Email marketing for small business remains one of the most powerful tools to drive conversions and purchases. It continues to deliver impressive ROIs when done right, making an email marketing strategy a cornerstone of your digital marketing efforts.
To help you make the most of it, we’ve collated 20 tips your email copywriter needs to know to create great emails. Why 20? This month, InSynch celebrates 20 years of being an award-winning UK digital marketing agency, helping thousands of businesses drive their online success.
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The first step to any email marketing strategy is to know what you want to achieve (e.g, product sales, blog engagement, lead generation) and tailor your emails accordingly.
Divide your email list into smaller groups based on demographics, behaviour, or preferences for more personalised emails. With an email marketing platform like Mailchimp, you can automatically segment audiences based on their behaviour.
When done right, a popup or download incentive that encourages users to give you their email address is a good way to grow your audience lists, especially if they are not ready to purchase or inquire yet.
Don’t just rely on a weekly newsletter, when a subscriber joins your list, give them a series of emails that funnel them towards a conversion. Automations are a popular feature on many email marketing platforms. They can also handle abandoned cart emails, follow-ups, and shipping update emails.
Crafting emails with great visuals takes time. Have your email copywriter create a template, which can help save time when it comes to styling your emails.
You want to accurately track open and engagement rates on emails. This is why you should regularly clean your list to remove inactive or invalid subscribers.
Don’t purchase email lists or add subscribers who didn’t consent to marketing, these people won’t engage. Email marketing for small businesses should focus on organic growth from your website, customers, and social media to find subscribers much more likely to engage.
Monitor open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates to measure the successes or weaknesses of your campaigns. Don’t forget to use data from past campaigns in your Google Analytics to refine your strategy and improve future emails.
Plan your email campaigns ahead of a significant event, such as Black Friday. Any UK digital marketing agency will tell you how useful this is for getting numerous emails ready to send at a time when you are going to be very busy.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think about what makes them want to open an email. Subject lines should drive curiosity and make the user want to see more.
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Using audiences you have segmented, tailor content towards that audience to address their preferences and what they are likely to be looking for.
Over half of all users on the internet use their phones to browse and read emails, don’t leave them out to dry with a desktop-only format!
Remember, the goal of your email is to have the user complete a converting action. Add buttons or shop links to your emails to encourage them to make that action.
Proper use of images and typography are essential to helping your audience understand and engage with your email content. Don’t overload them with unnecessary images or fonts, and don’t attack them with large blocks of text.
Remember that some of your users may be colour-blind, vision impaired, dyslexic, or affected by a physical or learning disability. Don’t make your text too difficult to read and buttons too small to press without pinpoint accuracy. Follow the best accessibility practices to keep your full audience included.
Sometimes your users miss your emails, it happens. That’s why creating a segment of subscribers who didn’t open your last email and re-sending it to them is essential to getting their attention again.
Using audiences, you can segment your subscribers into the loyal ones who click and engage, or those who have been generally inactive. Sending these audiences a discount exclusive to their group can be a useful reward/re-engagement tool.
When you need to figure out good send times, engaging subject lines, or a new content style, A/B split testing can help you find what works best for your audience.
Eventually, your oldest subscribers will have seen most of you have to give. Don’t let that be months after they first subscribed. When you plan the content of your emails, think about strands that aren’t repetitive and offer something new. Whether that is a news update, talking about a new product, or announcing a competition.
You would likely be annoyed if a company emailed you every 2 days, so don’t repeat that mistake with your clients. An email once a month is just enough to keep your subscribers engaged and keeps you from running out of stale content too fast.
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting out with email copywriting, there’s always room to refine your approach and unlock the full potential of email marketing. If you need help with any of the strategies discussed above, InSynch provides educational webinars and accredited training courses to help you get up to speed. Want to spend less time on your email marketing strategy? Let us handle it for you. Talk to us in an online consultation and learn what we can do for you today.
