Email Marketing Best Practices Online Marketers Should Follow.
More than 75% of internet marketers today can attest that effective email marketing is a requisite to doing business online. However, with the average internet user receiving hundreds of emails per week, email marketing is a difficult skill to master. As a savvy marketer, you have to come up with smart marketing techniques to ensure that your emails are visible and get opened even in a crowded inbox.
A good proportion of email marketing best practices are based upon the idea of consistent, relevant and efficient communication with the people on your email list. If a subscriber signs up for one of your newsletters only to go for months without hearing from you, they will most likely forget you or your services. This could even mean that the next time you message them they won’t hesitate to click on the ‘block-as-spam’ button.
That said, let’s have a look at some of the best email marketing practices that one could apply to ensure that your mail is received, opened and never marked as spam by your subscribers.
1) Always send a welcome email
As soon as someone signs up to you list, set your autoresponder to send them a warm, cheerful email thanking them for choosing to join your team. Remember you want to make sure that this person feels right at home with your services. At the same time, if you had promised a free download in return for a subscription, see to it that they don’t have to jump through hoops to get it. Get into a habit of including the link to such offers right in the first email.
2) Cultivate a culture of sending consistent but relevant follow-ups
You may have noticed that step-by-step emailing is far more efficient than sending one bulk message. In fact, a recent survey shows that splitting your services into an array of steps keeps the target audience on their toes waiting for the next piece of information. E.g if you promised to teach them how to become good email marketers in 5 short steps, send them emails over five days in the appropriate order. Avoid sending them one bulk guide or spacing your emails too far apart.
3) Allow the option of unsubscribing
This is where many aggressive marketers will fail. There’s really no point in coercing someone to read your emails as sooner or later they will label you as spam. If they need to opt out, then let them. Also bear in mind that you won’t achieve any success in marketing if you obsess or worry over recipients unsubscribing to your posts.
4) Create rapport with your customers
When was the last time you took the time to ask your subscribers to read or comment on a recent blog post? Email messages are one of the best ways to drive free traffic to your website. Another way of creating a healthy relationship would be by simple short surveys on your latest product or services. Encouraging your audience to interact with you is a great way of keeping in touch.
5) Provide value
Being a marketer does not necessarily mean you should send only sales or promotional emails. Email marketing best practices are about providing value as much as they are aimed at growing your business. Intersperse your regular sales messages with a couple of special ‘perk’ or ‘value’ emails. These could be free reports on a variety of relevant subjects or access to an exclusive webinar on a subject your audience are interested in. You might be surprised to find out that some of these subtle marketing strategies will be more effective than your conventional sales emails.
