Technology-Enabled Business Solutions

Do you cringe when someone on the sidewalk tries to hand you a flyer and eschews the chance to win a free television for buying a taco? Do you roll your eyes when a classmate you haven’t seen in 17 years wants to hug you and compress their life story into your elevator ride? Do you immediately discard the coupons for cat food that your grocery store just printed out, because you’ve never owned a cat and are deathly allergic?

If you wouldn’t accept these scenarios in your offline experience—why should you, or your customers—accept it within an email campaign? It is estimated that the average corporate email user receive 112 email messages in a given day. So, the challenge for email marketers is to stand out in the crowd, avoid the cringe, the eye-rolls and attempt not to be deleted. Here are five tips that might help improve your email campaigns:

1. Know your audience – Segment your email lists, and talk to recipients appropriately. Don’t expect to have the same dialog with a potential customer as a long-standing loyal customer.
2. Identify Yourself – Email recipients are going to scan the subject line and reply address to decide whether to read or delete your message. Make the subject line compelling and consider personalization that gets the recipient’s attention. Don’t overlook who is sending the email on your behalf. If your reply address is impersonal, you entire message will be treated as such. For example,  customer_servicerep_no227@company.com is not as warm as joe_smith@company.com.
3. Keep It Simple – Don’t clobber your email recipients with too much information. A short message with clear call-to-action and links to external sites is more easily processed by readers, and provides opportunities to track engagement and activity.
4. Embrace the Dissenters – Not all content or campaigns are fit for all recipients. Make sure you provide email recipients a chance to manage themselves by adjusting email frequency, content subscriptions, or personal data that might be used to refine messages to them.
5. Refine Your Message – Every email campaign is an opportunity to understand what subject lines improve opens, what content leads to more opens or shares, and what links provide more traffic or conversions to your site. Most modern email service providers (ESPs) provide this data within your account. Use this data to inform your campaigns and respond to customer engagement.

SOUND OFF: What have you done that has improved the performance of your email campaigns? Have questions about email or anything digital?  Join us for our #OptionPass hashtag chat, Wednesday, September 19th from Noon to 1EST. Learn more.