One of your best marketing weapons for driving traffic and making conversions is a properly executed email campaign. The problem, however, is many small companies don’t take the time to properly put one together so as to achieve the maximum effect. Some recent research has shown that a properly executed email campaign can provide an ROI of over 400%. Forty bucks back on every dollar spent? Sounds like a slum dunk doesn’t it? So, why are your recent email campaigns failing so miserably?
- The first disaster is your lead in, your headline. Dull and boring seems to be what most email subject lines are rather than being engaging and actually forcing the reader to want to know more. Snappy, engaging and to the point. Some recent research done by Hubspot reveals that subject lines of around 30 characters are opened more often than any other length, especially on mobile devices.
- You have less than eight seconds to capture a reader’s attention or they are gone. Too many emails are long and rambling and generally written by someone that doesn’t really know what they are doing. Are your best sales people writing these? Why not? Get to the point. Tell them immediately why they must take action right now.
- Don’t forget that this is marketing and advertising. If you don’t understand these things, find someone that does. Incorporating images, leading with stats and facts, using different colors and fonts all make your email more appealing and likely to be opened. Sizes, images, videos, and color are all factors that come into play that will make your emails more engaging.
- Do the research. Tuesday is the best day to send out an email campaign with Wednesday a close second. No one is even awake on Mondays and all people care about on Fridays is getting out and starting their weekend. Every email you craft (yes, craft) must be new and original. Forget about re-posting old blog posts. No one is going to read them. In the end, you need a proper plan developed by staff who understand advertising and marketing, sending it off at a proper time and give them a reason to open it and act upon it right now. If your emails are not driving traffic and making conversions for you, then you need to discard them until you find a formula that actually does those things.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
