Want better results from your email newsletters? Try these tips to increase your open and click through rates for your next email marketing campaign.
Take a reality check
The harsh reality is that nobody cares about your email newsletters. Industry benchmarks suggest that on average less that 20 percent of your database actually open your email, and less than 5 percent click on a link, so it’s time to get real.
Stand out from the noise
The internet has changed everything in marketing. Making so much information available to us so efficiently has actually made us more time poor than ever. We’re interrupted by noise all day long. And to the recipients, your email newsletter is more noise. Your job is to make it stand out in a crowded inbox.
Start with the subject line
Use active words in your subject line that urge readers to open your email because an enormous and irresistible benefit awaits them inside. A caption that reads “Our new product will blow your mind” will most likely fail to get the results you’re after. Instead try “Your weekend just got a whole lot better”.
Want more articles like this? Check out the email newsletters section.
It’s not about you; it’s about them
When you send any marketing message out, especially in email newsletters, speak only about the benefits to your recipients. They don’t care what you’ve been up to. They don’t care about your new office. They don’t care about your new shiny object thing that you need to promote. Of course, they won’t tell you this themselves. They’ll remain polite. But they’ll ignore your email.
One big mistake that rookies make all the time is to blast an email to their database every fortnight trying to sell them something. Please resist the urge to do this.
Instead, use the technology (and the fact that your database have given you permission to email them) to add as much value to their lives as you can. People love engaging with other people they trust and who help them out.
Make them hungry for more
Create “open loops” in your email that encourage people to click. An example might be, “Peter tells us that he has reclaimed his weekends by using this strategy. Learn the tactics he uses here”, with the text including a link to the rest of the story on your site.
Get started
There’s no time like the present, so take a moment to come up with a piece of information that will be valuable to your database, and then compose an awesome subject line and an open loop that delivers a benefit to them. Test it out and track your results.
Do you have any other advice for those wanting to improve their email marketing campaign? Please share it below.