Email marketing is another form of online marketing. Instead of spending money on ads on sites or social media platforms, you send promotions directly to everyone’s personal mailbox via email. The best part of it is that email marketing has a higher chance of getting noticed and prompting customers to take action.
The entire process isn’t scary nor hard. Professionals in this field even follow at least a few tips. One is to spread as many emails as possible to attract subscribers. Then, they take information from every user and study each individual to learn what their preferences are. Third, they conduct a test on which tone of words prompt opens and clicks. The one that performs well gets used.
Lastly, they study their campaign data and check each rate to improve their campaign strategies. Find out more about these professional email marketing tips below.
1. SMTP Relay for Better Email Deliverability
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is a backend system that sends or transfers your email campaign from your SMTP server to your recipient’s server. Think of it like this – when you press “send email” on your PC, the email is sent by your ISP to your SMTP server first.
After that, your SMTP server sends your email to your recipient’s/subscriber’s server. Their server then delivers your email to their inbox, like sending out a mail-carrier from the post office to an address.
Many professional marketers and large companies use email relay providers because this allows them to send a massive number of emails without getting labeled by services (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) as spam.
2. Personalization
Email personalization is a marketing strategy that targets a specific subscriber by leveraging information about them. It can be a user’s name, age, gender, location, sites they visit often, the products they buy, and other information you have about them.
A personalized email must have the three main elements: Comes from a person, Relevant, and Timely. “Comes from a person” means that your email campaign must use your name instead of the company’s or businesses’ name. “From (your name)” is a good example.
Relevant means content that your recipient is interested in. If they’ve stated that they like to read about international relations, you can send them a well-written email about the current geopolitics.
The Timely element is about using the information you have about a subscriber, so you’ll be able to write and send an email just when they need it. Looking at their latest search queries is one prime example. If they’ve been searching “How to kill bugs?” you’ll gain insight into what you should market to them, such as a good pesticide or pest control service.
3. Writing a Killer Subject Line
To write a killer subject line is one of the most effective email marketing hacks to follow. It’s a crucial part of email marketing as well. This is because the subject line reflects what the recipient should expect in the email.
A customer decides whether they should open your mail or not by reading the subject line. If your subject line is boring or reads with a spam-ish vibe, it’s either deleted or sent to the spam box. Here are nine good subject line ideas that can inspire openings and clicks and their examples:
- Simple, No-Nonsense – How to Have Fun While Working
- Funny – The Weirdest Interview Questions Asked
- Controversial/Shocking – This Is Why Your Email Marketing Sucks
- Single-word – Comforters
- Numbers and Lists – 5 Affordable Overcoats for Winter
- Personalized – Check Out These Restaurants Near (Customer’s Location)
- Questions and Other Punctuations – Rent JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures Part: 3 Now!
- “Missing Out” and Other Scarcity Tactics – This Limited-Edition Washing Machine is almost out of stock! Get one now!
- Mysterious – We got you a little surprise.
4. Using Numbers and Stats
Every week you must check how well you’re doing. You can do this by looking at your own data from an email marketing campaign and comparing your results to the general marketing trends.
This is because you might think you’re not doing good when you’re actually doing better than the industry’s standards. You’ll end up changing or improving marketing strategies that are already efficient and ignore aspects of the campaign that need attention.
Here are the data in your marketing campaign that you should look into:
- Opening rates – Checking your opening rates and comparing it to the industry’s standard will tell you what’s a trendy topic and which words to use as a killer subject line.
- Click through rates – A click-through rate is the number of email recipients who clicked on your email link. This rate is affected by how you personalize your emails and present the link.
- Complaint rate – The complaint rate shows which part of your campaigning strategy is done wrong. Two good examples are sending irrelevant content and sending emails frequently.
5. A/B Test Subject Lines
One way to know which subject line idea work is by using A/B testing. This involves the process of sending two slightly different versions of email campaigns and comparing them to each other based on how they perform. The testing strategy isn’t also just for determining a good subject line alone. You can also use A/B test in email marketing to grow your business.
Marketing professionals, for example, write two very different toned subject lines to be equally sent to each half of their subscriber pool. The first subject line sounds informative and direct, while the other sounds less serious and more humorous.
When the results came out, they found that the opening rates were higher on the informative subject line while the humorous one did poorly. So one thing was concluded: Informative Subject lines perform better, and that’s what they should use for email campaigns.
Final Thoughts
To get those the most of your email marketing, check your progress every week by viewing your customer interaction rates. Send as many emails as you can. The more emails you send, the more accurate the rates are.
Using email relay services will allow you to do that. Then, do your best to offer what your customers prefer. If the customer wants to read about the topics they are interested in, then that’s what you should make and send.
Interesting Related Article: “What is email marketing? Definition and examples“