Is Email Marketing Effective?

Whether you’re using email marketing to reach your tailored target audience or to find potential new customers, there are effective techniques that are ideal for increasing higher open rates and engagement for any campaign. Many businesses rely on automated emails such as sign-up forms and welcome emails (which can be key!) rather than actually planning a strategy on newsletters and how they could drive traffic to your website.

Creating the perfect email newsletter can take time and planning, especially when you want to maximise your open rates as much as possible. Here are five great tips for producing a targeted email.

1 – Content

With content, it’s always best to start with the subject line, as this can potentially have an impact on your open rates in general. Subject lines are important with any email, especially when they’re centred on promotions, sales or new products. Bearing that in mind, it’s best to check there’s something to inspire the subscriber to open the email in the first place, while ensuring it isn’t something that would go straight to the junk folder.

When it comes to better performing subject lines, always remember to include engaging taglines, correct spelling, correct capitalisation and a repetitive call to action.

As for content within the email itself, it’s always best to add information and keywords that you want your subscribers to read about. Ideally, this should relate to the subject line you’ve created beforehand.

But, how much content should you add? Less is more, in most cases.

When adding content to an email, it’s best not to go overboard with packing it out as much as possible. Most of the time, the user won’t scroll too far to read or potentially click on any offers or promotions.

At Artemis, we recognise that writing good content is a skill that not everyone possesses. If you need help with effective email marketing writing, we have a talented team of in-house content writers at our disposal. Why not call 01444 645018 to find out more?

2 – Action-Oriented

When creating newsletters, one the most important things to include is a Call to Action (CTA). Like websites, these are used to grab the user’s attention and can be worded to highlight the link to the promotion or new products.

A few examples of these are:

Shop now
Buy Now
Learn More
Read More
Register Now

How many CTAs should you add to your email?

While it’s tempting to add as many as possible CTAs, this really isn’t recommended. If there are too many CTAs within an email, users may feel overwhelmed and simply won’t know which CTA to follow. Ideally, keep it minimal and include engaging actions in various colours and placements to click, so it’s not too overwhelming.

3 – Imagery

Images within an email are just as powerful as the content and CTA; they can really help with what message you’re trying to send to your target audience. Every image included in the email should be high quality as the majority of subscribers that open a newsletter who see a blurry or broken image won’t continue on any further. This most importantly applies to your header image as it’s the first thing the user sees.

How many images should you add?

Like CTAs, it’s always best to keep images to a minimum. If your email is filled with mostly images and little text, you’ll likely find your newsletter go straight to the junk folder. Always add images that are related to your brand, email subject and any highlighted products.

4 – Mobile Optimisation

With a growing percentage of subscribers reading their emails through a mobile device, it comes as no surprise that newsletters would need to be responsive for the increase in users to those devices. Yet, many emails are designed on and for desktops, making viewing a newsletter on a mobile much harder.

Many email clients now offer newsletters to be automatically optimised for mobile once created, and the same principles apply to websites that are mobile responsive.

How do you know if your email is responsive for mobile?

Ideally, you would need to test this first before sending out any emails. There are ways you can do this with different providers so you’re able to see how your content, images and CTAs would align on a mobile. If you find you need to scroll along or expand the page to view all of it then you know it’s not mobile optimised. However, with easy implementation you can make your emails more readable for different screen sizes.

At Artemis, we are constantly preparing for Google’s Mobile First Audit, focusing on mobile speed, design and user friendliness. For a friendly chat and expert advice, please get in touch.

5 – Personalisation and Targeting

Many people are unaware that personalisation for emails can be successful for any sender; 74% of marketers say targeted personalisation can increase customer engagement over time. It’s important to understand how personalising a subject line or targeting segmented subscribers can improve open and click rates.

Overall, the subscriber feels more relevant when an email is less generic and more targeted to them. In order to achieve this you can include their name as well as promotions and offers segmented just for them. This enables you to have a clear audience for products and the offers they would be interested in.

What personalisation should you use?

The use of a “first name” within the content is strong enough to make the user feel more engaged in the newsletter itself, feeling that that the email is more for them rather than being generic. Personalisation can also be great for re-engaging your subscribers. Use automated reminders as a way to send out email offers to encourage users to come back to your website.

Email marketing is a hugely important tool that can help your business generate more enquiries, and more sales. Artemis have many years of digital marketing experience and can provide expert help to enable your business to reach a wide yet targeted audience of new and existing customers. Contact us for a free consultation.