When launching your e-mail marketing campaign you must have your e-mail messages written well in advance. The nature of each e-mail and the timing needs to be strategically considered, sending out random broadcasts whenever you have the time to write an e-mail is not the way to go about an effective campaign. If you are interested with regards to what must be considered in order to have an e-mail marketing campaign that actually works then read on.
Provide Useful Information
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It might sound a bit simple, but providing information in your e-mail marketing messages that is actually useful, that adds value to the lives of your audience is extremely important. This is because what happens when you don’t provide anything of value your subscribers is they will simply begin to unsubscribe and that is the last thing you want them to do. A writer from Inc explains the importance of adding valuable information in addition to marketing content:
Include useful information that benefits and inspires readers to action. Be personable. Selling your services is okay, but keep the overall tone on a friendly level. Be a human; not a self-promoting SPAM-bot.
To get useful information into your messages all you have to do is some research in your niche. Go through some forums and see what common questions people are asking. These can be the subject titles of your messages, and make sure that within the email you actually answer the problem.
Don’t Push Too Hard On The Marketing
People hate being blatantly sold to, what people can live with is if you provide lots of great content and then once in a while sneak in a subtle pitch for a product that you are selling. A good method is to not do any selling at all until the third or fourth second e-mail, because this gives you more time to gain the trust of your subscribers and do some pre-selling.
Customers buy products from people they can trust, that is why brand recognition is so important. Therefore, the goal of your first couple of emails should be to gain their trust, not lose them at the first hurdle by attempting to sell them something. By being patient, you will reap the rewards further down the line. An expert from Aweber explains that once you have given them useful info they will be more inclined to buy from you:
Your followers enjoy and appreciate the information you’ve shared. This builds up goodwill toward your brand. When it comes time for those educated, entertained people to purchase what you’re selling, guess who they buy from? You, of course.
Furthermore, you need to rotate the products that you market to your subscribers, because if you only have one product to promote then you are missing out on potentially a whole lot more money.
Be Very Responsive
It is important to build a relationship with your list, and you can do that by actually offering the subscribers to send you some questions, and then taking the time to adequately answer them. There are many different questions that can pop up into a reader’s head when they are consuming your content, and if you can make them trust you enough to have you answer all of their questions, then when the time comes to market a product to them they may trust you enough to buy what it is that you are offering.
In some cases, the problems that your subscribers will pose to you can be answered from the top of your head, depending on how much of an expert you are. Other questions might involve doing some research, but remember any questions that you do answer will only go towards increasing your reputation.
Catchy Subject Line
It is crucial to have the kind of subject line that catches the attention of your subscribers. The open rate, which is the percentage of people opening your emails which are on your list is very much reliant on the quality of your subject lines. They need to be to the point and have a sense of urgency about them. If you can strike a sense of curiosity up for your subscribers then you will have very healthy open rates for your e-mails. Hub Spot suggests that the subject lines must be to the point:
Make sure it is clear, to the point, and “headlined.” You want it to be easy to read and clear to understand. Whether you’re offering a discount, giveaway, webinar, ebook, or something else of value, make sure it’s easily and clearly conveyed in the email’s subject line.
Your E-Mails Will Be Skimmed Over
You would like to think that once your e-mails get opened they will be read down to the very last word. However, what most people will do is simply skim read your e-mails and that is why you need to write e-mails in such a way that makes them easy to be digested by skim reading. You want to format your e-mails in such a way that the most important information that you wish to convey will appear in very strategic places. Therefore, write e-mail’s that can be digested very quickly, as an expert from Marketing Sherpa Blog suggests:
I’m not saying all email messages have to be short, but they should be readable in a skim format. Your audience should be able to understand the main message in five to 10 seconds.
Using short paragraphs, bolded keywords and multiple headlines within an e-mail will make it easier on the eye which in turn will entice your subscribers to read on further. On the other hand, if you simply write a block of text and expect your readers to go through it all then you will not get very far with your e-mail marketing efforts. And above all, make sure that you are constantly split testing your e-mail messages to see which one is the more effective one. With enough testing you should be able to create a sales funnel that will allow you to make a good amount of money from your list.