Email Marketing Tips 101: 12 Incredibly Useful Email Marketing Tips for Any Brand
Emails can be accessed through smartphones, not just computers, which means email marketing has become more important than ever.
Are you in charge of a brand? And are you looking to improve conversions and boost the revenue of your company? Look no further because we’ve compiled the 12 most essential email marketing tips for any brand searching for brand success in today’s competitive market.
After all, email marketing remains one of the most rewarding ways of building lasting relationships with your customers, and at minimal cost! Scan through these 12 tips if you’re interested to learn how to boost your email marketing and with that, your overall brand engagement (and brand engagement boosts sales). Do keep these points in mind, whether you’re a copywriter or a business owner trying to design your own email newsletter.
Email Marketing Tip 1: Use simple design
Your emails are intended to win customers, but that doesn’t mean flashy and mind-blowing designs are always necessary. Most people appreciate simplicity and a sense of authenticity, so design that email to look as if it’s another email from your recipient’s good friend—simple and genuine.
A great example is the emails sent out by The School of Life (their email copy is also a perfect example of how adding value to others’ lives makes a big difference in your marketing). You can also take Sephora’s landing page as an example.
Email Marketing Tip 2: Write your main copy in narrative style
Your main copy refers to every other word in your email besides the subject line. Write it in a personal and relatable manner, referring to people’s feelings in the story you’re telling. For example, TestingMom.com, an online test prep company, does a brilliant job of arranging their emails to center on the experiences of mothers in deciding whether or not to purchase their services and products (and of course the mothers in their stories do end up purchasing).
Email Marketing Tip 3: Include videos
People like easy, so videos make all the sense. Plus, most people are visual learners. You don’t need a camera crew or lots of money. All you need is your smartphone, a great idea, and some editing work done. The point is to capture in video whatever it is you were going to say in that email. And did you know that YouTube is the second-largest search engine?
Awesome expert tip: Don’t forget to mention “Video” in your subject line, as it pulls people to click, especially those who largely prefer watching videos to reading text.
Email Marketing Tip 4: Link to your other content
Introduce your email recipients to more information by attaching your blog articles, youtube video links, or website as shareable content. Besides that, you could also link content by other people so that those who receive your emails get more value, wherever that value may come from. Share content on a regular basis.
One more thing here: When sharing others’ content, do put your own spin to retain a sense of originality and draw people back to your point and overall message.
Email Marketing Tip 5: Focus on quality, not quantity
The logical thing to do is to try to keep every single subscriber and prevent them from unsubscribing. Nonetheless, it could be better to weed out recipients who do not want to hear from you because doing so helps you make full use of your Mailchimp or Active Campaign subscription, since these email- marketing- companies bill businesses according to the number of email recipients they have.
Our tip here: Find out who hasn’t opened your emails in the last 3 months. Kick off from your email list people who are not interested in receiving what your brand has to offer. Smart segmentation is a crucial part of regular list maintenance.
Email Marketing Tip 6: Nail your subject line
Subject lines are almost everything in email marketing.
Keep subject lines simple, concise, and set the right expectations to your recipients about what they’ll get from you. It’s fine to use attention-grabbing hooks— but you might end up having high open rates and low CTR. In the end, it does pay to balance curiosity and relevancy. In short, your subject line should be captivating yet matter-of-fact, telling people the very truth about your offer.
Email Marketing Tip 7: Avoid spam trigger words
One hundred percent free, bonus, cash, increase sales, make money, amazing, freedom, opportunity…these are words that will have you in people’s spam folder. Even “we hate spam” is a spam trigger word! Get this: your email copywriting isn’t complete until you’ve checked your copy for spam trigger words.
Email Marketing Tip 8: Avoid spam formatting
Just as certain words trigger your email content to be destined for spam folders, your formatting can also bring you down if they’re of multiple font types and sizes, multicolored fonts, filled with non-emoji symbols, and all sorts of unnecessary punctuation. Ellipsis points “…” and exclamation marks “!” are your enemies when writing email copy— keep this in mind.
In addition, too many hyperlinks and images may put you where you don’t want to be— in people’s spam folder. And if you can, reduce images to a smaller size to avoid ending up in people’s promotions tab, or even better, use images only when truly needed. Otherwise, stick to GIFs and emojis which can add humor without leading the email into the promotions tab. If you choose GIFs instead of images, make sure the reference to your overall message is clear.
Email Marketing Tip 9: Write in a friendly style
You might already know this but we’re reminding you anyway: Do write like you’re writing to a friend (even though you’re actually a marketer!). Related to our Email Marketing Tip 2, writing in a friendly manner also involves writing in a narrative way, outlining people’s experiences and feelings along the way.
Did you know? Breaking down the text into paragraphs for easy reading is another crucial aspect of friendly writing (and of good SEO).
Email Marketing Tip 10: Have a clear reason WHY you’re sending out emails
Only send out emails if you can pinpoint a very clear reason why you should be doing so because you might end up sending more emails than is necessary and when this happens— the recipients of your emails might start to develop not very positive feelings about your brand.
In other words, always figure out why you’re sending out an email: is it relevant to your brand’s goals right now? Does it add value to subscribers?
Typical reasons for sending out emails are to share content, shout out about discounts and promotions, and to release a new product or feature.
Email Marketing Tip 11: Be specific in communicating what people will get
Tell people very specifically a) what they’ll get from your emails; and b) how often you’ll be sending your emails. Such consistency is key to building trust because people like familiarity and consistency.
Consistency also means being consistent in your brand personality, the language used in communication, and overall design layout and framework. Sending valuable and shareable content on a consistent basis is also a part of being consistent (also, so that people know that they can look forward to your emails).
Email Marketing Tip 12: Remind yourself of the main objective:
And that’s to engage first! Email newsletters are NOT about closing sales; the on-site sales copy on your landing page will do that. Instead, use your emails to focus on convincing people that they should engage with your brand.
If you appreciate these tips, be sure to also put them to use and share them with people you think might appreciate them too. And if you’re in need of more assistance with anything related to social media marketing and email marketing, chat with us at Tinker Society. We’re always interested to listen to your brand goals and struggles and of course, we’re also interested in pushing you ahead and making you stand out.
We’ve also written this for you: how to grow your email list with just 5 strategies.
