With an average ROI of 38%, it’s no wonder that email is widely considered one of the most effective marketing tools for large corporations and small businesses alike. It’s the best way to keep your loyal customers engaged and it’s crucial in converting leads to sales. If you have big news, you definitely do not want to miss out on crafting an engaging email to get your customers just excited as you are!
Whether to announce a launch, to thank your customer for a purchase, to promote a sale, or for another objective, sitting down to write a marketing email can seem like an intimidating task… but it doesn’t have to be! Here are the Do’s and Don’ts to follow for an email campaign that generates massive awareness and gets your customers wanting more.
Do:
✅ Share your story
Marketing emails are the perfect platform to share the details about you or your business’s story. Some emails- including welcome emails, thank you emails, or launch emails- are places where introducing yourself works best. Including a professional headshot accompanied by genuine words about what you hope to accomplish with your business is one great way to build a connection with your fans. Make sure you’re professional but don’t be afraid to get personal. These are your loyal customers who want to support you, so you can treat them like friends! The best businesses have a good story behind them, so here’s your chance to let your audience know more about you. This will help build trust and authenticity, and could be the core foundation for your branding.
✅ Use email as an opportunity to build up your branding
Every email offers a plethora of opportunities where you can really show your customers what your brand is all about. Use a consistent tone and voice throughout the email to appear legitimate, professional, and trustworthy. If you haven’t developed your brand voicing yet, this is a great time to start. Make sure your logo and brand colors are apparent, and that you have a clean, visually-appealing design that makes your message pop.
✅ Segment your audiences
Although it takes some extra work, segmenting your campaigns can make a HUGE difference in your returns. Segmented email campaigns have a 14.31% higher open rate than non-segmented campaigns. Don’t know what any of this means? It sounds more difficult than it is! A segmented email campaign involves creating different subscriber lists based on a set of defining characteristics. For example, if your business has two different types of target audiences, a segmented email campaign would send a different email to each audience. This allows for unique messaging tailored for each audience, making emails more effective as they better speak to each segment.
✅ Use a problem/answer tactic to sell your product/service
Don’t know how to write promotional messaging? I can tell you how to do it in a few easy steps! See what I did there? I posed a problem and gave you a solution. This is a perfect example of a problem/answer tactic! What you need to do is present a problem that your target audience faces (in my example, I presented the problem of not knowing how to write a promotional message), and then solve the problem by explaining how your business can help (I told you I could tell you how to write a promotional message in a few steps). Make sure your promotional messaging is to-the-point, but be sure to describe your products/services in enough detail so that readers aren’t left feeling confused. Since every business solves a problem, it shouldn’t be too hard to find one to ask your readers!
Don’t:
❌ Be overly-salesy in non-promotional emails
Like we covered in the “Do’s,” one of the most important aspects of your email marketing strategy is its opportunity to brand your business. There will be plenty of time down the line to send out email blasts that are specifically promotional in nature. Unless your email is sales-oriented (such as for a deal or new product), this may not necessarily be that time. If your email is too sales-y (AKA in-your-face, nonstop copy that run-ons about how great your product is and how readers need to buy now), that’s a recipe for disaster. Subscribers will immediately unsubscribe if they think this is what all your future emails are going to look like. The trick is to build a real relationship. Focus more on branding and introducing yourself, and how excited you are about your business, rather than making a sale. This will show subscribers who you are, and why they should pay attention to future messaging.
❌ Have a spammy subject line
What’s the point of putting all this effort into your email campaign if your message goes straight to spam? Make sure to take all precautions to avoid this by following these rules-of-thumb when it comes to crafting up a good subject line.
❌ Give everything away
You’ve been working on your business for a while, and you just cannot wait to share everything with the world in your email blasts! But, before you do just that, reconsider what exactly you want to share with your audience now, and what can wait until later. If you tell your subscribers everything they can know now, what is there left for future surprises? You also don’t want any email to be too long… or else people will likely lose interest and won’t even finish reading it, so this is a great way to edit your message down a bit.
❌ Forget to include your links
The last, but one of the most crucial, steps to any marketing email is linking it all up. Link your images (including logos, product photos, etc.) to your website, and be sure to include all your social media handles too so that your subscribers can follow you and get to know your business even more!
Now that you know the Do’s and Don’ts of a spectacular email campaign, it’s time for you to get out there and craft up some great messages to your audience. Follow these tips, and your subscribers will be sure to be glued to their inboxes waiting for your next email!
