Our Beginner’s Guide to Marketing: Effective Emails

As an accompaniment to our Guide to Social Media Marketing, we have put together the ultimate guide to email marketing (we spoil you, we really do).

Email marketing is sometimes thought to be ‘outdated’ and ‘old school’, but there are 4.3 billion email accounts in the world and together we all send 196 billion emails a DAY.

If you still aren’t convinced, 91% of customers check their emails every single day, and 77% of consumers say they actually prefer email marketing.

So it’s a great way to market your business and it’s actually really easy to get right.

Here are our top tips to perfecting your email style to get business flooding in.

1. Segment your Audience

Firstly segment your audience database, so you can really personalise an email. 62% of targeted emails get more clicks so you can’t really go wrong here.

You can segment based on geography or their occupation, gender, age, or interests. Appointedd’s CRM tools offer an easy way to get all this information helping you target more effectively.

It’s also important to segment based on what type of customer they are. Are they a completely new customer, or have they used your service before? Are they a recurring customer? What kind of information would be useful to them?

If they are a new email address and they haven’t used your service before but are thinking about it, it’s a good idea to send them free trials, demos, and consultations.

Similarly, if they are a recurring customer, you could send them emails updating them on your service, and loyalty offers.

2) Set a Clear Goal For the Email

Set a goal that you can quantify. For example, a good goal would be raising awareness of an offer that you have on the table. You can easily see and test the engagement.

Make sure your email is clear and concise, thankfully you don’t need to create loads of content: just get straight to the point! People scan through emails so quickly, we all do it. So make sure that your reader knows exactly what they are gaining by giving your emaill some of their time.

4)Your Subject Line is King

Make sure that your subject line is clear and actionable so that your user knows exactly what they are getting. It’s the first thing your customer sees after all, and pretty much responsible for if they open your email or not.

So again, this is actually quite easy, make the value of the email clear– the best subject lines are around 50 characters.

You should also avoid typical sales terms, like ‘free’ or ‘percent off’ as unfortunately these tend trigger spam filters.

It is often effective to include the recipient’s name in the subject line, GMass offers tools for this all completely free.

Similarly a reference to the urgency of the email is a great way to increase clicks for example ‘today only’.

Using a question in the subject line can also be effective, try a ‘Do you need..’ or ‘Have you seen..’

3) Link, Link, and Link

Make things easier for the reader by making sure you have a clear link in the body of the text.

So if you want them to check out a new feature you have recently introduced, put in a clear call-to-action button linking to your website pages. You could also link your image if you have one.

You can measure how many people open your email and click on your links with ContactMonkey which is a fantastic and FREE tool that tracks your emails for you!

Finally…

It helps to send your email at an optimum time: people are likely to be checking their phones during the commute to and from work, so send emails early in the morning or late afternoon.

Although of course you are the expert on your customers so tailor a time when you know your specific customers will be active.