7 Strategies to Engage Subscribers with Your Email Marketing

by Travis Campbell View Comments

You have worked hard to build or find a great direct email marketing list. You are sure it is targeted, filled with opportunity, and you definitely know you have what they need. You have loaded up and engaged the top autoresponder service ready to automate your email marketing campaign. But, will they engage? Can you activate this list into buyers? I am about to reveal a proven 7 point strategy to maximize even the toughest email list.

Small business marketing needs to yield a lot with a little. So, getting the most out of every email, maximizing email conversion has to be the prime objective. These 7 email marketing tips with get you there.

1. From Someone Important or at Least Friendly
If you aren’t a household name or you can’t get that star endorsement at least make your direct email marketing seem friendly and personable. No one wants an email from info, do-not-reply, or admin. And, they certainly aren’t going to open it. They are also likely to click the spam button on John, Joe, Jane, or Sally. Any good autoresponder service will guide you into avoiding these gotchas.

Make your direct email marketing messages look like an everyday email. You should use a real name from you or your company. It doesn’t have to be your primary email, but it should have your name. If you want good email conversion it needs to include a last name and must be correlated to the “person” talking, to the recipient, in the email.

2. Subject, Make it About Me
The subject line is the make it or break it copy in any email marketing campaign. There are lots of great email marketing tips for great subject lines, but here are some of the most important:

Use their name
Remind them of email list or opt-in source
Be descriptive and direct about the content
Don’t use high spam words like money, cash, viagra, finance, mortgage
Make it brief

These are hard to blend, but getting it right is critical to your email conversion.

3. Opener, Don’t Waste Time
Your customer is in your email. That means your small business email marketing plan is humming. Let’s not drop the ball here.

The prospect needs immediately understanding. What’s the benefit? Why shouldn’t they trash it along with the other 500 emails they will get today?

The opener needs and immediate benefit statement and brief expectation setting for the remainder of the email. Maybe even give something away here or begin with a small offer. Don’t try to sell the whole concept, just the benefit of walking with you the next step.

4. Appearance, Avoiding the Nigerian Spam Look
Nothing kills an email marketing campaign quicker than misspellings, typos, and bad grammar. Emails written without coherence and appealing flow are destined to get the delete key, or even worse the spam button.

Taking it to another level your email has to be well formatted. HTML is a professional and pleasing way to give your email a pleasing appearance, but it does create delivery issues and is not necessarily optimal (the discussion on this topic is long winded, and if you are a MarketingProfessor.com subscriber, you already know what format we currently compose in. Not a subscriber? Would be glad to have you on board).

What is always optimal is to format your email to be visually appealing and easy to scan. This means narrow column width, short sentences, and good heading and subheadings.

5. Invitation, Give Me a Benefit
Don’t forget the ask. This is a classic mistake in small business email marketing. Don’t forget the invitation or the call to action. Your customer needs a benefit here. A reason to stay.

Your invitation needs to have immediate benefit and long-term value. If possible enable them to immediately click to fulfillment (doable with this product).

6. Consistency, Don’t Surprise Me
Regardless of your email marketing plan you need consistency. Consistency in appearance, copy, and delivery. You want your email list to get conditioned to hearing from you and what that correspondence looks like–this is where a good autoresponder service comes in handy.

Autoresponder service providers can help you create custom templates, compelling from addresses, standard and personal subject lines, and consistent delivery.

7. Value, This is What it is All About
Value, little more to say here other than to remind you that this is why the customer gave you an email address in the first place. Do not send an email without some specific, tangible value in it for the recipient.

This means giving a little in every email to get a lot in return.

Take Action!
So, review these 7 points, and consider a recent email you sent, how well do you think you did? Knowing these points, what might you have changed? What can you change in the future? Consider this, before sending your next email, come back here, and review these 7 points, and make necessary adjustments before sending. Bookmark this page (below), oh, and if you haven’t done so subscribe to the RSS Feed, and refer to this post before you hit “Send”.

-Travis

P.S.: (yes, you can use those in blog posts too Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t hit the mark on some of these points, there is room for improvement for all us us, naturally of these things can only be fixed over time…but it is well worth it.