5 quick tips to improve your email marketing
There are plenty of things you can do with your email marketing to try to get more people opening your emails and taking action once they’ve read what you’ve had to say. There’s definitely too much information to be found on Google on this topic and wading through it is enough to send you into a paralysing head spin.
I’m saving you some research as I have done a LOT of investigating into what makes an awesome marketing email and I subscribe to many, many marketing lists of the best in the business. I see what they are doing and I’m sharing some of those techniques with you here. You’re welcome!
In this blog, I’m focusing on 5 quick things you can implement in your next email send that will make a positive difference. I’m keeping it simple to avoid you experiencing that horrible feeling of overwhelm. Let’s take baby steps together towards email success!
Here are 5 things you should try with your next marketing email
Mix it up with your subject lines
There’s an argument for using consistent wording in a subject line if you have a newsletter that you send out regularly. Yes, people may come to recognise it and therefore open it because they like to hear from you.
What can also happen is it becomes boring and open rates start to fall. So, my first tip is: Try mixing things up!
Take something exciting/interesting that you are communicating within the email (if you don’t have anything exciting/interesting to say then why are you sending anything at all?) and pull this out in the subject line.
Don’t just use April Newsletter or similar, for the subject line. That’s not compelling enough and busy people will be tempted to just delete it and wait to see if you can do better next time.
Need further inspiration? Download my FREE guide: 10 email subject line tactics to get your emails opened.
2. Try using emoji in your email
This is a super simple one. Pop one, maybe two maximum emoji in your subject line and see what it does to your open rate. Tip number 4 in the blog I reference above gives an example of that.
🌟 Emoji makes your email pop out in a busy inbox - improving open rates. 🌟
When you use it in the body of your email, it’s a creative way to convey emotion but it also draws the eye so use it where you have a call-to-action.
👀 If you want more ideas of how to use emoji, take a look at my Email Marketing Toolkit as I give more examples in that.
You can simply copy and paste emojis into your email subject lines and body copy from this emoji library.
3. Insert extra calls to action (CTAs) as a PS
This is a really neat trick which I am seeing a lot of pro email marketers doing at the moment. They have their email message complete with cute emoji and strong calls to action, then after signing off with their name - Boom! They hit you with one or two extra little messages and links.
These extra opportunities to click at the end of the email are perfect for catching the skim readers. Try using juicy little offers such as linking through to related content that the recipient might find helpful or use it as a chance to push a related product or service.
Or do both! I see plenty of emails with a PS and a PPS. See this example from Marketing Mastermind, Marie Forleo (also note cute use of emoji):
4. Ditch the images
Like changing the subject line from your norm, this one might feel out of your comfort zone but I highly recommend going for a simple, text email with no images.
Why? Because it will help with both your deliverability rate and your clarity of messaging.
Deliverability because emails with lots of lovely images in them can get sent straight to spam folders or are blocked by aggressive firewalls. If they do come through, often the images need to be downloaded, so the email looks really ugly.
Clarity of messaging because to get your email to do its job, you are relying on words alone (or an emoji!) to get the point across and covert readers to clickers. You need to become a lean, mean, email writing machine. Ditch the images and see what happens.
5. Keep it short
During my ongoing email marketing best practice research, another trend I’ve spotted is the super short email. By short, I’m talking less than 100 words.
That’s just enough words to say hello, make your point, include a call to action, sign off and if you like, include a tempting PS link.
It can be easier said than done to write something powerful in less than 100 words but to help you with this, I advise you to stick to talking about just one thing in your email. Decide what you want the recipient to learn and do from this email and then work your hardest to convey that succinctly and get that click.
If you regularly send long emails, that’s fine! Just this once, cut it right down and record how many clicks or replies you get vs when you send longer-form emails.
It might be a good idea to use a combination of super short and longer, blog-type emails in the future. Until you test it, you won't know!
Conclusion
So that’s it! I’ve chosen 5 tips you can apply to your own email marketing which I have gleaned from my research into what the marketing masters are doing. These tips are purposefully ones you can apply fairly easily to your next marketing email and I encourage you to do so.
To recap, my 5 tips to improve your email marketing are:
Try a different kind of subject line.
Experiment with emoji.
Use a PS (and PPS!) after you sign off the email to get bonus clicks.
Stick to text emails - no pretty pictures or banner images.
Keep your email content to less than 100 words as an experiment.
Let me know in the comments if you try any of these tips and what results you get. I’m testing them in my own emails all the time but it’s always nice to hear what experience you guys have.
I have loads more advice and ideas where this came from and it’s all in my Email Marketing Toolkit - go take a look!
