Posted on 6 December, 2012
Creating a successful email campaign isn't easy. It takes skill to make sure your email isn't marked as spam, to convince the reader to open the email and finally, to get your customers to take action. Ideally this means they will buy something from your company. There are a lot of elements to look at, so in this article we'll show you three things you can do to maximise your chances of making a sale. Identify target markets in your mailing listIf you have a large email list, chances are that not all your customers will be interested in the same products or services. It's a good idea to do some research and find out about what they will be interested. Have they bought something from you in the past and could benefit from your latest product? Or maybe you want to sell exclusively to either men or women? By sending targeted emails, you should get an above-average conversion rate. Personalise your emailsHow many times have you read 'Dear Valued Customer...'? How valued are you if the person writing the email doesn't even know your name? It's easy to include individual customer names, even in a bulk mailing. Your target audience will dictate how you address them, e.g. 'Mr Smith' or 'John'. There are plenty of other ways to personalise emails such as mentioning prior purchases or using regional references, but your email should always be appropriate. Businesses, especially those in the medium to large sector, should aim to be as human as possible. A great way to do this in an email is by using a real person's signature. Instead of ending with 'Yours sincerely, ACME' use an employee's name. And a photo could be beneficial; customers prefer to buy from people rather than faceless businesses. Constantly test your emailsYou should be tracking the results of your email campaigns, even if it's as rudimentary as working out from each one how much money you made. Ideally you'll want your email service to provide feedback on bounce, open, click-through, conversion, and unsubscribe rates. Once you have a benchmark, it's time to start testing. The easiest way to do this is an A/B split test where you send one version of your email to half your target audience, and a slightly modified version to the other half. It's advisable to change just one element per test, such as the subject line, heading or images. This is so that you can identify the best combination of features. Testing can help you to improve the effectiveness of your emails as well as confirm that they are working. For example, if you normally send your customers long emails, test them against a short version. You'll then know what works best for you and your customers. The perfect email?Writing the perfect email isn't easy, but using some tried and tested methods, you can maximise the potential of each email campaign and, hopefully, increase your profit. |
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