Let me say this first…
Email Marketing is not dead!
A lot of businesses use email for customer retention to increase their chances for sales while you’re reading. If you aren’t using email marketing you’re probably missing out on huge profit margins.
Email Marketing to this day is very valuable but can be a waste of time and money if you aren’t using an effective email marketing strategy.
This is why I thought I’d make a list with email marketing tips consisting of some do’s and don’ts that can make or break your email marketing campaign.
so here are my…
2024 Email Marketing Tips —Do’s & Dont’s For An Effective Email Marketing Strategy!
1. Have a Thank You page
The moment people sign up for your email list It’s appropriate to at least say thank you for subscribing.
People don’t randomly give out their contact information so it’s important to acknowledge that.
The Thank You page can also have more uses than that.
It can be used to build context for what they should be able to expect now that they’re part of your email list.
You can increase email engagement by giving email subscribers multiple reasons to open your emails. Previews of exclusive content, occasional giveaways, free courses, weekly digest, and more.
An effective Thank You page can be the difference between getting people to anticipate your emails instead of throwing them in the trash.
2. Create a writer avatar
It’s essential to be aware of how you present yourself when you’re communicating with your readers and be consistent in it.
A few examples of writer avatars could be:
- The Expert
A person that has already been on the journey and guides people to the “promised land”. - The Pioneer
A person trying out new things and reporting back what works and what doesn’t. - The journalist
A person who researches well-known strategies, events, and tools and provides his readers with information about them. - The interviewer
A person who interviews other people with experience in the niche so that his readers can learn from it.
As I’ve said before email marketing can drastically improve your chances of making more sales but that’s only possible if you know exactly what the goal is of the list you created.
Are you trying to sell a service, promote affiliate products, increase customer retention, promote new content, etc.? These goals all require separate lists or segments.
This allows you to go deeper and personalize your messages which will lead to better results no matter what your email marketing goals are.
3. Clean your email list from non-openers
People often underestimate how important it is to clean your email list from non-openers.
Your open rate is directly connected to your mail being blocked or seen as spam. ISPs ( inboxes such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo ) look at the history of your IP and domain reputation.
The moment you have a history of low open rates the ISPs will put you in a category of emails that should be blocked.
This is why the moment you notice specific people not opening your emails consistently it’s time to remove them from your list.
Email marketing services will show you which subscribers are active and those who are not.
A good email marketing service will be able to automatically clean your list as soon as it finds inactive subscribers.
3. Create goals for your email list
As I’ve said before email marketing can drastically improve your chances of making more sales but that’s only possible if you know exactly what the goal is of the list you created.
Are you trying to sell a service, promote affiliate products, increase customer retention, promote new content, etc.? These goals all require separate lists or segments.
This allows you to go deeper and personalize your messages which will lead to better results no matter what your email marketing goals are.
It’s essential before you start your list to set out a few goals for your email list. It’ll also help with guiding your subscribers to the place you want them to go effectively.
4. Send emails based on time zones
Honestly… I’m on a few email lists of people I find really interesting but I never get to read their emails on time purely because of timing.
When I get an email at 3 AM and 7 hours later I go through my mail there’s a high possibility it could get lost between all the other emails that are sent to my inbox.
This is why I’d advise you to take time zones into account when you start sending your emails.
There have been multiple studies done about the best time to send emails. If you combine these studies with the time zone you’re targeting you can increase open rates drastically.
5. Use lead magnets to grow your list
There are so many people that take advantage of email addresses by spamming them with offers that a lot of people nowadays hesitate to give away their email addresses.
People often only give their email address if they trust you or you’re going to give them something valuable in return.
If you have a blog you can earn the reader’s trust by providing valuable content over a long period but not everybody has the time to do that or is willing to make content.
This is why a lot of people use a “tool” called a lead magnet. A lead magnet can be anything that might be of value to leads.
Lead magnets that are often used are:
- Ebooks
- Free courses
- PDF’s
- Discounts
- coupons
- Exclusive content
- etc.
It doesn’t take a lot of time to acquire a lead magnet.
Some email marketing services already have lead magnets you can use but if you want a custom-made lead magnet you could hire someone on Fiverr to create it.
6. Segment your list
The ideal scenario is to have your email subscribers anticipating every email you send. This can only be done when you consistently give them what they want.
You can’t do this by sending everybody the same emails so you’re going to segment your subscribers in different groups and send different emails to them.
Examples you can segment groups by:
- Age
- Location
- Interests
- Occupation
- and more.
7. Copy should be personal
How you’re saying something is just as important as what you say in the emails you send out. The goal of these emails is to create a relationship with your subscribers.
When you sound like a rocket scientist talking to another rocket scientist you won’t achieve that goal because most people don’t talk like that.
In email marketing, we got something called “the granny rule”. Write personal emails the way your grandma would write letters.
The more you sound like an actual human being, the more success you’ll have with email marketing.
8. Take some time to come up with a headline
Headlines are important because they can make or break your email marketing campaign.
The quality of the headline decides whether a person is going to open your email or not so you can’t treat headlines as an afterthought.
I know a lot of people who would spend more time crafting a good headline than writing the actual email.
Explaining what content is in the email isn’t good enough.
You’re going to have to find out what kind of emotions you need the reader to experience to open the email and then create a message that stimulates those emotions.
If you’re sending out the same type of emails consistently you could also split-test multiple variations of a subject line with the help of an email marketing service.
9. Build context by creating email sequences
Have you ever heard of a great relationship that has been built just by talking one time?
…Me neither.
It often takes time to see what someone is about before you reach that point. Just like in real life sending one separate email will not result in sales most of the time.
This is why you should try to create email sequences that seamlessly fit together and tell the story of “you” and how you can provide value.
These can also be used to build context when you’re doing a product launch for example. You create a series of emails and every email strategically builds anticipation for the next one.
Email sequences are one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s toolkit when it comes to building a relationship with your email subscribers.
The Dont’s Of Email Marketing
There are a lot of things you should do to have an effective email marketing campaign but there are also some things that you shouldn’t do.
These things can have a huge effect on your success.
I’ve listed a few of these “dont’s”.
These aren’t all of them but these are the ones that immediately came to mind when I was writing this post.
1. Buying email lists
I know it takes a lot of time and effort to build an email list and buying one might seem attractive but trust me…
Don’t do it!
There are just too many unknown factors that you’ll have to deal with if you buy an email list.
Email lists you create yourself contain a lot of information about your subscribers that you’ve obtained through segmenting them into groups.
When you buy a list you don’t have that information and that makes personalizing your emails to cater to your subscribers that much harder.
You also don’t know if the email was obtained legally which means using that list might get you into trouble with the law.
They might not even want to hear about the things you want to say which would make it a wast of money.
Instead of risking these things why not make your own list and maximize the value you receive from email marketing?
2. Sending duplicate emails to the same email address
Earlier in this post, I talked about how ISPs such as Outlook and Gmail will block your emails based on your domain’s and IP’s reputation.
Sending duplicate emails is a great way to ruin your reputation. This increases the chances that the emails will not be opened and it’s basically spamming.
3. Not testing with multiple inboxes
Before you send your emails it’s important to test them with multiple inboxes. You don’t know what your reputation is with ISPs till you test it out.
I’d send emails to numerous ISPs through an email marketing service to see if they end up in the inbox or under spam.
This way if they end up in the spam section you can still open them without hurting your IP and domain reputation.
4. Ignoring email analytics
No matter what form of marketing you do there will be analytics and testing involved.
There’s no such thing as a one fits all marketing campaign so during your campaigns you have to keep a close eye on your analytics and see what’s working and what’s not.
That being said, monitoring analytics in email marketing can sound intimidating for beginners but it’s actually very simple.
In most standard situations, we look at email metrics such as open rates, link clicks, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates.
Recommended External content: Email Analytics: The 8 Email Marketing Metrics & KPIs You Should Be Tracking
Final Word
These tips can get you far with promoting email campaigns but before you can actually benefit from it you need to have a proper email marketing service.
Depending on your goals the proper email marketing service might differ this is why I have created a post with the top email marketing services.
In the post, I have even included which email marketing service is the best for which activity so you can be sure you picked the right one.
You can read the post by clicking here.
That’s all I have to say for today.
I hope this was of value to you if you’re interested in creating an email marketing campaign.
If you have any questions or you want to show some love leave a comment and I’ll reply as soon as possible.
See you in my next post!
