Email marketing

The open rate is key to the success of your email, if nobody is opening your email nobody will read it. You could have the best copy and the best design in the world, but unless you can get your audience to read it the campaign will be a failure.

To improve the open rate of your email you need to look at the database you are sending it to, when you send it out and crucially the subject line that you use for the email. Below are some tips.an individual as opposed to ‘marketing’ or ‘sales’.

Timing is key to the success of any email marketing campaign. Careful consideration has to be spent on the best day, time of day and time of month to send it out.

It is generally recognised that no B2B email should be distributed outside of working hours and not before 10.00 am. Emails sent outside these times tend to instantly be considered as ‘SPAM’.

Your subject line is key to the open rate of your email. No other marketing medium has so few words to get across the main message of the communication. Make sure the subject line is original, intriguing and does not get stopped by the SPAM filters. DON’T use words like ‘free’, ‘offer’ or ‘sales’. Even an exclamation mark in the subject line can increase your SPAM score!

Ensure the ‘from name’ is a real person. Recipients are much more likely to open an email that looks personalised and has come from an individual as opposed to ‘marketing’ or ‘sales’.

No matter what the offer, there are things that you can do to ensure you get the highest click through rate possible. Below are some tips.

Ensure the content of the email fully represents the needs to the recipient. If the message is useful the reader will feel that you understand them and what it is they want. This will give the reader greater confidence in your organisation and will be more likely to do business with you.

Your audience are likely to be time pressured and inundated with other B2B emails, therefore you must write copy that can be scanned quickly and still get the main message across. Bullet points are very good for giving a lot of information in a few words. If you are sending out a newsletter keep the text quite short, usually just a synopsis of the article, the rest can be hosted on your website. This has the added benefit of being short and punchy on the email and you are driving clicks when people get more information.

Nobody likes to think they are just being sold to. There are different types of emails you can send; newsletters, lead generation, audience generation etc. for all of them there needs to be a reason why you are communicating with them and an offer you are making.

Make it obvious what you want people to do with your email. The reader should be able to easily identify what is expected of them, if they don’t know, you will not get the results you hoped for.

People like to think they are receiving personal communication. Open the email with their name “Dear John” if it is informal and you already have a relationship with the recipient or “Dear Mr Johnson” if you don’t. You can also include the company name during the message to add impact e.g. “ACME Industries could generate lots of sales through effective email communication, Click Here for more information.”

Your bounce rates tell you how good your database is. Typically email data deteriorates at between 30% and 40% per year. Always clean your hard bounces, this is the easiest way of getting the full potential of your database and increasing your ROI from email marketing. MA Data Services can quickly supplement your list with frequently verified emails to reduce bounce rates.

Your unsubscribe rate tells you how good your email campaign was. If a lot of people unsubscribe then they either didn’t find the content relevant to them, it wasn’t targeted correctly, they couldn’t understand your message or they didn’t like how you put your message across. Once someone has asked you to unsubscribe them, make sure you do ASAP.