In a world where social media is all-encompassing in the marketing world, it can be easy to overlook the power and intersection of email. Businesses ignore this tactic at their peril, as an optimized campaign in this area will result in a healthy mailing list and strong customer base of regular customers.
This is not to belittle what Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google + have to offer for having their usefulness. But when it comes to social shares, likes and retweets versus buy-in and sales, there is a clear winner in terms of priorities.
Here we’ll explore some of the best optimization techniques, bringing in as many eyeballs as possible and bringing in the most sales.
Give a personal touch
If your email isn’t sent with a personal touch to a specific person, it will get lost in a pile of junk or spam. Consider this a rule of thumb with any email approach – the more generic the email, the less likely you are to cut through.
From the subject line to the opening introduction and throughout the text, make sure that consumer’s name comes first and takes center stage. Show that your company has the ability to interact with people and get the message out to them – not just a bland message sent to an anonymous person in the company.
Think in time segments
So you’ve fine-tuned the text and software and spent months putting together a long list of potential customers. That’s a good start, but don’t make the mistake of sending your campaign at the wrong time.
Put yourself in the recipient’s shoe. If you are an accounting firm and want to present a new offering to local businesses, think about when they will open this email. The ideal timeslot for any regular business from 9am to 5pm is during that early schedule from 9am to 9:30am on a Tuesday morning.
Mondays are generally when employees get used to the weekend again and Tuesday is early enough in the week to take the notice and push through a sale.
Be mobile proficient
Smartphones are the communication mode of choice for the vast majority of people, making it paramount that every message sent is compatible with iPhones and Android devices.
If you happen to run your campaign through a popular platform like MailChimp, you’ll get a demonstration of how your email will be presented on mobile.
If you can’t access this preview, find a software application that runs, or worst, a draft campaign internally and check it yourself. Any campaign with text or images that are out of proportion will not get a breakthrough.
As we said, social media has its uses. For email marketing campaigns, the ability for recipients to share and engage with a business in this format opens up communication tools and makes your campaign go viral.
This is easy to achieve if your company already has these accounts in place. If your campaign is enticing enough, the easiest way to send that message is via a Facebook share or tweet in a group.
Make a call to action
Amid all the bells and whistles of persuasive language, multimedia, and aesthetic presentation, you want the end user to sign up. That doesn’t necessarily mean an instant purchase on the spot, but it could be a newsletter subscription or follow that lets you follow their account.
A call to action often results in a landing page where you direct the user to a link where they provide this information. Don’t leave this section to the end because the longer the email is, the less likely it is to click through due to the short attention span. Make this a priority.
Freelance writer and journalist on news, sports, SEO, conservation and entertainment
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