How many promotional emails do you receive? I have 4 email addresses that I use and between them I estimate I receive about 60 advertising emails per day. Yep, 60, minimum. Looked at over a week, that is huge. I have to say that most of them I don’t even look at, just delete. The ones I do look at, however, have attention-grabbing subject lines. But truly how effective is email marketing, and should your business still be sending promotional emails out?
What purpose do your emails serve?
In my marketing life, I have sent out many an email newsletter. It’s pretty easy to log into MailChimp, type away, bang a few images and links in and send off a newsletter. What is harder is defining the purpose of what you’re doing. Do you want people to buy a specific product? Or raise awareness of your 50% off sale? Get them to like and share your Facebook or Instagram accounts? Or provide a review of your business? Your email will be clearer and better targeted if you know why you’re sending it out in the first place.
What is your message?
Once you’ve decided what your purpose is, you then have to craft your message. It’s best to do this with as little text and as many images as you can. Just the message and a link to buy or review or whatever your purpose is. Think about it like this – you only have 5 seconds to get your message across. In actual fact, that’s about all the time you do have to keep people’s attention these days!
The importance of subject lines
The most important part of any email newsletter is the subject line. If you can’t peak people’s interest, you won’t get them to open your email. So think creatively, and think about what your customers are looking for. Testing out a few subject lines is also a good idea. Test a subject line that mentions a discount, versus one that asks you what you’re doing this weekend. Or test a subject line that mentions a high-profile celebrity, versus one that offers you something for free.
Calls to action
Within your email newsletter there needs to be a clear call to action – buy this, click here to sign up, browse our online store, etc. If your email waffles on with too much to say and too many links, customers won’t have a clue what they should be clicking on and will get bored easily and click away.
Part of a broader marketing strategy
Email newsletters have to be seen as part of the whole marketing mix. They can be a great additional way to promote an area of your business, or your social media platforms, for example. Adding links to your email ensures you can track how many people have clicked through, which makes email marketing an accountable marketing activity.
And if you need help crafting the copy for your email newsletters, get in touch for a chat.