Email marketing is big business. It is the quickest, easiest and cheapest way of reaching your customers. You can direct them to your site, advertise the latest news, let them know of offers and much more. But it can all go very wrong. You have to ask yourself; would you read what you are sending out?
Email marketing can be very powerful, but only if used properly. I have seen some emails come through, where the writer has clearly got excited and you are left with no idea where to start, and a page so long you can’t be bothered to read it.
There are several things to remember when writing an email. As trends for opening emails is going down, you need to make sure yours are the emails everyone wants to open. Here are some tips to remember, to make your email a must read.
1. Write understandable content
In the same way as when writing content for a website, you must remember who is going to read it. You know your industry inside out, but your clients probably don’t! Keep it short and sweet, and avoid anything too technical. Keep the email digestible – give them a short preview, and send them to the full article on your site!
2. Make your links noticeable
If you are going to link to your website, use bigger bolder text, so the links stand out. how many of you scan the headline and go straight to the site to read the article in full? Would you do the same if you had to search for the link? Make your link text interesting, make your reader want to click on it, make it a call to action! Persuade your reader to go to your site and look around.
3. Track those links!
Once you’ve got the links, track them. you can track the email to see how many people have opened it, how many have opened it more than once, how many liked it so much they sent it to a friend… You can even see how many people have clicked on the links and gone through to the site. There is so much information there that you can use to tailor your emails so you get the best results, and make sure your email reaches the most people.
4. Think about size.
Your email should be no wider than 500 to 650 pixels. Any wider and people will have to start scrolling sideways, and guess what, they won’t bother. Images should be optimised to just the right size, dimensionally and file size.
5. Test, test, test!
There are so many different email clients, and they each have their own quirks and ways of displaying your email. You can’t afford not to test your email before you send it out. For example Outlook 2007 won’t show any images set as a background, so if you have text over an image, you won’t see the image. It’s a good idea to set up email addresses to check each client. When we create a template, we make sure the template works on all platforms before we give it to a client, and are always there for tech support if something won’t work!
A good example of what happens when you do not check your emails, is one sent to me. They had a dark grey background, with slightly darker grey text over it. I don’t know what it was meant to look like, as I didn’t bother to stick with something I can’t read!
6. Don’t get junked
Try and avoid spam keywords, so your email does not get ‘junked’ by the mail client. Using words like ‘free’ too much may cause your email to get written off as spam. Tailor your subject line as well to make sure it is as interesting as possible, and more likely to be read. For example, ‘Can you spot these ten great photoshop disasters?’ is a more engaging title than ‘ten photoshop mistakes’.
7. The finishing touches
Let your readers know who you are. Put something at the end of your email with your name and website, some details on it, and a link to unsubscribe of they want to. Legally, you have to allow people to request to not receive your emails, and you don’t want to be wasting bandwidth on people who are not going to open it!
8. Personalise it
If you’re mailing list has people’s first names, use them! Add it to the subject line so that the email is more personal, and greet them as you would if you’d emailed them personally. Open rates will be much higher and your contacts will get to see the great campaign you’ve put together.
9. Be consistent
Once you have worked out what the look and feel of your email will be, stick to it. People will be more inclined to open your email if they recognise the style from the last one. Many popular email clients also give a preview of the top of the email. Put a highlight of what’s in the email here so they know what to expect, and want to know more. Again, think what would catch your eye?
10. Perfect timing
So now you have a pretty good email, just needs to get sent out! Research shows that the best time to send an email out is on a Tuesday or Wednesday, in the early afternoon. Mondays are too busy, and you are still recovering from the weekend, and by Thursday and Friday you are ready for the next weekend, so unlikely to open the emails. Send out your emails at the same time every month/week etc. Your readers will know when to expect them and they can look forward to receiving them, and build time to read your email into their day.
With all those tips and tricks, you don’t really have an excuse for bad emails now! So good luck, and get writing!