So you’ve worked hard to build your email list, what’s next?!
I was talking with a friend last week about her email list and how excited she was that she’d gained several new subscribers over the weekend.
She was especially excited as she realised the bigger her email marketing list, the more sales she typically made week in and week out. She was stoked!
For small business owners though who are just starting to learn all about the power of email marketing, the challenge doesn’t stop with getting someone to subscribe.
So now that you have an email list, what’s next?
The next part of your email marketing journey, is to develop emails that people will actually:
- Open your emails when it hits their inbox.
- Read the content in your emails and…
- … go on to click the links in your emails.
Getting your potential customers to click on the links in your email is so important, because once you snare them onto your website, your chances of turning them into money spending customers increases exponentially.
Below I’ve gathered 5 proven ways to earn the trust of your readers and get them to open your email and click through the links pointing to your products / pages / blogs!
1. “Newsletter” is a No-No!
Now, before you give me a violent reaction, let me clarify myself: do not label your email program as a ‘newsletter’.
We call ours “Weekly Tips & Tricks”, but you could also use “Latest Hints & Tips”, “Club News Update”, “VIP Special Issue”, or whatever fits your business best.
However DO NOT use the boring-arse term ‘newsletter’. Just the sound of it makes one feel sleepy and uninterested. Who’s got time these days to read a newsletter? Exactly my point!
Imagine you have two mailing lists to join, which one would you open and which would you trash?
Mailing List 1: Weekly Newsletter
Mailing List 2: Powerful Business Tip That’ll Save You $200+ Per Week
That’s right! Obviously, you’d trash the first one! Case closed. And when your prospect signs up to this excited sounding mailing list, they will eagerly await the promising benefits your site has promised.
2. Use Personalisation.
I miss those times when I get handwritten letters in the mail, or long emails from a friend in my inbox. I guess the feeling of getting an email written “just for you” is important to make us feel special and loved.
It’s proven to help make your readers feel more important (which they are) and in turn become more active customers and visitors to your site.
Disclaimer: In saying this though, a lot of top marketers of late are saying that they no longer collect first names because only asking for the email address at the opt-in stage does actually increase their subscription conversion rate. In receiving their correspondence they just simply say “Hi there” to kick the email off which it still absolutely fine.
So either way is fine, but if you DO collect first names, don’t forget to use them. 🙂
3. ‘Regular’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Every Day.’
Okay, I’m sure you’ve read somewhere how effective it is to send regular updates to your subscribers. And yes, I agree with that. I appreciate all the great value I get from my inbox from all the talented
But please, do not spam my inbox every… single… day.
Give your subscribers some breathing space. Send them emails on a regular but sensible rate, and also send them in a regular pattern so they aren’t surprised when your email arrives.
Depending on the nature of the email, we recommend our clients stick to either a weekly, fortnightly or monthly update, as they are seen as a generally acceptable rate of emails which gets a great response from those receiving them.
For example, your feature about women’s clothes will not work well with your male subscribers, so why would you send them an article about it? Similarly your talk about a famous rapper may not be interesting for your older audience. (Although some groovy oldies could be getting diggity down with Jay-Z, who am I to judge?)
These are quite extreme examples, but just be mindful of list segmentation.
Putting rapper jokes aside, segmentation is one way to make sure that the content you are sending is aligned to the personalities and character of your varied audience.
And by sending your reader more targeted mail, you can ensure that they see your emails as more relevant and therefore less likely to skip over them when they arrive in their inbox.
5. Use Calls To Action.
For example, you probably see them in the emails we send out where we invite to to read a blog to address a problem they may have:
“If you’re looking to automate your business, and give yourself more free time to develop your business, then you have to absolutely have to read our blogs on ‘The Top 4 Automatic Marketing Tools Every Business Should Have’ right now!”
So Are You Adopting These Principles Into Your Email Marketing Campaigns? Today Has Never Been a Better Time to Start!
Remember, our ultimate goal is to grow our list so we can nurture prospects into becoming customers.
Start by providing your subscribers with really useful, high quality information that helps them solve a problem. I’ve said this before but your job as a business / website owner is to help your customers become better versions of themselves. That’s all.
Master that and you’ll be singing all the way to bank!
Which of these tips would you work on first? What is your most favorite tip from the list? Do you have any more FREE email marketing strategies to share? Let us know in the comments below!
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