Why less is more in email marketing
You’re a new brand. You’ve spent some money, time, and resources developing out your target audience, and it’s starting to pay off. Let’s say you’ve driven some qualified traffic to your site through paid or organic advertising—maybe even through a dynamic social media campaign. They’re impressed with your brand, and are thinking maybe you’re just what they’ve been looking for. They sign up for your newsletter. One week later they opt out because you didn’t offer them email preferences, and you’re sending them either
A.) irrelevant information or B.) way too many emails.
Whether your goal is to sell something to your target audience, develop a relationship through content, or you’re a not-for-profit organization trying to make a difference, in 2019 less is more with email marketing. Consumers and businesses alike are becoming less engaged with email content by the masses, and more engaged by impactful, short messaging that’s relevant to them. From the subject line to the message within, we’ve got some tips for you to ensure you’re making the most out of your email marketing strategy.
Keep your subject lines short
With more and more users utilizing their phones for email, it’s important to keep your subject lines short, sweet, and as personalized as possible. Hey, you might even want to try throwing in a dynamic first name, or an emoji. You’d even be surprised how well, “Trust me, you don’t want to open this” works as a subject line!
Reiterate your message with a preheader
Never forget the preheader. The purpose of the preheader is to give the target audience the chance to determine the relevancy of your email for them. Writing a compelling preheader can increase your open rates substantially. If you have a compelling CTA (call-to-action), this is a great place to allude to it.
Avoid the promo blinding effect
We’ve all been there as marketers - wanting to dump multiple promotions, messages and CTAs into one email. If you’re an eCommerce dealer, you might struggle to balance coop advertising opportunities with your brand message. Leave your message with one clear, concise CTA, with consistent header/footers and buttons to drive your customers to additional related content. Your target audience will get used to your consistency, and if they want to see more promotions, trust me—they’ll click.
Send fewer messages
Yes, this is the concept of this entire post. Plan out your month strategically. What’s the goal of the campaign? What does success look like? Do not send a message if you haven’t defined these questions effectively. Once you define your months goals, determine what types of campaigns you want to run. Spend your time and energy developing out the targeted messaging, instead of too many messages.
Personalize your campaigns
This might be more complicated if you don’t utilize dynamic content, or a CRM to manage your customer data, though most email marketing platforms have personalization options. Determine your options, and develop a plan. Direct, personalized messaging from an individual often has the highest open rates and engagement. Mix personalized messaging from your sales representatives, or yourself, with messages coming directly from your brand. Utilize the customer’s first name, their birthday, and/or small bits of information about them. If you can go as far as sending them messages that you know they’re interested in based on their ordering habits and general data —do it!
Test. Test. Test.
I don’t think I can reiterate or repeat the word test enough to drive it home. Testing is tedious, it requires reporting, harnessing the data gathered by the test, sometimes repeating the instance of scheduling, and more. BUT without testing, you’ll struggle to increase your email engagement. Test something small—a button color, a header image vs. no header image, or your subject line. Test one small detail in each email, and as you learn more about your users and habits, you’ll slowly increase your engagement rates, and optimize your strategy.
