11 Ways to Improve your Email Marketing

Marketing emails are a great way to increase conversions, but they can be tricky to start. How do you know if you’re going about it in the right way or not? Sometimes, it’s not that obvious. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of ways to improve your email marketing campaign.

1. Before you do anything else, cut down your list. This might sound like marketing blasphemy, but a shorter list doesn’t mean less success; it means narrowing down your email recipients to those who truly want to purchase your products. Get rid of those who never open your emails, and allow those who’ve lost interest to unsubscribe efficiently. Additionally, deliver your emails during non-peak hours so your prospects can give you their undivided attention. 
2. Make your subject line brief and interesting. A long subject line can discourage even your most devoted subscribers from opening your latest email. Your email’s introduction should be a sentence that expands on the two- or three-word subject line and holds the reader’s attention. 
3. Putting the email recipient’s first name at the beginning of each message is more powerful than putting their full name, their name with an honourific, or no name at all. Address them the same way you would address a friend. Go one step further by making the words around the name - the ones that will be seen when unopened in the recipient’s inbox - more interesting. 
4. Never fake concern or care with well wishes. Most customers don’t believe what you’re saying, and you could be putting something much more useful for both you and your customer where that empty phrase went. Instead, make yourself stand out. Tell your potential clients why and how you’re different from your competitors. When they see the value in choosing you over someone else, they’ll be more willing to become a customer - perhaps even a loyal one. 
5. Let your clients know that this is about them, not you. Putting your company up on a pedestal will only exhaust them, or worse, drive them away. Give them the relevant information while centering the message around them. 
6. Don’t list product features in your marketing emails. Most of the time, your clients will research a product they like on their own time rather than taking the time to read your list of its capabilities and aesthetic qualities. Show a high-quality image of the product and perhaps one feature, nothing more. 
7. Be clear and simple in your message by avoiding fancy acronyms and complex terms. These words are usually meaningless to your target audience, so using basic language in a charming way will be more beneficial to you. While you’re at it, be realistic about what your product can do. Saying it makes things easier won’t interest many of your readers. Giving specific examples of how it makes things easier creates more sales in the end. 
8. Although you want to rise above the competition and prove yourself to your audience, don’t make impossible claims. Calling yourself number one in the biz might seem like a good idea, but your clients are less likely to trust you. Most consumers have been conditioned to associate impossible claims with arrogance and dishonesty, neither of which you’ll want your company to appear to have. 
9. Put yes-or-no questions into your marketing emails. Structure them in a way that doesn’t require your client to devote a great deal of time or energy to your cause. Make these questions intriguing and customer-centric. Better yet, use these questions to start a conversation. Generating natural back-and-forth exchanges gets your customers more involved in your business. 
10. Limit your calls-to-action to one per email. Slipping too many into one message can be frustrating or overwhelming for your client, so simply requesting a reply or a click on a link will suffice. Never give them off-hours tasks to complete; nobody likes homework. Asking your clients for too much decreases the probability of them doing what you want them to do. Make your requests simple and minimal. 

11. Once you’ve started implementing these strategies, experiment with them. Play around with your requests, word count, language use, text format, and visual information; then collect the open rates, response rates, and conversion rates of each version of your emails. There’s no magic formula, but one setup may work better than another. 

Email marketing becomes easy when you know what to do and what not to do. Be open to testing out different strategies, using our list as a guideline. With some practice, you’re bound to find the right format for you.