7 Success Secrets for Profitable Email Marketing Part 2
Email is a fast, inexpensive, and effective way to target and address your various audiences. So why do so many businesses struggle to get their email marketing to bring in new prospects and customers?
This is the second of 7 articles which reveals the secrets to my email marketing success over the years.
If you’re struggling to get a response to your emails, these 7 Success Secrets will make an immediate difference to your open rates and response.
If you missed the first article about targeting who you send your emails to.. click here>>>
Success Secret No. 2: Make It Relevant
My second secret to Email Marketing Success is about making sure your content and communication is valuable and relevant to your particular target audience.
In the recipient’s mind, you have to be known for sending high quality messages; otherwise, you will be ignored or readers will quickly unsubscribe.
With so much email now classed as spam, it’s no wonder that the most common inbox activity is delete, delete, delete.
Your name in the “from” field represents your brand and reputation that should be known for sending messages that are very relevant and valuable.
The “subject” field should represent a timely and relevant proposition to encourage the reader to open it.
The key to ensuring your content is relevant and valuable is ask your customers what concerns them and what information they want to know about.
We recently used Survey Monkey to ask a section of our customer and prospect base what concerned them about their online marketing. The feed back we received will help us ensure the information we put out via email is valuable and eagerly awaited.
Survey Monkey has a basic plan which is free to use. This plan is free as long it consists of 10 or less questions and the number of responses is less than 100.
If you feel your email marketing could be more profitable, I invite you to send a selection of your current emails for a free review. To apply email sally@common-sense-marketing.com with subject line ‘Free Email Review’ and she will contact you.
2 Comments
Mike Walpole
18th February 2016Richard
You only briefly mention subject lines.
As someone who deletes most emails, I only open those
where the subject line is very strong/unusual (without being OTT)
so I regard this problem DIRECTLY related to open rates.
How do we solve this please?
Amanda Armitage
19th February 2016Hi Mike,
It’s a very good point you’re making. Here are some thoughts…
There are 2 elements you can add to any subject line that will usually improve its effectiveness…
1. Curiosity
and
2. Benefit-Orientation
But the secret to using this approach is to… INCLUDE BOTH in the same subject line.
In other words, I’m not saying that you should have an email subject line that piques the reader’s curiosity OR promises to deliver a benefit.
I’m telling you to create a subject line that DOES BOTH. For instance… here’s an example that includes both elements:
“This clever copywriting trick keeps readers riveted to your message”
You’ll notice the first part of the subject line piques curiosity…
“clever copywriting trick”? What clever trick? What is it?
The second part of the subject line conveys a clear benefit from the curiosity factor…
“keeps readers riveted to your message”
When combined, promising a benefit while piquing curiosity, your email open-rate will almost inevitably improve.
So an example for your own business might be “These 5 simple children’s photography techniques always deliver amazing results”
This blog post from Email Broadcaster, Constant Contact, also has some useful tips: http://blogs.constantcontact.com/good-email-subject-lines/
I hope this helps!
Regards, Richard