You might be surprised to hear that email marketing is still one of the cheapest and most effective forms of digital marketing. Of course, it has been around for decades so there’s no surprise why this kind of strategy works!
Another great thing about email advertising? You can connect with your target audience without having to worry about any huge costs involved.
It’s more than likely that you have an understanding of the basics of email marketing, but you may not be aware that there are ways to make your investment more effective. Here’s what some experts have to say about it.
Page Contents
Sustain your Email List
To save money, you should spend time cleaning your email list. You could be wasting your time and energy on email addresses that are no longer valid or have even been created simply for the opt-in process. By cleaning up your lists it can help save money!
By using a two-step subscription process where leads must enter their email address and then confirm the subscription by clicking a link, you can increase open rates. For existing subscribers, send an email asking them to opt-in for further emails – and delete anybody who doesn’t respond.
Research shows that this process increases open rates because it requires your contacts to give out more information about themselves before subscribing which helps identify potential customers or clients with similar interests as yours – so they are less likely not interested compared to receiving random emails from unknown sources every day. They will also be much more willing to subscribe if they already know something about what you do!
Reward your Loyal Subscribers
Emails have a high Return of Investment (ROI), but don’t take it for granted. You should reward your loyal subscribers! While some subscribers open every email sent by your brand, others may only engage with promotional messages or newsletters – they should be rewarded for doing so!
When you send out a special discount code or coupon that’s just for people who open your emails regularly, do not hype it in the subject line. The benefit is casual subscribers may be more likely to open email messages when there isn’t an obvious reward and they will see this offer too. This is something that the pros recommend that you do once in a while with your email list.
Make it Easy to Unsubscribe
Business owners often stress out about unsubscribes because they think it means that people aren’t interested in their emails. However, this isn’t always the case as pros know not to get hung up on a few uninterested subscribers when there are tons of engaged ones waiting for your next email.
When people don’t open your emails, they’re more likely to get flagged as spam. You want the majority of your subscribers eager and willing to receive them since those are the ones most likely going to buy from you or sign up for services.
When someone unsubscribes, it is best to simply let them go because ultimately they were not helping anyway; keep in mind that these individuals will be less interested so may end up ignoring future newsletters too which could result in a down-spiral effect where eventually all members simply ignore any received messages completely.
Give your Subscribers Choices
Whether you’re sending a welcome email, an announcement or anything in between – it’s likely that not everyone will be interested. Allowing people to self-segment and choose what they want to receive can increase your open rates by making them feel like they have control over their inboxes.
You might have heard of the expression, “out of sight, out of mind.” Unfortunately for marketers trying to get their message across through email marketing campaigns and newsletters, it is no different.
Just because someone signs up on your website or subscribes to one brand’s emails doesn’t mean they wish to be bombarded with messages from every other company that you do business with as well. In fact, this can turn people away very quickly if not done correctly – which means fewer open rates and lower conversion levels than desired!
Segmentation is an easy part of email marketing that can be handled with a robust, user-friendly survey. Include links to surveys at the bottom of every email so users are able to opt into topics or emails they want more information on and opt-out if they’re no longer interested in receiving messages from you.
Remember to Use Alt Tags for Images
If you are not including alt text with your images, then don’t make the mistake of sending out broken emails. This is even more important if there aren’t any alternate images to describe what we’re missing when yours doesn’t load.
To improve your marketing email and make it more accessible to users, every image you include should have alt text attached. This means that people with a slow internet connection can see the images as well as those who are visually impaired or using a reader on their phone or computer.
The text reader can understand alt text, but it cannot read images. This is a problem that ensures your content will not be understood by all recipients unless you fix the issue. In addition to being better for your email campaigns, using Alt Tags for your images is good on-page SEO practice.
Use Small Sized Files
It is important to make sure that your emails are mobile-friendly. If you send attachments, don’t use a file size larger than necessary so it doesn’t take the subscriber through their data limit for the month. Even if you aren’t including any files with your email there’s still a benefit from keeping things small so people don’t have slow load times on poor internet connections!
When sending out emails, you need to consider the total size of them. As a general rule of thumb, images should be under 1MB in file size for optimal viewing and loading times over email clients.
Track Your Links
If you include links in your marketing emails, tracking them will allow you to find out how many of your readers clicked the link. Most email automation services have a way for users to track their clicks on each one included in an automated message so it’s important that companies keep up with this feature if they want accurate data about where people are clicking and what content is drawing attention.
If you’re using email automation to market your business, don’t forget about link tracking! This helpful tool allows you to see how many people click on the links in your marketing emails. Most services include this option so that way it’s easier for you to track and monitor who is clicking which links.
Optimize your Emails for Mobile Devices
Marketing emails sent to mobile devices should be optimized for consumers. This means using a single-column design, ensuring that buttons are large enough so they can easily tap them with their fingers, having subject lines of no more than 25-30 characters and pre-header texts which show what’s in the email along with clear CTA text (call to action).
By using responsive email templates that adapt to any mobile device, you are allowing your user access to the same experience on a laptop, tablet or smartphone. Remember that more people will access the internet than their mobile than a desktop or laptop, so it’s vital that your email campaigns are properly optimized. What may look good on your desktop may look awful on a mobile phone.
Some Final Thoughts
If you’re a business owner, then it makes sense that your marketing budget is important to you. These email marketing tips from the pros will help make sure every dollar counts with increasing profits and return on investment (ROI).
Email marketing can be highly beneficial for businesses when done correctly, but it can become ineffective and costly if you are sending out poorly crafted emails to a mailing list that is full of invalid or fake email addresses.
