Across the world, more than 205 billion emails are sent in 24 hours, among those emails, businesses are desperately trying to achieve conversions and sales through newsletters, emails with content in them and targeted emails, the list could go on. When done correctly, email marketing is a powerful tool. So how can your email be one that’s opened rather than one that’s trashed?
Among the 74 trillion emails sent each year, it can be difficult to produce one that is both eye-catching and engaging. Along with cost saving benefits, when done right, emails can be hugely advantageous to a business. So how do you create an all-round great email?
Subject Line
The most important part of your email, will determine whether your email gets moved to ‘Trash’ or opened by the user. The average open rate for business to business marketing campaigns is 18.5% – it might not seem a lot, but the average click rate on an email is only 3.4%. If your mailing list is good and all are valuable clients or potential clients, your chances of making a conversion rate (a conversion in this sense is not a click to the website but a product added to basket or a service enquired about) that’s higher than 1% will still be slim .
However, if you’re getting more than this, you’re doing better than average. But there are still some tactics you could be utilising in order to increase the open rate. Mailchimp as well as many of the well-known email clients allow you to add *|FNAME|* to the email subject meaning that it comes up as the person’s name.
As you can see from the highlighted email I got from Bella Italia, they addressed me with my name, and they know my birthday is close, so have told me I can book now for my birthday and get a discount! Addressing me with my name and giving me a reminder about my birthday plans secures the connection I have with the brand and immediately makes me favour that email over the others I received.
‘From’ Address
Getting the correct ‘from’ address is important. This is one of the disadvantages of MailChimp as the ‘From’ address always has ‘Mailchimp’ in it with a string of numbers. However, you can set the ‘From Name’ to be anything you want. Make sure this is something appropriate such as ‘Dave from Company Name’ or alternatively ‘Company Name’.
As you can see pictured is an email I got from a company. I say ‘A company’ because I’m still not sure who they are. Whether this was an error or a tactic they tried, it didn’t work and I immediately wasn’t certain I wanted to open this specific email. As you can see, I haven’t because of the lack of trust.
This is why thinking about your ‘From Name’ or ‘From Address’ is absolutely essential when it comes to sending out marketing material. This is mostly about building trust with your audience. If they immediately don’t trust the sender, even with the best intentions, it won’t even get read, let alone opened.
The Content
This is the broadest topic that’s going to get covered, and it’s also one of the hardest to get right! First of all, you need to add value to your audience, this is the key point to remember when emailing. Ask yourself, why are you sending this email? What do you want to get out of the email? What do you want the consumer to do from the email?
Your answers should be something along the lines of ‘To add value to the customer or to give them important information, to get more conversions out of the recipients and I want the customer to click through to the website!’ Arguably, getting click-throughs is the goal, after all, emails don’t take payments (yet)…but websites do!
Your content also needs to make the reader feel informed and valued. A fantastic marketing campaign is by Booking.com, who emailed me regarding some deals in a holiday destination in Wales called Caernarfon. The best thing is, Booking.com knows I’ve been to Caernarfon twice (and it’s normally this time of the year) so has told me to check out some deals that are in Caernarfon.
Of course, your content doesn’t have to be SO personalised and complex, but if one of your existing clients has bought a pen (for example), you can send them an auto-email suggesting that they could perhaps buy a pencil to go with their pen, or a pen pot to put the pen in – it’s much more likely to convert if it’s related and targeted to the individual.
However, let’s imagine, your contact has never bought off your business and has merely given you an email address as part of a newsletter sign up or networking event. These can be targeted through value added content. This can be a discount to a product on the store, a white paper that you can send them or even some email advice.
Conclusion
Although this may seem like one of the more detailed blogs, this is only the beginning of email marketing, and there’s so much more that can be offered, implemented and considered. From auto-response campaigns that can drive conversions for over one thousand days to re-targeting campaigns to white papers and newsletter sign up pages. The list of possibilities with email marketing is endless.
If you need help with your email marketing campaigns, we can help you. Get in touch.
