. There are lots of different ways that people may view your emails, whether its on Gmail, MS Outlook or even on a smartphone. Some platforms have problems opening complex emails, so at least make sure they look similar on most of them.
- Make sure your newsletter will not be classed as spam. Most spam detectors are clever but sometimes your email can get stuck in a spam box. Again do some testing and speak to your web expert for advice on this.
- Use email marketing to pursue social and interactive media. Through email marketing you can help build an online community for your business connecting it to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter via links. New and interactive media such as videos have also proved successful in newsletters.
As I’m sure your aware Optimise Internet already help a number of clients with their email marketing, however, in a few weeks we will be launching Optimise Mailer. Optimise Mailer is a solution for all email marketing needs, whether you just need a template for the email or you want our help from start to finish, we can assist! In the meantime, remember these tips to keep on top of your email marketing or give one of our team a call or email to see how we can help you.
