Email marketing is often a tactic that gets overlooked but is absolutely key when thinking about keeping your current customers engaged. It can be a great way to communicate latest offers, content and news (not just of your company but the general industry) – the more people you have engaging with it, the more loyalty they have, the greater your customer retention.
So how should you include email as a tactic in your broader marketing plan? I’m glad you asked, as well as ensuring that it is consistent with your branding and tone of voice there are a few other ways you can ensure its success.
Newsletters can be a great way to update your customers on the latest & greatest so here are our top 5 tips for nailing it:
- Pick a cadence and stick to it – monthly or quarterly can be great and a lot less daunting than committing to a weekly newsletter. Obviously this does vary business by business but you also need to be mindful that the content won’t create itself.
- Design a template and stick to it – your readers want to know what they’re getting each time an email arrives in their mail box. Visual layouts stick in a person’s head; you want them to recognise your newsletter and recall that this is a mail they want to spend their time reading. Make sure you break up each section and choose a template that is aesthetically pleasing for the eyes.
- Establish your regular content and stick to it – there’s a theme here and it’s consistency. It’s really confusing for your customers if you keep changing up what you’re doing. Plus, you want them to invest in your content have them wanting more. Of course you need an introduction but think about what other unique pieces of content you could include – competitions, customer feature, latest offer, new blog posts, news in the industry (after all you can’t be expected to be seen as an expert if you only talk about yourself). There are lots of possibilities but our top tip is to pick a few key segments and deliver them each time you make a send.
- Write a clear, concise and attractive subject line – do not use emojis or special characters as these can trick inboxes into thinking they’re spam. Again, consistency is key, you want your readers to know by just that one notification that your email is worth reading and what they are expecting to receive. It should be descriptive of what it is but maybe include an issue dependent variation.
- Include call-to-action items – that is, make sure that your emails lead somewhere and incite your readers to do an action. Whether that is to read your latest posts, shop your new products, take you up on a special offer or follow you on social. If you aren’t telling your readers to do something, then you’re losing out on an opportunity.
It goes without saying that you also need to make sure that when you are collecting email addresses etc, you need to be cognisant of GDPR and ensure you have the correct permissions. Also make sure, that with almost every form fill/interaction with a customer you ask if they are willing to be added to your mailing list – this can help you build your audience. If you have a website, make sure you a link that is visible for people to sign up to your mailing list, you could even share the URL on social.
Most platforms for sending bulk emails also have built in analytic tools – you can see who opens, reads and clicks on the links you include so use them to your advantage. If you can, test different subject lines to see what gets you the most opens and if you aren’t getting any click-thrus, experiment with your content a little.