culled from:estmarketing.co.uk
1. Choose the right email system:
It is important that you choose the right email system that suits your business. There are many well-known ones out there such as Mail Chimp and Constant Contact, which are great for sending messages to customers and known prospects. But if you want to reach thousand’s of prospects at one time you may need a more advanced system such as the platform we use at EST.
2. The importance of a great subject line:
When creating your subject line it is important to remember the ‘2 second rule.’ That is the amount of time you have to win over your prospect before they make a decision on whether to open your email or not. We find we get most success when personalising the subject line, so including the contacts name or company name. It is also important to keep it short and state where possible why the recipient should open your email i.e. what is the benefit to them?
3. Send it from a human:
The ‘from’ field tells the recipient who sent the email – most people tend to focus on the subject line and the ‘from’ field is often forgotten. Through experience we’ve found that using a persons name in the ‘from’ field gets a much better open rate than using a generic from address such as info@ or sales@.
4. Concise content:
Make your content as concise as possible! Lengthy emails that require the recipient to keep scrolling down will not be read and most likely be deleted. When creating your content, remember to keep your prospect/customer in mind and state clearly what the benefits are of your product/service to them. If you do have more information you would like them to read, introduce it in your email and provide them with a link so that they can read more if they choose to.
5. Obvious links:
Thanks to Google – 99% of people now recognise a clickable link straight away when it is blue, bold and underlined. Make sure you create all your links in this way to make is as easy as possible for your reader to click on your links.
6. Minimise images:
Due to advanced spam filters, and all sorts of other technical aspects, high graphic emails are no longer as effective as they used to be. Our most successful campaigns are those that include no images. When prospects have to download images this automatically sets off an alarm that this is a mass marketing email and so they often hit the delete button without even looking at the content. We have found by making the email look and sound more personalised a prospect is much more likely to open and respond.
7. Personalisation:
Aim to make your content as personalised as possible as this will increase your open and response rates. We suggest you add personalisation to the subject line, address the email to the recipient personally i.e. ‘Hi Bob’ and start the email with a friendly, personalised introductory line that will encourage them to keep on reading.
8. Strong call to action:
Having a clear, strong call to action on your emails is vital to the success of your campaigns. Whether it be encouraging the reader to sign up for an event, download a whitepaper or requesting a consultation – make it clear and extremely easy for them to respond.
9. Don’t forget the unsubscribe:
It is illegal to send your marketing emails out without giving the reader an unsubscribe option, so don’t forget to include the unsubscribe link on all your email campaigns! Spam filters often pick up the word ‘unsubscribe’, so a tip we have picked up is to use ‘remove me from your list’ instead to avoid getting blocked.
10. It’s all in the follow up:
Once people respond to your call to actions it is important to follow up with the prospects to convert them. So make sure you or your sales teams allocate some time in your diary to follow up’s in the days/weeks after your email campaigns.
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