In a world of social media and other online marketing channels, email marketing remains an effective way to communicate with your audience. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest bring new opportunities for engagement, however, according to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is set to get even bigger this year, with upwards of $2 billion dollars projected to be spent on email marketing in 2014.
Listen To What The Numbers Are Saying
An email marketing campaign is not a one-way conversation: A professional email marketeer should be able to listen to response rates and unsubscribes in the same way a good conversationalist responds to how his audience is reacting to his story and adjusts accordingly. Just like a conversation, an email campaign that starts off with a needy, demanding ask like “BUY NOW!” will be ignored.
Tell stories to build trust
Learn to mix in good stories along with your advertising messages. Each email in a campaign should be built around an action: Sometimes that action is buy a product that’s on sale, sometimes that action is helping the customer build trust in your company and brand. Your emails need to drive results that are in-line with your business goals. If you’ve got a story to tell, tell it, but make sure you do it in a way that leaves the customer wanting to know more about your business than when they started reading the email. Unlike social media with its constantly-changing news feeds, you have the customer’s attention when they’re reading your email, use it well.
Always Leave Them Wanting More
Whether your email campaign is meant to make your company more attractive to your customers or sell products right way, keep your content short and to the point. If you’re creating a brand-image email campaign, start your story off in the email but finish it on your website. If you’re writing an email to sell products right now, consider adding a “Learn More” button in addition to a “Buy Now” button in order to accommodate customers who aren’t quite ready to purchase your product right away. After putting in all that hard work into building a list and writing great subject lines that drive open rates, the last thing you want your valued customer to do is read your content and not do anything: The goal of a good email marketing campaign should be be to make your customers as excited about your business as you are.
