If you are a content creator, an independent professional or an entrepreneur, email marketing is a creative way to stay top-of-mind with your audience, clients and prospects.
By creating useful content – such as blog posts, articles, white papers and webinars – and distributing them via email, you also can increase your visibility online and position yourself as an expert in a given topic.
If it includes a clear call to action, such as “register here,” “request a free consultation here,” “see complete article here,” or “use promo code here,” email marketing can also be a powerful lead generation and sales tool. If content is king, email marketing is the princess.
There are many how-to’s and tips on how to increase your effectiveness with email marketing campaigns, so I’ve saved you the headache of going through many sources by compiling a list of my 20 favorite email marketing tips from the web. These are not only straight to the point, but also very practical and easy to implement right away. Lets get to it!
- Segment your email database by time zone so you can send different types of emails at the appropriate time.
- Generally, the best time to send emails is early in the morning.
- Between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. is the best time to send promotions such as gym memberships and clothing sales, as people are more prone to pay attention to them after work.
- The best time to send emails about property and financial services is 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., because people start thinking about their personal lives but are still focused on productivity.
- Between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. is the best time to send holiday and B2B promotions.
- List segmentation is key to making sure your message gets to the right people. Ideas for segmenting: location, buying behavior, site usage, gender and age.
- Headlines with 28-39 characters have the best click-through rates.
- Write every headline with the answer to the question: “What is in for me?”
- Wednesdays and Thursdays have the best open rates of the week.
- Use your brand name in the “from” field, and use your website colors.
- Keep your call-to-action above the fold, highlight it with color, and add a sense of urgency by adding a time frame for readers to act.
- Build a no-clutter landing page for every marketing campaign that includes a clear intent and persuades your reader to take further action.
- Do A/B testing to find the best email message and timing, such as: subject line, design, call-to-action, headline, day and time.
- Break your email into clear sections.
- Describe visuals in the Alt-Tag because they may not appear in email.
- There’s no need to be so professional – have a personal tone in your writing.
- Add your logo to the upper-left corner.
- Offer an incentive to subscribe to your email list that people can’t refuse.
- An occasional sales pitch is okay as long as it serves your audience. Make it about them – not about you.
- Don’t stop tracking in open rates, but track all the way to website visits and conversion rates (sales).
Email marketing strategy varies from business to business and from objective to objective, but the one aspect that applies to everyone is that you must try, try and measure and measure. Without proper measurement mechanisms in place, you won’t know whether your efforts are moving the needle. At the end of the day, you have many different online marketing tactics to choose from, so focusing on the ones that are worth your time is crucial to really making an impact in your audience.
If you are using email marketing for your online promotional efforts, are you getting the results you want? Do yo have clear, measurable goals in place? If you are not using it, why not? Please share your comments and questions with me. I read them all, promise!
Did you like this article? Register HERE to my e-mail list, where I send practical personal branding and marketing articles to help your career and business straight to your inbox.
Do you need help gaining more visibility online to reach a bigger audience and/or position yourself as an expert? Learn more about how I help corporate professionals, influencers and solopreneurs become more marketable through personal branding and marketing strategies, and also about applying for a complimentary “Make Me More Marketable” session HERE.
marketingforyourcareer.com 