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10 tips: succeed with email marketing

Want to succeed with email marketing but don't know how? Sometimes it can be hard to see the wood for the trees, and email marketing consists of several important parts that all need to be taken into account before it bears fruit.

Let Webamp do email marketing that gets results for your business. Contact us today and let our specialists help you.

Webamp The team
- Specialist
Last updated: 12. dec. 2022

Why use email marketing?

Email marketing is one of marketers' oldest working tools. However, this does not mean that email marketing is "outdated". Quite the opposite, in fact. There are three times as many email accounts as there are profiles on Facebook and Twitter combined. That's why email is still alive and well and an effective strategy for converting leads into customers.
However, getting permission to send emails to people is easier said than done, and it's actually only the first step on the road to a successful email marketing strategy. In fact, it's also the emails you send afterwards that create so much value in the long run.

So here are 10 tips to make your email marketing more effective all round.

1. Define your objective

One of the very first things you need to do is ask yourself the question: "Why should I use email marketing at all?". If you don't have a goal in using email marketing, you won't get the results you want.

That's why you need to take a step back and think about what your email marketing goals really are. It could be to:

  • Be "top of mind" so your company is the first your customers think of when they need help or need to find a preferred partner.
  • Educate potential customers and build trust so they discover you're the best qualified partner in the market.
  • Remind existing customers to use your products or services.

Once you are sure of your goal in using email marketing, it will also be easier to define your target audience and optimise your emails to support your goals.

2. Find the right balance between information and sales

When sending emails to customers, it's important to find the right balance between information and sales. It may be tempting to send potential customers a good offer, but don't overwhelm them with offers. First you need to build trust with them, for example through content marketing.

A good rule of thumb is that your emails should consist of 90% information and 10% sales. That way you won't scare your leads away before they've got to know your business.

3. Make sure there is consistency between the opt-in text and the newsletter itself

You have to keep your promises. You've probably heard that before, and it applies when you're doing email marketing too. That's why there needs to be a link between what's on the page where the recipient signs up to receive emails from you, and what your emails actually contain. If this is not the case, you will lose the trust of your customers.

In addition, the GDPR regulation requires that you only send content related to the topics described in the opt-in text of your emails.

To establish a bond of trust between you and the customer, it is therefore best to be as specific in the opt-in text as possible. Tell the recipient exactly what they can expect when they receive emails from you and, if possible, how often this will happen.

4. Give your emails an engaging subject line

Even if potential customers have signed up to receive your emails, it's far from certain that they'll open them. To get a high open rate, you need to make your subject line interesting. Your job is to convince the recipient to spend 10-30 seconds of their life reading your email.

But how do you do that?

  • First, you need to make it clear what the recipient will get from your email. For example, you could start your subject line with: "Get the best..", "Learn all about.." or "don't miss out".
  • Personalise your emails to make them relevant to each recipient.
  • Be ready to spit. Don't wrap your messages in platitudes and terms that are hard to decode. Instead, talk straight and keep your subject lines under 50 characters.
  • Do an A/B test to test different versions of your subject line on a small group of your recipients to see what works.

5. Make a call-to-action

What should happen when the recipient has actually opened your email? What action do you want your recipients to perform? These are important questions to ask yourself if you want to use email marketing to generate new leads.

You therefore need to make it clear what the recipient's next step should be. Do they need to fill in a form? Read a blog post or buy a product from your webshop? You need to spell out what you want the customer to do with a clear call-to-action.

6. Keep email design and text simple

Emails are displayed very differently depending on whether you use iPhone, Gmail, Outlook or one of the many other mail providers available. So keep your design and text as simple as possible, so your message gets across and doesn't get lost in poor design and convoluted phrasing.

7. Write alt-texts for your images in emails

Alt-texts for your images are alpha omega. An alt text is an alternative text that describes an image and can be entered into most email platforms and marketing systems.

The reason you need alt-texts is that only part of your recipients will be able to see the images. This is because some have image viewing turned off by default, so each user has to take an active action to view them.

Therefore, if you have both text and images in your email, you should describe what is in the images. Otherwise, there may be strange white spaces in the email that confuse the recipient.

8. Make it easy to unsubscribe from your emails

Email marketing has gotten a bit of a bad reputation over the years, and with good reason. Although it's actually a breach of marketing law and the GDPR regulation, too many companies send emails without recipients' permission. And just as many companies make it difficult for recipients to unsubscribe from their emails.

While you might think it's best to retain recipients at all costs, people will only get more angry and frustrated with your company if they want to unsubscribe from your emails and can't easily do so. You also risk being blacklisted as a spammer by the major email clients like Gmail and Outlook.

Therefore, you should always make it easy for your recipients to unsubscribe by putting a link at the bottom of the email, for example saying "unsubscribe all emails".

9. Test, test and more test!

One of the best things you can do when doing email marketing is to test on all parameters. First of all, test the technique. Does your email look the way it should? Most modern email platforms have testing features built in so you can see how your emails look in Iphone, Gmail and Outlook respectively.

The next step is to test which time you get the most engagement on your sent emails. For example, you can test whether sending emails before or after lunch affects open rates.

Finally, test the content. This doesn't just mean the subject line as described earlier. You also need to test which call-to-actions work, as well as how changing the name of the sender affects open rates.

10. Remember the legislation on email marketing

Most people know the spam rules when they do email marketing. Yet new cases and warnings are constantly coming in, so it's important to comply with the rules so you don't end up in the Consumer Ombudsman's crosshairs.

BONUS: 3 types of emails that work

Email marketing conversionTo be successful with email marketing, you need to make sure you follow the customer through the different stages of the buying journey. Your emails need to be relevant and interesting to recipients, as well as meaningful to them at the time they receive them. Therefore, it may be a good idea to look at your email marketing strategy from a helicopter perspective and divide your email marketing into 3 categories:

  • Welcome emails:
    Welcome emails help you establish a relationship with your customers. This is how you introduce your brand and tell the customer what next step to take. Welcome emails have a really high open rate, so you need to put in the effort to create the best possible welcome email. This is where your recipients are most receptive - and you need to take advantage of this!
  • "Complete your purchase" emails:
    If a customer has added an item to their basket and then left the website without purchasing it, you can send them a reminder email to remember to complete their purchase. You can also use this type of email to remind the customer of the products they never bought.
  • Follow-up emails after purchase:
    Keeping your customers is at the heart of a well-run business. That's why it's important to maintain the relationship with the customer after they've made their first purchase. This can be done in many ways including a follow-up email saying "thank you for purchasing", an email asking the customer about their purchase experience or an email recommending related products.

Let our specialists take care of your email marketing

Want to create success with email marketing? Get help from our specialists and send out emails that actually work.

Write to us in the contact form or send us an email at info@webamp.dk. You can also call us at 70 60 50 28 and we will be happy to help you with your email marketing.

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