Email marketing should be a major focus for anybody hoping to effectively connect with people. It’s proven to work, if you do it right. So we’ve got some email marketing tips to help you make your email list the best it can be.
We’re pulling these tips from our recent Data-Driven Email Marketing Webinar with Christie Chirinos from Caldera Forms. Check out the 45-minute webinar to go more in-depth on how to make your email marketing work better.
5 Email Marketing Tips
Let’s look at just five email tips from Christie’s recent webinar:
1. Make emails mobile friendly.
[pullquote]80% of people check email on their phones. [/pullquote]That’s a pretty astounding number. If your email isn’t easy to digest on a small screen, it’s time to change that. And if you don’t know if your emails are mobile friendly, you really need to find out.
You can start simply enough by proofing your email on a device. Start seeing your email the same way the vast majority of your subscribers do. You might start to see simple things to change right away.
In general, make sure you have short text with good headers and sub-heads and lots of white space. It’s hard to say how long or short an email should actually be. Some successful emails are really long, but they also have really good content in short, digestible bursts.
2. Frequency matters.
How often do you send emails? Some successful freelancers are sending emails out every few days. But it’s not a saturation strategy—they’re sending out super engaging emails that develop connections. Others send out emails monthly or even quarterly and find great success.
There’s no one right answer. You need to experiment and see what works.
But a sure way to lose subscribers is frequent emails that don’t provide value. [pullquote]Always make sure you’re offering value to your subscribers.[/pullquote]
3. Segment your lists.
Email marketing is known for having some incredible response rates. Often that happens thanks to segmentation.
[pullquote]Simply put, segmentation is making sure people get emails they want to see.[/pullquote]
Demographic segmentation is common, but what might be more helpful is psychographic segmentation—focusing on what people want.
So how do you get that kind of data on subscribers? Just ask:
- For new subscribers: Ask them to fill out a subscriber profile as part of an onboarding or automated welcome email process.
- For old subscribers: Send a segmented list to your old subscribers who haven’t indicated preferences and ask them to do so.
For both groups, make it clear why you’re doing it. Explain that you want to make sure your emails are relevant to them and that they’re getting emails they want to see.
4. Utilize other types of email.
When we talk about email marketing, it’s easy to focus on the direct blast email. But don’t overlook transactional emails, onboarding emails, or cart recovery emails. These are all an important part of email marketing:
- Transactional emails: These are action-based emails. Someone purchased something and that triggered a transaction email: here’s your download, confirm your purchase, thanks for ordering, etc. These emails are about doing something, so keep it simple and direct. They are still an opportunity to show your company culture, so find the balance between doing that while still doing what needs to get done.
- Onboarding emails: In some ways, these might be a subset of transactional emails, but it’s important to focus on them. These are the emails you send to welcome someone to your list and help them know what to expect or how to use your product. These often come from a company founder or president, but here’s an email tip: send them from a support manager or someone close to the customer. Nobody believes these emails come from a founder anyway.
- Cart recovery emails: These can be a huge opportunity to make up for lost sales. Jilt is one helpful tool (we interviewed Jilt product manager Beka Rice about cart abandonment). A lot of these tools offer templates and you’re welcome to change the template—but don’t. A lot of research went into the effectiveness of those templates. Use their well-researched approach with minimal tweaks.
5. Build your list.
[pullquote]None of the potential of email marketing can be realized if you‘re not building your list.[/pullquote]
- Website: Put sign up forms on your site (make sure they’re GDPR-compliant—you might need to use a modal window or some other approach, depending on your email service). And you should definitely plug your email list in more than one place.
- Social media: Make sure your social media followers are on your list. Add sign up links to social profiles and talk about your list on social media.
- Give an incentive: Use a lead magnet to encourage people to sign up (we talk more about lead magnets in our email marketing post).
More Email Help
For more email tips, check out these resources:
- Watch the full Data-Driven Email Marketing Webinar with Christie Chirinos.
- We talked with five email experts and collected their email marketing advice in one big post.
- You can also grab our email marketing checklist to help you avoid email mistakes.