5 Secrets To Successful Emails, That Most Overlook!

Most of us don’t realize how crucial it is for us to get a good email marketing strategy in place. A good email marketing strategy can make your business. If done well this can give you over a 4000% return on investment for businesses. Most companies don’t even talk to the readers who opt-in to their funnels or blogs. Or it’s a case of well they didn’t buy or take my free product so we’ll get back to them 3 months down the line.

What a shame as in most cases when your email is opened there could be many things that could have distracted the reader and this will impact the result. So today I want to give you 5 secrets that will help you improve your email marketing which could turn your business right around.

Now remember any good strategy addresses the smallest details to the biggest features, and not taking any notice of these or overlooking them could be the difference between the success or failure of your campaign.

A Message Pre-header

Most don’t know how important a message pre-header is to your email. From my experience when a person reads an email they first read the pre-header to see if there is anything interesting in the email and in most cases, then scroll all the way down to the bottom – what one calls ‘speed reading’. People have time issues. So if you have no Pre-header, which is content that follows the subject line of the email, which should ideally capture the essence of the email, it is more likely that the reader will scroll right down to the bottom of the email – missing your crucial message to them.

Your pre-header should not be more than 100 characters. And remember that a pre-header gives you the opportunity to tell the readers what’s in it for them, if they open the mail.

Some advice for using a pre-header:

• Highlight a question the email is trying to answer

• Expand on the subject line so that you can reinforce it.

• Mention free give-a-ways or offers

• Ensure that it makes them want to read further.

P.S. or P.P.S Ending

Since many readers, because of time constraints, scroll down an email – we want to make the ending of the email just as important as the beginning. What works is that you leave a crucial message or a reminder in the form of a p.s or a p.p.s so that if they are just reading the end of your email, you would still have the opportunity to catch their attention.

Don’t End Up In The Junk Folder

Companies wonder why they have a low response rate to their emails. In most cases it’s because the emails end up in the readers junk folder or spam folder or even promotions folder and they don’t even know that it’s there.

Here are some tips to avoid this:

• Try not to use keywords such as bonus, free, promo etc; they trigger the spam filters.

• Always keep the number of images to a minimum, too many images cause the email to land in the promotions tab.

• Keep your email content to on average 2 paragraphs – bulky is not good.

• In the welcome mails, ask your users to add your contact details to their contact list.

Keep Your Email Personalized

There is nothing more annoying, especially when you don’t have time, when you receive an email with a ‘Hi’ and it proceeds to sell to you in the lines to follow. Keeping your emails personalized will make a big difference in your read rate. If you start your email with ‘Hi Jack’ there is more chance of Jack reading at least your pre-header than if you start with ‘Hi’. The other reason is that if you are addressing him by his first name then there is a chance that he might know you.

You see even though we all know that the autoresponder emails used today can address everyone personally, one will never ignore an email where you are addressed by name – reason, you might know the person.

Another thing is to segment your email list and deal with each segment with relevance. You will see your open rates start increasing. This is purely because you are now having a real conversation with the reader about something they relate to and they don’t feel like just a name on your list, but feel exclusive. Segmentation is one of the most effective strategies for conversions, but is not emphasized enough.

Don’t push your emails on the customers – let them opt-in

It’s incredible how companies believe that it is okay to purchase an email list. Well it isn’t! Firstly, you have no relationship with the person on that list – so why should they read your email? Purchased email lists may work on a few rare occasions, but in general, they are not effective and it will damage your reputation, given that they go against the POPI regulations.

The most strategic and effective approach to email marketing is to build a list of opt-in email contacts. This allows you to do targeted, specific marketing. When people opt-in for your free ebook, or newsletter by themselves, you gain an audience that is already interested in your product/service, and less spams means higher open rates.

I remember the first time I called my cold leads, my approach was purely to ask if I could send them an email. Well every-one I spoke to gave me their details and thanked me for not just spamming them. One lady said that my call was like a breath of fresh air and that she wished that more people would get permission first, rather than just randomly sending out emails hoping for a hit.

Finally

Even with the increasing influence of the social media marketing, email marketing still remains effective and sometimes, more powerful than any other type of content marketing.

So get your customers to opt-in, this will start you on the right foot. Your focus is to build a solid relationship with them and in this way they will start trusting you. Once you have the trust of your readers, you have everything.

Happy emailing, until next time.

Ann Marot