Five top tips to improve your email marketing

As email has become a ubiquitous tool for the public, businesses have been able to take advantage of a low-cost, high-reach and easily measurable marketing medium.

 

However, with an estimated 294 billion emails sent around the world every day, it’s fair to say that your potential customers’ inboxes are already overflowing with messages – some far more welcome than others.

 

This has caused some savvy start-ups to move to other channels, such as social media, to avoid the impression of being spam-mongers.

 

But email can still play a key role in your business, as Shoes of Prey co-founder Michael Fox explained in a recent StartupSmart blog post. 

 

With the rise in daily deals sites and many retailers looking to shift stock quickly at discounted prices, email marketing remains an important tool. It can also help make your brand feel warm and personal to customers.

 

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs get the basics wrong.

 

“Consumers are quick to unsubscribe from services that deliver irrelevant content or abuse consumers’ trust,” says Stas Belkov, co-founder of daily deals aggregation business DealFetch.com.au.

 

Here are Belkov’s top five ways to improve your email marketing efforts.

 

1. Provide real value

 

When launching an email campaign or newsletter, ensure your content is interesting, relevant, and engaging.

 

Give your users what they were after when they originally signed up to your website or service.

 

This may be the latest news about your products, curated content about your particular niche, or special offers that cannot be found elsewhere.

 

There must be a compelling reason for your subscribers to open your email, or they will ignore it.

 

Ensure the quality of your email is top notch; provide a better email service than your competitors.

 

Being dynamic can also be beneficial to your email campaigns. Offering the same thing every time will quickly result in many users unsubscribing.

 

Mix it up by approaching each email alert differently, or by updating your style and content type each month.

 

2. Personalise your message

 

Whether you’re providing basic news about your company or promoting your products and services, personalisation can enhance the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

 

Even before getting to the email itself, the subject headline can benefit from personalisation by including a user’s name.

 

Any piece of data that makes the email feel more personal to the user will have a positive effect on open rates.

 

The email itself presents many opportunities to personalise content for users.

 

Information and news can be shown based on user interests, while products and services can be recommended based on previous purchases.

 

This level of personalisation hinges on the amount of data that is available on each particular user, but if implemented successfully it can have a large positive impact on an email campaign.

 

The sign-up process is the perfect opportunity to find out about each user’s likes and interests.