Sometime ago we shared with you some top tips on small business, email list building and how to use email marketing effectively in your general business marketing strategy.
Today I’d like to share with you 5 top tips for successful email marketing in general, covering all the important elements that will make your email marketing campaign more impactful on your ROI.
List Building
Ok, first of all let’s get down to the basics. No email marketing campaign can possibly be effective without a solid list. So one of the most first steps and perhaps the most challenging is building a list.
Building an email list can be a time consuming task however there are ways in which you can generate lots of subscribers over a short time using some effective methods in which we cover in the following article: effective list building for email marketing.
Email Marketing Service provider
Once you have a built a sensible amount of subscribers, let’s say 50 to start with; you can then begin to search for a good reputable email marketing service provider. Again we recently covered this topic in depth and gave you our 5 top email marketing service providers to consider using, read this post carefully to help you make the right selection of service provider.
Design & Layout
Now the fun really begins. To be successful and to maximise the impact of your email marketing campaign, you need to understand the importance of design and layout. When I say design I’m talking about colour, font size and giving your email newsletter a professional corporate look and feel to it.
Many email marketers simply don’t bother with this and send out plain-text version emails as their newsletter. There is nothing wrong with this but as far as first impressions are concerned I’m not normally interested in reading ranting text-form email trash that lands in my inbox, it’s not fun and above all it doesn’t grab my attention. As you’ve guessed we’ve got a full article with lots of tips and advice on design and layout for your email marketing newsletter worth checking out.
Content
Whether you concern yourself with design and layout or not, the other most important aspect of your email marketing endeavours is the content you place in them. Whether it’s an excerpt from one of your latest blog posts or an online promotion, it needs to be compelling enough to make your readers want to click on the links you place within them, links back to your website, web resources, products and services.
Use images as well as text to effectively portrait what your email newsletter is all about; add compelling titles, relevant and resourceful links and social bookmarking tools to promote your newsletter even more.
Analytics
Finally if you use the services of an online email marketing provider such as Vertical Response or Aweber you should have access to useful tools that allow you to track the effectiveness of your email campaigns, from the number of emails opened and unopened, bounces, number of clicks to your links to the number of subscribers opting out of your email marketing campaign.
By analysing the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns you can then make subtle changes where needed and test different methods such as design variations and content for improving and effectively making your campaigns more successful throughout.
Recommended Reading
1. Cost Effective Email Marketing for Small Businesses (Part 1)
2. Cost Effective Email Marketing for Small Businesses (Part 2)
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About Samantha Wright
Nice roundup of the essential tips, thanks for posting Samantha.