People are spending more time online and checking their email more often than ever, so email marketing has increased in importance. If email marketing is something you aspire to, apply all of the ideas presented in this article so you can get started off on the right foot.
To get the most of your email marketing, invest in a program that personalizes your emails with every customer’s given name instead of a generic greeting. Ensuring that every email starts with the recipient’s name is key to encouraging your customers to see your newsletters as valuable information and not just more sales spam.
Do not use dollar signs in either the subject or the body of your emails, unless you are using just one to denote a specific amount of currency. This will strike many recipients as being spam my behavior, and many spam filters will automatically trash emails that include character strings like “$$$.”
While you want to use your email marketing to improve your sales. The only way to get potential customers to read your emails is to convince them that they have value. To do this, your emails should always contain concrete, useful information and relevant links, and not just generic sales fluff.
Strategically plan when your emails will go out. People do not like getting emails at inconvenient times, especially if it’s something that they have to act on quickly. Be considerate by making your offers convenient and easy for people to take advantage of, and you will have more sales than you otherwise would.
An email marketing campaign needs a design and testing phase, just like anything else. Plan on putting in time making sure that your messages get past all techniques used for fighting spam, from content filters to image blocking and java-script suppression. You can send out a million messages blindly and not ever know if they are even seen.
Consider using text emails instead of graphically intense HTML emails for your campaign. You may be thinking that the graphics will engage your reader more, but it’s usually not the case. Many people today have trained themselves to delete emails with lots of imagery, assuming they are spam. As well, those images often trigger spam filters, meaning your message is never received by some people on your email list!
The importance of branding your business extends all the way down to your email marketing efforts. Whatever distinctive design elements and styles your company already uses, such as logos, fonts, and color schemes, should be incorporated into the emails you send out, too. This can help your readers instantly recognize you.
For maximum accessibility, send your email marketing messages as multipart format. Any email clients that support HTML or have it user-enabled will show your content in HTML format. However, if someone receives your email and only allows text content, that is what they will see. Doing this allows everyone to see your message, regardless of their client or settings.
Make your marketing emails personalized. This doesn’t just mean addressing your customers by their first names. Take into account whatever information you have about your subscribers. Segment your subscriber list by interest or buying behavior, and create messages that are likely to appeal to that group of people.
Provide an option so people can sign on to your mailing list. Make the sign up option stand out on your site and you can easily add potential customers to your email list.
Set up some expectations for your recipients when they sign up for your email campaign. Once they sign up, they should receive an immediate confirmation email that highlights what they can receive from signing up. This can help you build great customers relationships and help you avoid complaints from the recipients not being aware of what they were receiving.
If you are going to incorporate graphics into your e-mails, you should make certain that the e-mails are still readable if the recipient chooses not to display those graphics. A great way to do this is to utilize ALT tags so that replacement text will be displayed when the images cannot be displayed. It might also be a good idea to place the bulk of your images near the bottom of the e-mail.
Choose appropriate but useful fonts for your messages. Try and select a font family that accomplishes two things. It should reflect your niche or industry, as well as the tone of your content. It should also be a universal category of fonts that will work on all computers and email devices.
Craft compelling, efficient subject lines. A subject line that is less than 60 characters long is more likely to be noticed by a reader and is more likely to be opened than a message with a lengthy subject line. If you must use a long subject, put the important information at the beginning.
Apply a consistent and professional color scheme to your email marketing campaign. Nothing will strike a more visual chord in your subscriber’s minds. Think to your personal favorite brands, and their colors come to mind readily. Search your favorite Internet search engine for color schemes, and you can quickly find one appropriate for your industry, or even distinct within it.
With all that you learned about email marketing, you’re going to want to make sure that your mind digested all of the available information. You may wish to reread this article as necessary, or be sure you can find it easily, so you can remember to use the tips in this article for achieving the goals you have in place.