We're Making Email Marketing Stupid Simple

GETTING STARTED: THE BASICS

1. What's The Goal?

Email can be used for many purposes, so decide what you want to benefit from it first. Do you want to build your brand by providing resources and educational material for your readers? Or are you wanting to push sales by highlighting new products and services? 

A wise business mentor once told me all content marketing should be boiled down to either entertaining or educating. Your content should provide value by either engaging your customers or offering them new or useful information. Stick to that and you'll have tremendous results.

2. Where's Your Audience?

Practically speaking, you'll need to build your email list "organically" with natural business contacts you have. There are services out there where you can purchase email lists, but that's generally not recommended. Building your list organically takes time and is slow work, but you'll have much better results down the road.

If you like stats, here is a great article by HubSpot  with stats on email marketing in 2020.

3. Who's The Author?

Are you writing the email content yourself, having someone on your staff do it, or outsourcing it to a professional content writer? If you're going to write it yourself, then do what many small business owners do and block off several hours every month just for writing. Spoil yourself with 4 hours at your favorite coffee shop, put your phone away, and focus on writing.

TIPS ON GETTING HIGH ENGAGEMENT

1. Write Catchy Subject Lines

One of the most critical parts of an email is the subject line, which often determines if your email is deemed worthy of opening or not. Consider having your subject line be the completion of this sentence: "I never thought it was possible but..." For example, one of our older email campaigns that had a high open rate had the following subject line, "We just out-performed a larger marketing agency." We wrote that subject line based on the above principle by starting with "I never thought it was possible but... we just out-performed a larger marketing agency." It's catchy, news worthy and grabs attention.

And try adding an emoji to your subject line. Again, it catches people's eye and adds a level of emotion that is difficult to get across with words. And don't forget to personalize your subject with the recipient’s name. Those two tips can make a world of difference in building trust and engaging more with your customers.

2. Be Mobile-Friendly

Make sure you're using an email provider that sends mobile-friendly emails, meaning they look good on a phone or tablet as well as a desktop monitor. According to a great

blog by Hubspot on email marketing, 35% of business professionals open their email on a mobile device. Make sure they can easily read your email.

3. Send When It'll Get Opened

Did you know almost 24% of opens happen less than an hour after your email is delivered? Emails have the highest open rates on Saturdays. Weekday emails are more likely to be opened on Tuesday, and after 8 pm is the best time of day to get an email opened. It may seem like a trivial detail, but taking time to send your email at a good time will definitely affect how many people open and read it.

IMPROVING YOUR UX

What’s your UX? It’s your User Experience. Making sure your user (or the recipient of your email) has a pleasant experience is critical. Below are several tips on keeping your readers happy.

1. Make it palatable

Most of us don’t want to open an email only to be blasted with a novel. Keep your emails short and to the point. Remember, most people are busy and will quickly trash your email if it’s overwhelming.

2. Don’t forget the design

Just like your website, brochure or Christmas card, your emails needs to be designed well too. That’s where using a software like MailChimp can come in handy, as they have plenty of pre-designed templates to use. Use large text, colorful photos and plenty of white space.

Download our free step by step instruction sheet on sending emails with MailChimp.

3. One Clear CTA

Your email’s Call To Action (CTA) should be simple, and there should only be one. What action do you want your readers to take? All of your content should point to that. Overwhelming them with too many options will drastically decrease your engagement. Remember this: keep it simple and keep it singular.

There is a lot more that could be said about improving your email marketing, but that’s all we have time for today. As always, let us know if you have any questions, or if there is any way that the team here at Oostas can serve your small business through websites or online marketing.