E-mail marketing remains a very powerful strategy, so long as you approach it correctly, you are very relevant and you are careful not to waste the time of your subscriber. Sounds like a commonsense statement? Let’s drill into the do’s and don’ts of successful e-mail marketing campaigns and expand on some of these “basics” to help you achieve better conversion.
1. Some people like to crow about the automatic nature of their e-mail campaigns, the “set it and forget it” nature of auto-responders and how they can make money while they sleep. The truth is somewhat different. If you really want to start connecting with your subscribers, build more credibility and boost your income, you need to be dynamic. Your e-mail list is constantly changing and as your business does not exist in a vacuum, make sure that you review the make up and contents of all your auto generated e-mails to ensure relevance, currency and to make sure that no links are broken.
2. It’s not all about the numbers. We hear from time to time how this entrepreneur has amassed an e-mail list of tens of thousands. You can bet your bottom dollar that the vast majority of those are essentially “dead” contacts. How old is the list? Your business is certainly changing and maturing and what you are offering today may be quite different from a year ago. Purge your list to make it more credible.
3. When you trim your list, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You will likely have a cross-section of different buying types. You should try and analyze buying habits. It is easier to achieve a repeat sale within 30 days of the original sale. Try and segment your list so that productive subscribers get more attention and are targeted appropriately.
4. The art of writing copy for e-mails needs a lot of study. Unless you’re very experienced at this you should either outsource this task or spend time to go over your creation, several times if necessary, before you send it. Some people advocate that you must be short and to the point, but you must be as relevant as possible while keeping the copy as short as you can. Headlines or subject lines are of ultimate importance and you should pour over each word just as carefully as you would if you were composing one of those miniature PPC campaign lines.
5. E-mail marketers face several hurdles before they can even think about conversions. They must write relevant, non-spammy, punchy and interesting copy content, but it must be configured in such a way that it passes through the spam filters as well – no mean feat. If you try and be too cute by including trigger words and symbols, especially the word “free” and “click” too many times, the spam filters will eat you up. Keep your backgrounds plain and never send a creative-only e-mail. Always mix text and creative and never center a creative on your page. This definitely looks like spam to the filter robot.
6. Once you get through to the inbox and your mail is opened, send people to a relevant landing page. This page should be a mirror of the e-mail in terms of style and theme if possible and its content should be a natural follow-on as part of your sales funnel. Test different landing pages to see how they affect your ultimate conversion rate.
7. Analytics must be your friend. Don’t scratch your head when you look at Google’s analytics program anymore. Roll up your sleeves and understand it. You have to track your conversions to see how you are achieving this result. You also need to know when someone abandons the shopping cart, or when someone clicks to another page and then abandons a visit. If you are truly on top of your analytics, you can tailor appropriate messages to visitors based on their journeys through your site. This form of intelligent e-mail marketing requires you to fully understand all those metrics.
Any e-mail secrets to share?
Matthew Toren
