So, you’ve decided to create an email campaign to market your products. Believe it or not, building such a campaign is not as complicated as you think it might be, and if you take the time to understand basic best practices for email marketing, you will be just fine. When creating your course, here are a few of the best practices to include.
Understand Your Audience
Before you can fully start an email campaign, you must first understand your audience. Learning about your potential viewership is essential, especially since you only want to email individuals who are interested in your product or service. When getting to know your audience, you will want to ask a few of the following questions:
• How does my audience prefer to communicate?
• What type of language should I use when addressing my audience?
• What activities or actions does your audience engage in that make them unique from the rest of the population?
You may not fully address these questions immediately – it can take time to get to know an audience. However, as you learn more over time, the data you collect will help you gain further insight into your audience’s needs and wants. This information will help you figure out how to best proceed with your marketing campaign.
Perform Testing on Your Emails
Experimentation is important when it comes to emails. It is vital that you A/B test virtually every aspect of every email before sending it. From subject lines to headlines and calls to action (CTAs), your email must serve its purpose and resonate with current and potential consumers. Be sure to only test one key element at a time. If you fail to do this, you may end up with inconclusive results. It would be best if you also were sure you have a sizeable sample to test. Once you find an element that works, you can move on to the next test.
Keep in mind that your recipients will change as your product or service changes. This means you will need to test regularly to see if your emails are still as effective as they once were.
Create a Checklist
It can be challenging to remember what information to put into an email before you send it. Fortunately, you can send a compelling and attention-grabbing email your customers won’t forget by using a simple checklist. Try utilizing the following checklist before hitting the “send” button:
• Use a customized name. If you don’t know which name to choose, don’t hesitate to perform A/B testing.
• Craft precise, short subject lines. The ideal subject line will have three to five words and get your point across immediately.
• Be sure your content is personalized. Draft a compelling call to action (CTA).
• Make it easy to unsubscribe for individuals who may not be interested in your products or services.
• Be sure your location is disclosed. This is required by law.
• Show your readers your appreciation.
Using a checklist, you can make sure you don’t leave out any vital information for your readers.
Quality Over Quantity
Many individuals believe sending a significant number of emails will get them the attention they desire. This is a largely false belief, primarily because sending too many emails will usually get you the opposite effect of what you want from readers. Your customers probably already receive dozens of emails from various companies and organizations regularly, so you should aim for quality over quantity. Many of your subscribers may suffer from email fatigue, but you can combat this by composing a unique, efficient, and one-of-a-kind message. Always begin slow, and see how your audience responds to your email frequency before starting a regular campaign.
Send Emails at the Right Time
The timing of your emails is crucial. After all, you want to send emails that will be opened and read each time, and some times of the day and week are just better than others. You will need to perform tests to see when your recipients are most likely to open their emails. For example, your recipients may prefer to open their emails on Wednesday. If this is true, simply send your emails on Wednesday. Some marketing professionals find it conducive to send messages at “off” times (times that are not at the top of the hour – ex: 9:05 instead of 9:00). Sending your emails at the top of the hour can decrease the chance that your emails will be opened when you intended.
Verify Your Email Addresses
Are you starting from scratch? or are you using a list of email addresses you inherited from someone else? No matter what the case may be, it would be best if you took the time to ensure that each email you have was added organically with the owner’s permission. This means you should immediately delete any purchased or rented email addresses. If you do not do this, you will more than likely experience low engagement. You will also be at risk of getting denied by major internet service providers, and your account may be shut down.
You don’t want such things to happen to you, and the fastest way to build an authentic, helpful list of addresses is to create an engaged recipient base. Doing so will keep your delivery rates high and ensure your messages get read.
Segment Your Emails
Much like direct marketing, email marketing primarily consists of everyone getting the same message at the same time. In modern times, you will experience higher customer engagement if you personalize your letters to show that you know your customers. You can segment your emails according to factors such as where your customers live or what they have purchased lately. The more you cater to your recipients’ activities, tastes, and interests, the more likely you will genuinely engage with them. Never underestimate the power of segmentation.
Make Unsubscribing Easy
Even if your users previously engaged with you or read your emails, there may come a time when they want to unsubscribe from your emails. This is a normal part of the process, and you must make sure you do not take any unsubscribes personally. Be sure you have an easy-to-understand unsubscribe system in place, and ideally, users should be able to unsubscribe with a single click. Avoid making your users log in to their accounts to unsubscribe from your messages. Remember, if your users don’t know how to unsubscribe to your emails, they may begin to mark them as SPAM.
Stay on Brand
Whether you are hiring a professional designer or using a template, your email should align with your overall brand. If you send an email that does not align with your brand, you risk confusing your subscribers and possibly alienating them. Your recipients should never have to open your message to see where it came from. The process of clicking your website from an email should be a fluid experience for subscribers to know what actions they should take and in what order. Always avoid sending confusing multi-step emails that irritate subscribers.
Write a Standout Subject Line
If you want your email to serve its purpose, you must write a subject line your subscribers can’t ignore. Every component of your email is essential, but your subject line will help your subscribers decide whether or not they want to open your email and engage. Your subject line should ideally be three to five words, and if you are struggling to craft a powerful line, consider writing it after all the other components of your email are complete. Doing so can help you decide what angle you would like to take and ensure you fixate on the most news-worthy portion of your email. Try to provide your subscriber with a sense of urgency.
Calculate the Number of IP Addresses You Will Need
Any device that utilizes the Internet Protocol (IP) to communicate over a network is linked to a unique number block known as an IP address. Regarding your email, your IP address’s behavior impacts your sender’s reputation, which ISPs will use to judge your sending patterns. The majority of email service providers can send an email on a dedicated IP address or shared pool. When you send from a dedicated IP address, you are the only sender, and your reputation belongs to you and you only.
If you intend to send both marketing and transactional emails, it is always a good idea to separate the two streams. Since transactional emails are necessary and requested by your user, you don’t want to risk their delivery by combining their reputation with your marketing emails’ reputation (which usually have far lower engagement). The number of IPs you need will largely depend on your monthly sending volume.
Send the Most Effective and Efficient Emails
The best practices above are not the only best practices, but they are most important. By utilizing them during an email campaign, you can ensure you send the most effective and efficient marketing emails possible. When you create an online course, be sure you make them easy to understand and apply. Click here to learn more about earning money on the side in your spare time.
