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We’ve become so used to technology, we’ve forgotten the elements of long division that we used to need to find the answer. The same can happen to our e-mail marketing strategies. We’ve become so accustomed to the powerful technology available, we just grab e-mail addresses and go, forgetting the elements that help us achieve our goals, be they customer acquisition and retention, sales, education, or something else.
So, take a step back and re-examine the elements of your e-mail campaigns that will make them successful - for both you and your recipients. To help you remember, think “E M A I L”:
E - Easy to read
M - Meaningful content
A - Actionable
I - Insightful metrics
L - Loyalty building
Easy to Read
You have only seconds to catch recipients’ interest before they decide what to do with your e-mail: read further, save for later, delete, or report it as spam. To get recipients to continue reading, your e-mail needs to be as easy to read as possible and it has to help recipients quickly identify what they want to read.
Meaningful content
The key to this is that the content is meaningful to your recipients, not just to your company. If it is not, they will delete it before reading any further and certainly before clicking through to your website. Furthermore, recipients will come to expect that your content is going to be tiresome, so they’ll either stop opening your e-mails or they’ll unsubscribe. Worse yet, if they feel the e-mail is self-serving, they may report you as spam, even though they opted in to receive e-mail from you.
This is not to say you can’t promote your products or services. Analysis of e-mail reading habits and click-though rates proves that users are interested in and willing to accept advertising, self promoting news, and coupons that introduce them to new products and save money. Moreover, high-quality content can boost the results of these promotional efforts. Well-received content might include a mix of items:
- Short articles about your products or services
- Profiles and success stories from your customers
- Tips and tricks of your trade
- News updates
- Analysis of trends in your field
- Educational material
- Event announcements of interest to your customers
- Coupons offering discounts or special purchase
Actionable
Your e-mail messages should contain content that initiates action, and this call to action should be prominently displayed. It’s not enough to just link to your website from your logo or include a phone number in the footer. If you want readers to take action, make it clearly visible.
Actionable can mean more than just “buy now”. It could also be forwarding your message on to friends or family because they found the content so useful. Make sure:
Your content is useful and, provide an easy and obvious way for readers to forward your message on to others. A “forward to friend” or “forward to colleague” button or text link should be in every message, toward the top, and always in the same location.
Insightful Metrics
E-mail technology can gather a wide range of data, including open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates and forwarding. There’s a lot more information to glean from these metrics than just how many people opened your e-mail and clicked on a link. Instead of comparing your metrics to industry averages, monitor your response rates to identify what constitutes a successful campaign for you. Track long-term results and make any necessary changes. The insight you can capture and the results you can achieve by using this insight in future efforts is key to your ongoing success.
Loyalty building
While gaining permission to mail to an e-mail address is step one in an e-mail campaign, building loyalty is the step that makes sure you retain that permission. Building loyalty also ensures that readers continue to read and respond to your e-mails over along period of time, not just to the first mail. More important, an e-mail program that builds loyalty consequently builds loyalty to your company.
Following the E M A I L acronym can help ensure that your e-mail campaigns will be a success for both your readers and your company.
Posted on 29th August 2006