Jay LeonardWhat is your No. 1 tip for creating/sustaining a solid email marketing strategy?
The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment and provides entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth.
1. Build an Editorial Calendar
Trying to write emails on the fly will guarantee that your strategy gets derailed. Write out an editorial calendar, breaking down what will go into each email—at least for the length of the campaign. Personally, I prefer to plan six months in advance—minimum—so I can get ahead and stay ahead. If you’re segmenting your emails, build it into your calendar, as well as promotions. –Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting
2. Be Transparent with Readers
Give your readers something to look forward to by letting them know what to expect. Coupons on Tuesday? Case studies on the first Monday of the month? Make a schedule and you’ll be surprised how quickly your readers will contact you when you miss an email! Announcing it publicly is also a great way to ensure that your content schedule actually stays on track. –Laura Roeder, LKR
3. Always Provide Value
Regular email marketing can be a great way to keep yourself at the forefront of people’s minds, but don’t just spam your list with pleas to buy, buy, buy. Make sure to always provide value in your mailings, whether with interesting links, helpful advice or nifty resources. People are more willing to buy from someone they already consider helpful. –Steph Auteri, Word Nerd Pro
4. Make It Personal
Yes, you know you’re sending an email to thousands of people, but the person receiving that email doesn’t want to feel like one of the masses. Personalize your emails with little tidbits of information about your life; talk to your readers as if they are good friends. People will appreciate the personalized feel, and it makes your emails more engaging. –Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media
5. Share Positive Content
As a self-help book author and motivational speaker, it is my practice to share empowering content. Because my email marketing strategy is based on positive messaging, it spreads like wildfire. Let’s face it: who doesn’t want to be happy? Spread the good word and share a positive message! –Gabrielle Bernstein, Gabrielle Bernstein Inc.
6. Use the Right Tools
Content is certainly crucial, but so is choosing the right tools to use for your email marketing. There are tons of options out there, but my number one recommendation would be to use AWeber. There are also ways to increase signups on your site by using tools such as PopUp Domination, ViperBar and more. Find the best tools and leverage them! –Ben Lang, MySchoolHelp
7. Segment, Segment, Segment
It’s not enough to think you have a solid email marketing strategy by throwing all your email addresses into one batch. Think about ways to better segment your email list to avoid non-targeted messages. Don’t just segment by geography or demographics; consider segmenting by activity level too. If a subscriber hasn’t opened one of your emails in a month, try a reengagement campaign. –Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.
8. Are You Split-Testing?
By now, most marketing managers know all about conversion optimization and landing page testing, yet very few email marketers bother to test their subject lines or email creative. Tools such as CampaignMonitor make it easy to create multiple versions of one email, send them to small portions of your list, measure the results, and then send the best performer out to the rest of the list. –Matt Mickiewicz, 99designs
9. Don’t Forget Deliverability
Email deliverability is like oxygen to your email strategy—you cannot survive without it. Many marketers focus on testing or segmenting but forget to master the art of deliverability. Make sure your email service provider has strong “whitelisting” capabilities with the major ISPs. Get a dedicated IP for your mailing. Ensure you can view feedback loop reports to manage any spam issues. –Warren Jolly, Affiliate Media Inc.
10. Keep It Consistent
Your email marketing strategy should be consistent with your messaging sent through other marketing channels. Different messages will only confuse your customers, so always make the information easy to digest and consistent with the company they have grown to love. –Danny Wong, Blank Label Group, Inc.
11. Don’t Overload Them!
Customers get tons of emails, so we know their bandwidth or capacity for caring enough to read our email has to be shared with everyone else. We keep it simple: we make a bold headline, have them simply click through to a video, site or fan page, and update them with the biggest news only. All other details are found on the fan page, Twitter or blog. –Jerry Piscitelli, Portopong LLC
12. Respond Whenever Possible
These days, if someone is on your email list, they don’t necessarily expect personal responses if they reply to you. Surprise them and give as many thoughtful, personal responses as you can when it’s necessary. This will build rapport and brand loyalty with customers in the process. –Sean Ogle, Location 180, LLC
13. Landing Pages for Potential Subscribers
Whenever you do an online marketing activity—such as a guest post—send readers to a landing page with an email sign up form instead of directing them to your main website. This will greatly increase your percentage of sign ups, which in turn enhances your ability to keep in touch with your fans and followers. –Elizabeth Saunders, Real Life E®
14. Check Your Own Inbox
What types of emails do you most enjoy receiving from companies? Which ones have you springing for the unsubscribe button? I prefer emails that have a sense of humor, provide transparency, and show personality while adding value. Address your customers as if you’re talking to them in a coffee shop, rather than trying to sell them something. And don’t get bogged down by clunky templates! –Jenny Blake, Life After College
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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Maybe one should look at another marketing opportunity and that is the emails we all send from our cor-porate email addresses every day. I represent a company that has developed a solution for just those emails and thus this post.
The basic idea behind WRAPmail is to utilize the facts that almost everyone have websites (corporate and/or social network site) and also send emails every day. These emails can become complete market-ing tools and help promote, brand, sell and cross-sell in addition to drive traffic to the website and conduct research. WRAPmail is available for free at http://www.wrapmail.com.
WRAPmail also helps search for missing children with every email sent by incorporating an optional RSS feed from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Great, simple tips that most of all know in the back of our heads but don’t really implement. I particularly like Laura’s advice. I’d like to get my readers used to receiving certain things from me at, for example, the beginning and the end of each month.
Great 14 tips that all of us can use to improve our email marketing campaign. Some may think that the tips are simple but I personally feel that a profitable business and email marketing campaign is built on a strong foundation of basics.
For me personally, I feel that giving good values and communicating with the subscribers consistently over a period of time is the best way to build a strong relationship with the subscribers.
As I have read from some other website, some marketers will ask themselves this 2 questions on a daily basis:
1) What are the things that they have done today that will add value to their list of subscribers?
2) What are the things that they have done today that will help to add more valuable subscribers to their list?
I feel that this 2 questions is very important.
Thanks again for sharing the 14 tips :)
Zack
Hi
Thanks for sharing the tips!!!
Every single one of these tips is valuable. Even seasoned email marketers benefit from reading this.