Email marketing is a cornerstone of many marketing programs, from small B2B startups to huge consumer brands. Mastering the top email marketing hacks can help a marketer quickly drive a much higher return on investment from this widely used and popular marketing channel.
According to a report, roughly 218 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2018 around the world. Here’s another fact: 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing is helping them increase customer engagement and conversion. Clearly, email marketing is a huge channel used by most businesses to market their products and services. Winning requires you to get an edge, to help you stand out from the crowd.
Email can also work really well with other channels, including direct mail. In fact, email is the top “other channel” that Postalytics customers use to connect with their audiences.
To help you achieve a good engagement rate, here are some unmissable email marketing hacks you should try.
Play it straight: Inform your subscribers
The first & most important step is to inform your subscribers about what they’re signing up for. Be clear about what you’re offering in your emails: Whether it is some content about helpful tips, newsletters, or seasonal offers. Make it clear & easy for them to understand what kind of emails they will be receiving.
The clarity of the emails and the idea behind it will help the subscribers to be sure if they need it, and on the basis of that, you’ll be able to gain long-term subscribers. The best way to inform them about the types of emails they will receive is by declaring it on the signup form.
You don’t want to end up in spam boxes, and to avoid that, it is necessary for emails to match with the subscriber’s expectations.
#1 Email marketing hack: Combine email with direct mail marketing
Many marketers are turning to automation tools to enable direct mail and email marketing to work together to boost engagement.
There are several key reasons why:
- Direct mail marketing (sending letters and postcards via the mail) has seen a resurgence in response rates.
- Marketing automation tools enable the same lists to be used for both email and direct mail, with minimal time to setup campaigns.
- Automated drip campaigns can now trigger a combination of email and direct mail for nurturing, lower funnel and post-sale opportunities.
Interested in ideas to combine email with direct mail in order to boost response rates? We’ve worked with a renowned Chief Creative Officer to develop free workflows below:
The best multi-channel campaigns use the strengths of email (immediacy and high ROI) and direct mail (response rate and long tail of response) together to maximize the impact of promotions and offers.
Similar fundamentals apply to direct mail campaigns and email marketing:
- Offers and calls-to-action (CTA’s) need to be clear and visually prominent
- List and audience selection represents a huge factor in campaign success
- Powerful images can convey more than words
Consistency of offers, messaging and branding across digital and physical channels, such as email and direct mail, lead to the highest response rates.
Hack #2: Use HTML in your emails
One of the most common email marketing hacks involves putting HTML to work. Why? Because HTML emails have several advantages over plain text emails:
- HTML emails enable much more sophisticated tracking
- Design & formatting gives your email a far more professional appearance
- Calls to action can be made more prominent with large buttons, fonts & formatting
As competition for eyeballs increases, these factors become more & more important over time.
Before you start with the HTML in email process, it is important to understand the tools that you will be needing, and you will also need to understand your audience well in terms of where they will click on a CTA, what are the elements they get attracted to, and how they need to be to create HTML emails accordingly.
Coding HTML emails is not child’s play. The daunting challenge of design, development, and coding can be a lot for novices. Many marketers hire a dedicated email developer & get an email template guide to remedy this. It will not only simplify your work but will also save a lot of time.
Hack #3: A/B Test relevant subject lines. For YOUR audience.
A subject line is considered as the face of an email, which is why it needs to be persuasive. If the subscriber’s attention is not grabbed by the subject line, the power content won’t make any sense. The recipient is more likely to consider & open the email, which contains a subject line that is compelling.
You’ll see a lot of advice about how you should construct your subject lines. We suggest that you commit to A/B testing for your audience(s). A practice of continuously testing subject lines will teach you the things that motivate your audience(s) to take action.
What subject line elements should you be testing? Here’s our top tips:
- Personalization. Test whether using names & other personalization elements make an impact.
- Segmentation: Slice up your lists by industry, title, or other criteria & test subject lines to them uniquely.
- Emojis can lift response. Make sure you are testing them with your audiences. If they work, vs. no emoji, then start testing flavors of emojis against each other. If they don’t work, don’t use them.
What kind of email generates more engagement?
Cultivating affection for your brand may be a strong theme within the top-ranked email types. This common thread shows that your contacts are possible to open your emails when they’re acquainted with your brand and even love what your company is all about.
A strong welcome series allows you to try to just that. Introduce yourself and your mission, and take the time to urge to understand your subscribers so as to foster a robust relationship that feels personal.
It’s interesting to notice the types of content that performs well on blogs and websites. Rolling the right content into a singular newsletter that subscribers can anticipate may cause more engagement—rather than sending separate emails dedicated to every individual kind of content. Especially once you remember that the majority of people open but half the entire emails in their inboxes.
It’s important to notice that although people said they’re likely to open emails from unfamiliar brands, you shouldn’t be emailing anyone who hasn’t explicitly given you permission. It’s illegal, unethical, and an honest thanks to finishing up on blacklists.
Hack #4: Unsubscribe the inactive
We know how vital it is to build an email list for a successful business campaign, but what’s the point if your customers are inactive? When you declutter the list, it will automatically help in paying attention to the quality customers are quite active with your mails.
To keep the audience engaged, make sure that they are updated about all the offers through your consistent emails. However, sending way too many articles will lead you to the spam box or worse, you might end up getting blocked. Moreover, you should give the option of unsubscribing to your readers as well. It’s the law in many countries, and the right thing to do.
Just because an audience member unsubscribes from hearing from you in one channel like email doesn’t mean that they don’t want to hear from you. They may simply be receiving too many emails, and they can’t handle the volume. Savvy marketers try reaching out and engaging with unsubscribers via other channels like digital ads or direct mail.
Hack #5: Visually Pleasing Email Templates
If you believe in building a strong relationship with your subscribers or customers, good email templates will do the deed. Emails that are beautifully designed with attractive visual gets more and better attention compared to the basic ones. To enhance the engagement and conversion, you must seek out an email template guide for clarity.
Generating mobile-friendly emails is also an easy and less time-consuming way of engaging with subscribers. Make sure that the mobile-friendly emails are readable, attractive, and interactive because the conversion rate through mobiles is higher.
Hack #6: Build rapport by sending from multiple people
If you’re aiming to build a long-term relationship with your customers, we have the perfect hack for it. Use multiple members of your business to send emails.
The different email addresses for a sender is a good way of stepping out of the no-reply town. The usual business email addresses that start with please-reply or no-reply usually eliminate the personal touch. To make it more interactive for the readers, use actual personal email id.
Hack #7: Never give up
One reason for increasing unsubscriptions is when you give up on the idea too soon. You should maintain the consistency of your email marketing send-outs until you build a trustable relationship with the customers. Be frequent with your mails.
Don’t give up if you don’t see the results soon; stay in the game till people are influenced by your emails. Apply the email marketing hacks mentioned above in every mail, and be sure to be consistent with it.
Over time, you’ll find your audience and your voice. You’ll then reap the rewards of your consistent attention to these fundamentals.
Author Bio:
Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free HTML email templates. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.