10 Tips for Email Marketing Success

A couple weeks ago, I attended a Webinar put on by Solid Cactus. We have had a couple of websites designed through Solid Cactus (www.CheapNovelty.com and www.MarshallDeals.com), and they have a ton of great products and services to offer; if you’re looking into starting up, I’d recommend on checking out what they have to offer.

The Webinar that I recently attended was called “It works: 10 Tips for Email Marketing Success”. I took a lot away from this webinar, and thought that I would be very beneficial to those of you out there who are new to the game of Email Marketing as well as those of you who have been using Email marketing for a while; it never hurts to polish up! Check out the below tips and let me know if you have something to add; I always welcome more ideas to become successful!

1. Professional Appearance – Keep colors and image consistent to your website. When sending out an email, always offer the option to be read in both HTML and Plain text. This is very important to those customers you’re marketing to who use their Blackberry!
2. Action – Create a sense of urgency – “Shop Now”, “Limited Quantity Available”, or “Read now for Important Information”. You need to give the reader a sense of direction in the message of your Marketing in order for them to take action.
3. Personalization – Make sure you personalize your subject line. Your customers are getting multiple emails everyday; be sure to make your subject line one that they will want to click on and open.
4. Subject Line – Don’t have more than 50 characters. It’s very important to be specific about the subject of your email. Short and to the point is best.
5. Spam Check – Make sure to include a “Click Here to Unsubscribe” to all of your email marketing. This is part of the CAN SPAM ACT – You can google this if you’re interested in learning about all of the rules and regulations of Spam. (If you’re not up to snuff on your Spam rules, you’ll definitely want to check this out… some hefty fines can be assessed for sending Spam email!)
6. Segmentation – Know and divide up your customers by interests to get a more defined marketing base. This will allow you to be more specific when sending out emails. For example: you wouldn’t necessarily want to send out an email related to a shoe sale, when the only product that a customer has ordered is books.
7. Testing – Test your audience to see what works best to capture their attention – use time of day, day of week, promotion, all as test variables.
8. Tracking & Reporting – You’ll want to be informed about the number of people who open your email, click your links, forward the email, subscribe to your list, unsubscribe to your list, the web pages they visit, conversions to sales, click through performance, what time/day of the week this occurs. All of this information can help you to form a more effective email marketing campaign.
9. Automate Mailing – Send Welcome emails when someone subscribes; have automated emails sent out when an order is placed on your site, or when a cart is abandoned.
10. Surveys – Send surveys to your customers about how to improve their experience. Discover your customers’ wants and needs as it pertains to email marketing.

Think that Email Marketing isn’t and/or shouldn’t be an important part of your business? Think again! Email Marketing has a 7% average conversion rate – which is better than most other forms of online marketing! Solid Cactus stated that they expect Email marketing overall to have an average Return on Investment of $45.65 for every $1 spent in 2008. Don’t drop the ball with your email marketing!