8 Email Marketing Tips That Convert Subscribers to Customers
Becoming an email marketing expert is not a skill developed overnight. Anyone can simply start writing a good email, but greatness comes from years of trial and error.
You’ll need to learn the ropes through successes, and failures – and boil everything down to a perfect science. But, we all know you don’t have that kind of time on your hands.
Luckily, Social Firm is here to help jump-start your journey to expert level email marketing with these 8 tips.
Learn from our mistakes and kick off your next campaign with a meaningful bang.
8 Email Marketing Tips.
- Set your goals
- Build a quality email list
- Segmentation is everything
- Focus more on them and less on you
- Use useful links
- Call readers to action
- Learn from every mistake
- Just hit send
1. Set your goals.
What is your goal? This should be the first question answered when creating any plan. Email marketing is no exception to the rule.
Narrowing down your goals will allow you to determine if your current campaign is working or if it needs to be fixed. All businesses want more traffic. Without setting goals, emails sent to your subscribers are sure to fall short.
Our broad goal is always subscriber engagement – and ultimately for readers to take action.
Proper engagement requires understanding your audience. Ideally, your audience are people who will actually buy or are ready to buy your product.
A non-golfer is unlikely to come to your golf shop and buy high-end clubs. However, a seasoned golfer may feel the itch to come in and take a look because your messaging was spot on.
Example:
“Our goal with this email is to build rapport with current customers and drive traffic to our in-store appointments page.”
2. Build A Quality over Quantity Email List.
There might be a million suitable customers for your product, but the 1,500 who have subscribed are worth the most to your bottom line. Why? Because they purposefully opted into your email list which makes them a higher-quality lead.
Those individuals are more likely to create value for your business vs. other uninterested list members.
Remember, your subscribers are bombarded with digital marketing messages all day, every day.
Emails that engage a customer’s values will break through the noise of everyday email bombardment. Even if a customer isn’t in a position to buy right, you will be top of mind for their future purchases.
Don’t devalue your product and kill the rapport you’ve built with the vast majority of subscribers by sending 3+ emails a day that read like this:
“1-day fire sale 80% off today only!” – May get some on the fence subscribers to pull the trigger today but at what cost?
Properly nurtured subscribers age like fine wine. By caring for them and providing real value, they will serve you well.
3. Segmentation is everything.
Segmentation is all about sending the right message to the right person, at the right time.
Campaign Monitor defines Segmentation as “The division of email subscribers into smaller segments based on set criteria.”
By segmenting your subscriber lists, you can effectively target their specific interests.
Having lists broken down into coffee drinkers vs. tea drinkers will allow you to effectively target those specific tastes.
In order to send the right message, you need to understand exactly who you are speaking to.
Segmentation keeps your subscribers happy too.
HubSpot cites that 53% of e-commerce revenue comes from segmented email marketing campaigns.
4. Focus more on them and less on you.
Your subscribers are holding out for one simple reason. They aren’t aware yet that they need your product.
Spending all day writing content that only focuses on you, for example – telling your origin story of how your grandfather started the business in 1955, unfortunately does not engage the reader.
People easily lose interest in hearing other people’s narratives. The most effective way to do this is by incorporating your product into their story.
Your subscribers see the world through their own eyes. Engagement is key to successful email marketing.
Paint a picture of how their life will be drastically improved by your product. Create a need, not a want.
5. Link information to sources that your subscribers will find interesting.
Sharing quality information will ensure you stand out. Willingness to share helpful information positions your brand as an expert partner, instead of just a salesperson.
Linking to outside sources (preferably academic or news sources) not only benefits the subscriber, but it shows that you are a trustworthy source of information.
6. Call your readers to take action.
A study conducted by Jakob Nielsen found that users spent over 80% of time on a webpage reading information that they did not have to scroll to see.
Pumping quality content for the first 90% of your email, only to have your call to action be hidden at the bottom of the page, is going to hurt you.
“Call us for a quote today!” Deserves to be up front, in the middle and at the end of your email template. Follow this rule if you truly want your readers to take action.
Far too many failed email campaigns are focused on the writer’s own beliefs and values. Email campaigns must engage the reader to be successful.
7. Learn from every mistake.
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
– Oscar Wilde
Analysis is the key to addressing failures and learning what works for your business.
Data-driven decisions are one of the smartest moves you can make.
Without the ability to track and analyze your data, your guess is as good as mine. Guessing is no way to run a marketing campaign.
Additionally, taking an objective look at your past email campaigns is essential to imprioving the quality of your engagement rates.
Simply firing an email and hoping for results won’t work. When something does work, it’s pivotal to find out why using data.
8. Just hit send already.
If you only take away one piece of advice from this article, it should be that profitable email marketing campaigns are the result of data-driven planning and consistent execution.
Consistent execution means starting today. You miss 100% of the shots you never take and every mistake is a valuable opportunity to not only learn but also move forward.
Humans constantly study history to learn from past mistakes and successes. The more archived evidence you have to study, the more productive your future attempts are guaranteed to be.
Pessimism and fear have no place in your business. HubSpot research suggests that over 90% of consumers check their emails daily. So take advantage of that and get your message in front of them right now.
Everyday, you have the opportunity to engage with your subscribers in a meaningful way. Your click through rate means a lot more than any doubts or fears your brain may come up with.
You stand to lose nothing by giving your best effort. The key takeaway is that the first step is to actually do it.
To ensure that your next campaign is a success: Download our “Email Marketing Templates That Convert” Guide today!