4 Beginner Tips to Email Marketing

For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is approximately $38 dollars. Email drives customer acquisition and retention, according to 80% of professionals, because they are a more personalized form of communication that is tailored to individual customers.

However, getting email marketing right can often be tricky, which is why it is necessary to have some guidance. Remember that numbers never lie: so tracking and reporting your strategies is as important as testing one out.

Here are some key tips for email marketing:

1. Determine your goals.
   The types of emails you create will vary widely depending on whether you are trying to create awareness, generate leads, or communicate with recurring customers. Emails you write to raise awareness can cover broader spheres as well as informative shares. On the other hand, communication with recurring customers should take into account their purchase habits, history of communication with the firm, increasing your thought-leadership with opinionated articles etc. Warm prospects can be nurtured by informative and thought-provoking content. Needless to say, your email content speaks volumes of your business and the ROI on this format is one of the highest. So make it worth your reader’s while! To know how to create valuable content, read this.
2. Decide on a frequency.
   Will you send emails on a quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis? If you have a high frequency of emails, be sure that the content you’re sending is relevant and doesn’t come off as spam or force your reader to hit “unsubscribe”. Usually, product emails, rich in graphics tend to be marked as promotion mail. If you’re a B2B business, you can consider sending plain text mails with the bare minimum of graphics.
3. Formatting is key.
   Use email marketing tools such as Litmus, MailChimp, Reachmail, etc. to beautifully format your emails. Recent research shows that plain text emails are better compared to HTML emails because an email client like GMail (which a majority of people use) the latter is marked off as “Promotions”. Although plain text may not be visually engaging, use good formatting and spacing techniques to keep your mails visually aesthetic and easy to read. Use short sentences and the right amount of spacing.
4. Experiment.
   Keep experimenting with different send times and days of the week. Also compare the response between plain-text and HTML emails to see what techniques work best for you. Track clicks, opens and actions to see whether your mails are making an impact. Iterate what doesn’t work, and retain what does work. Once you have completed your A/B testing on timings, days of week, design format — optimise.

And lastly, pick an email marketing tool that allows you to personalize. Simple personalisation tricks like addressing your email to a person by his “First Name”, goes a long way, not just in getting his attention, but also to avoid it going into Spam.

Good Luck with your Email Marketing!