Best Practices For Email Marketing
Newsletters are very important tool for communicating with consumers directly, but require good expertise to ensure that your messages stand out, reach the right audience, and are actually read.
Email is a cost-effective tool to send across your brand messages in real-time, and alongside social media, it is a perfect channel to relate to daily events, send quick updates and news, and be part of daily trends. It helps in building consumer loyalty, as regularly sharing good content reminds fans of the value you offer and always keeps your brand top of their mind.
It is also a great measurable way to utilise and share your existing contents and increase awareness about your offers and promotions.
And finally, email marketing is a perfect tool to collect data and insights about your consumers, for example, what tone of voice or content is preferred, which is key when starting to develop a new brand strategy.
In this article we’ll walk you through some important points to consider when designing your email marketing strategy.
First step in starting your campaign is defining your audience, the consumers or fans that you would like to communicate with via newsletters. This is usually fairly similar to your general target group, only more filtered depending on what proportion of your TA is actually digitally active and responds well to online communications.
Below are few ways you can collect or increase your newsletter subscribers:
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- Adding a sign-up form to your website or blog
- Promoting call to action on sponsored posts on Social Media
- Attaching a form to printed marketing collaterals
- During participation in trade shows, networking or corporate events
- Through asking your existing subscribers or fans to give referrals and encourage subscription within their network in exchange for a gift or discount.
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Obviously, the means of collecting data is not limited to these methods only; but this should just give you an inspiration to find more bespoke ways of connecting with your potential consumers. Remember to always ask for opt-in permission from your contacts before adding them to your database!
After defining your audience, it’s time to decide on the content. The best way to start working on the content is to think about what made your audience sign up for the emails in the first place. Was it to know more about your discounts, or maybe they were interested in your insight about the industry? What did you promise them? Write down some generic ideas and follow them throughout your campaign.
We recommend using the ‘AIDA’ model to develop your newsletter content. It stands for:
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- Attention – In this case, grabbing their attention through an exciting email headline with right timing, which you can check by closely following your analytics.
- Interest – Writing a good introductory paragraph, incentivising the consumer to read the email. Try to keep your tone of voice more direct.
- Desire – Giving them what you’ve promised, be it an insight, promo update, tips etc. Excite them about your brand and stand out! Treat your subscribers exclusively. Treat their data with care, give them special discounts or let them know first about your upcoming plans/services/news.
- Action – Incentivise to take an action and click on the link, make a purchase or call you.
- Finally, keep it short and provide a hyperlink to a more detailed blog or a page. After all, none of us likes reading very long emails.
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If you would like to find out more on how to start a successful newsletter campaign, get in touch with us!