April 20, 2023

5 Email Newsletter Mistakes To Avoid

Email newsletters are a great way to educate your customers about your brand, but there are some newsletter mistakes you need to be aware of!

Every good marketer knows that establishing a loyal customer base is a great way to grow your brand cost-effectively. It’s exponentially cheaper to turn a one-off customer into a repeat customer than to gain a new one-off customer. There are many ways to build that loyal audience, and a business newsletter is a great way to speak to your most loyal customers. A good business newsletter is a great medium for delivering product updates, advertising new specials, celebrating business wins, and highlighting exceptional staff.

While most businesses aren’t writing business newsletters and should, this blog is for businesses writing and distributing a newsletter now and looking to avoid common newsletter mistakes. Writing a newsletter can be tough, so the more advice you can get, the better. A good business newsletter requires knowing your audience and nailing your brand voice, which is harder than it sounds.

Per that, to help guide you through your email newsletter, we assembled our content team’s thoughts on common business newsletter mistakes.

Business Newsletter Mistake 1: Getting Too Technical

Email newsletters are a great way to promote new pieces of content on your website, share industry news, and prime your audience for new product releases. However, it is important to remember that your readers likely aren’t experts in your industry. Remember, they depend on you to be the expert for them. We recommend sharing industry news and explaining its impact on your business, but we would encourage you to keep it comprehensible. Your readers want to be informed and understand your thoughts on your industry. Still, they don’t need to dive into the more granular elements of macroeconomic conditions, industry controversies, and product development.

Now, if you are a Business-to-Business company, you have more leeway to use a little more jargon than you would if you were marketing to consumers directly. Your target audience, if you’re trying to reach a business decision-maker audience, is likely to be more educated on the nuances of your industry and willing to learn more about your brand’s context. Still, we would recommend keeping your newsletter a little more conversational. If you want to take a more technical tone, we recommend linking your newsletter to a whitepaper or case study on your website. That’s likely the best way to highlight your industry expertise without leaving your audience behind.

Business Newsletter Mistake 2: Choosing The Wrong Cadence

This email newsletter mistake is pretty easy to make. Open rates will often stay below 50%, no matter how relevant any one email is, so a lot of marketers start thinking of email marketing as a volume game. If you see a 30% open rate on every email, why not send the newsletter out more frequently to ensure more eyes read your content?

However, this approach can backfire. The more emails you send, the higher probability that your readership decides to unsubscribe. That’s not a good outcome for your business newsletter.

The inverse can also happen. Since it requires time, planning, and attention to detail to send out a great email newsletter, some small businesses can find it easier to send out email newsletters only once a half. That’s not much better than the weekly email, in our experience. We typically recommend at least a quarterly cadence for an email newsletter but monthly can be better for certain industries and brands.

Regardless of which cadence you decide to follow, be sure to stick with it. Nothing will drop your readership as quickly as haphazardly sending out email newsletters when you have the time. It’s better to send them out quarterly, if that gives you the time to plan, research and write than to send out subpar emails on no set cadence.

Business Newsletter Mistake 3: Being Too Topical

You’re writing a newsletter, so it makes sense that you should incorporate current news, right?

Well, not exactly. Yes, you should incorporate industry-related news and educate your readership about new happenings with your brand. This is a great way to share content with your audience. However, be cautious that you don’t write a newsletter that ONLY tries to connect to current events.

If you’re writing about impactful changes in industry regulation, process, or product offerings, staying topical isn’t a bad use of space. But sometimes, business newsletters only include information about the latest fad on social media, recipes for the changing seasons, or well-wishes for specific holidays.

We get it. Sometimes, you’re on a deadline and need to fill space. Still, be wary of using seasonal or topical content to use all of the digital pages. If your readership wanted a recipe for Christmas cookies, they’d consult a baking blog, not your newsletter.

Now, we highly recommend incorporating some degree of tradition in your email newsletter. We love seeing staff birthdays and work anniversaries highlighted in business newsletters since these sorts of moments help humanize your brand to your customer and promote a sense of loyalty. Develop your own sense of tradition for optimal results; just be sure your traditions are relevant to your customer base.

Business Newsletter Mistake 4: Making Your Newsletter A Sales Pitch

We get it. You’re busy and want to maximize your outreach to existing customers. There is nothing wrong with that. However, if you fall into the bad habit of viewing your business newsletter as solely a chance to upsell or promote new offerings, your readers may start unsubscribing.

These readers know your brand and likely have already purchased from you. They opened your email newsletter to stay updated on the industry and your business, not feel like they just walked onto a used-car lot, complete with a pushy salesperson. Now, if you are offering a new product, we definitely recommend promoting that product via email. It shouldn’t be tangled up with news updates if it’s important enough to warrant an announcement. We recommend sending out a promotional email separate from your newsletter. Let the newsletter be about your brand, not your sales pitch

Business Newsletter Mistake 5: Failing To Segment

Email marketing is a great medium for newsletters, although printed newsletters can work for some brands. But good email marketing requires a wide net of email addresses since only 40%-50% of recipients will open any email. Per that, brands sometimes fall into the trap of throwing every email address they have onto a contacts list.

That can often be a mistake. The best use of a business newsletter is to grow and develop a loyal and excited customer base, the most excited and engaged people who have ever purchased from your business. Sending out a generic business newsletter to every email you have is likely to fail at reaching that objective.

We recommend pruning your customer list down to as core of a group as possible. Depending on how many email addresses you have, you could even create multiple customer remarketing campaigns. For instance, you could send general product announcements via email to all of your contact lists, send a quarterly newsletter to a smaller subsect and then deliver a “Rewards Club” email to an even smaller subsect. Regardless of how you segment your audience, just be sure you deliver email content your reader will be interested in. This is a key marketing rule to keep in general: the more targeted your content is, the better.

Take Your Email Marketing To The Next Level With JSL

We mentioned previously that print newsletters could be effective for some brands, but email is the best vector. In our experience as a digital marketing agency, email marketing is the most cost-effective, labor-efficient, and targeted way to reach existing customers. If you’re a small business that often sells to existing customers, you must use email marketing, no ifs, ands, or buts.

However, small businesses often struggle with getting email marketing down pat. Email marketing requires technical savvy, marketing experience, and design skills to really be done right. If you’re busy managing your business, that can be unrealistic. That’s where JSL Marketing & Web Design, your premier email marketing agency, enters the picture.

Depending on your specific needs, we can work with you to develop….

Automated Email Campaigns
Targeted Email Blasts
Segmented Customer Lists
Digital Graphics
Content Promotion Strategies
& More!

Fill Out The Form Below To Begin Your Email Marketing Planning!

November 10, 2022

Is Email Marketing Dead?: Email Marketing in 2022 & Beyond

As marketers, we’re always trying to keep up with the latest trends and be aware of what the marketing world is talking about. But one question that’s circulated over the years (and is still a hot debate) stood out to us:

Is email marketing dead?

More small businesses are reevaluating their marketing strategy and making tough decisions based on a channel’s impact, return on investment, and relevance to their strategy. Email marketing, in particular, is the tactic that often gets pushed to the side or forgotten, as business owners are more likely to invest in SEO or web design, which have a seemingly “instant” impact (spoiler alert — they don’t).

We put our heads together to talk through the pros and cons of email marketing to help equip you with the best data possible. Every marketing strategy is different and it’s likely that email marketing might not be a good fit for your brand, or that your email marketing execution will be unique. That’s perfectly fine — we’re here to simply share our thoughts!

The Challenges Of Email Marketing

Cluttered Inboxes

How many times have you opened your inbox and recoiled in horror at the number of unread emails? One of the biggest challenges with email marketing is competition. The sheer number of emails sent, often sporadically and without rhyme or reason, can deter email recipients from actually checking their inbox, since there are just so many emails to wade through.

Low Chance of Touchpoint

When you send an email, there is no guarantee that the recipient ever opens it. In fact, most probably won’t! That can be off putting to some marketers, who want to know they are making an impact on their desired targets. For some, the risk of an email being unopened is too large, so they opt for display, SEO or SEM instead.

Active Engagement Can Be Hard To Measure

Even an opened email is no guarantee. A recipient still needs to actually read the content, let alone take the desired action, like call or buy a product. Some marketers instead prefer more passive marketing mediums, like Youtube ads or broadcast TV, which require little action on the viewer’s part.

The Benefits of Email Marketing

While there are definitely challenges with email marketing, it is worth remembering that these can be overcome with the right strategy. Targeting the right people, writing good email copy, and incorporating a compelling call to action all will improve the odds that you see success with email marketing.

However, it is also worth remembering that email marketing offers a ton of benefits, benefits that other mediums do not.

Email Marketing Is Automated

One of the key benefits of email marketing is that it’s a completely automated outreach strategy, if done correctly. The number of touchpoints your brand can establish with customers and potential customers with email marketing is many times what you could do with manual outreach from sales. Other mediums, like social media and pay-per-click advertising, can be automated, but the potential reach is just typically so much higher with email marketing, at least for the typical small business.

Email Marketing Is Conversational

The biggest brands in the world pay top dollar to perfect their brand message when reaching out to potential clients. A natural, low-pressure, and informative brand message can help entice your clients to learn more and can often lead to gleaning bits of insight from your clients. Remember, the whole point of marketing isn’t just to advertise; you also should be encouraging real and authentic two-way exchanges of information with your clients and potential client. Email marketing is a great medium to do just that.

Email Marketing Is Cost Effective

They are better ways to reach more people than email marketing, but none are as cost-effective as email marketing. Pay-per-click advertising, paid social media campaigns, and broadcast advertising can reach more people, but these mediums do come with a hefty price tag. Email marketing typically requires no ad spend budget, fewer hours of maintenance, and less manual setup versus other marketing channels, making it a lower-cost medium. But that’s not all! Because email marketing allows you to reach specific people at specific times and is used to nurture existing clients to purchase again, it also drives more sales than other low-cost mediums. Email marketing punches above its weight!

Email Marketing Is Tailored

Marketers are always thinking through how to create marketing funnels, or paths to draw their potential clients from awareness to consideration to purchase. There are ways this can be done with web design, SEO or social media, but none have the versatility that email marketing does. If done correctly, marketers can use their email marketing campaigns to “build their own adventures” for potential clients and clients, depending on user quality or actions. Maybe a different follow up email should be sent to those who didn’t open the previous email. Maybe you are putting leads down an automated email campaign and realize that there really need to be two campaigns, depending on the industry of the lead. Never fear; with the right CRM and email strategy, you can segment your campaigns to be tailored to each unique lead.

Email Marketing Strategies

When we view email marketing holistically, acknowledging its weaknesses and noting its strengths, we see that there are a few rules to keep in mind when using email marketing.

Don’t Rely on Email Marketing To Grow Your Business; Use It To Grow Clients

Email marketing, at least for small businesses, doesn’t tend to be a great vehicle for net-new growth. Few people will open emails from a sender they don’t recognize, so using email marketing to reach new clients doesn’t pan out for a lot of small businesses. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t encourage email marketing to existing clients or leads. The medium is a great way to continually nurture existing clients or leads and sporadic email communication, such as through a product recall campaign or an existing client recall campaign, can keep you top of mind with your existing clients. Remember, an existing client is 60% likelier to convert, so this approach tends to work well!

Use In Tandem With Other Channels

Email marketing has its benefits, but it needs to be used in tandem with other marketing methods. As mentioned previously, email marketing works well as a remarketing tool. We recommend using other channels, like SEO, paid search, and paid social to reach new clients. There are multiple ways of doing this, but we recommend an approach where each individual piece of the campaign complements the other tactics. For instance, use paid social media to redirect to a contact page, where users can request a piece of content by filling in their name and email address. Now that you have email addresses, utilize a well-planned and informational email marketing campaign to educate and inform your lead about your brand!

Follow Best Practices, As Always

Email marketing isn’t a cheat code. You won’t see results if you don’t follow industry best practices for best results. Make sure…

Your email bodies are short and digestible
Your emails have concise and enticing subject lines
Your emails come from a trusted email address
Your emails don’t make pushy sales plays, but mainly offer informational content and news.
You comply with all relevant privacy and can spam regulations.

Consider Your Main Objective And Plan Accordingly

We will always recommend using email marketing as a part of your overall strategy, but it might not be the crux of your marketing strategy at any given point. If you’re a new business with hardly any customers, you need to focus on the essentials. Local SEO, branding, and logo design are much more important than email marketing at this stage. If you’re a company with a broader customer base, but an old, less-responsive website, we’d recommend putting more effort into a website redesign or a brand new site before email marketing. Now, if you’re a brand with a large customer base, but most of these customers haven’t purchased lately, then email marketing might be the perfect way to reengage them!

Need to revamp your email marketing strategy? Get in touch with the JSL Marketing Team for a free consultation!

October 08, 2020

6 Email Marketing Tips to Keep Your Customers Coming Back

If you’re a business owner looking to grow your brand, you probably have questions about why you should be using email marketing.

That’s a good place to be! Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach your target audience while still being cost-effective.

It’s a medium with a low cost of entry, allows you to reach a lot of people quickly, and produces some of the highest return on investment.

Don’t believe us? Check out some quick facts about email marketing.

Email allows you to reach 85% of Internet users in the US. That’s a higher % than search engines or social media! 99% of those with email also check their email daily.
Email marketing is cost-effective. One study, jointly conducted by Shop.org and Forrester Research, found that over 80% of US retailers considered email marketing one of the most cost-effective ways of acquiring a new customer.
Email marketing drives sales. With email campaigns, you’re able to slowly guide leads through the sales cycle and nudge them towards a purchase by offering new information at every step. You can’t do that as cost-effectively or seamlessly with ads or SEO. Plus, since most users check their inbox multiple times in a week or month, you can still drive sales after the fact, even if they aren’t ready to convert RIGHT now.
Email marketing can be adjusted for seasonality. You can’t rewrite your website or create a new video ad for every new holiday. It’s just not feasible for most small businesses. However, sending out holiday promotions or seasonal sales via email is simple. Businesses are able to quickly adjust their email campaigns to stay timely for their audiences, often in ways that just can’t be done through other mediums.

While all of that is great, how do you optimize your email marketing campaigns? Email marketing might not be rocket science, but there is a lot of research, finesses, trial-and-error, and technical skill that goes into every successful email campaign.

To better help you grow your brand, the JSL Marketing & Web Design team has compiled a list of email marketing tips to help you refine your email marketing campaigns and process. Drive qualified traffic to your business with these six email marketing best practices!

Our Email Marketing Tips, Tricks, & Best Practices

Before we run through our best email marketing practices, let’s define some common email marketing terminology to help you speak “Email Marketing” like a pro!

Email Body or Copy: the text and verbiage contained within the email.
Subject Line: the title that previews the subject of an email in the end user’s inbox.
Open Rate: the % of recipients who open the email. For instance, if a company sends out 10,000 emails with their monthly newsletter and 4,000 are opened, the open-rate of their email newsletter would be 40%. Anything above 30-35% would be considered a great success for an open rate.
Click-Through -Rate: The % of recipients who click an email. To use the previous example, if 500 people click the email, out of 10,000 sent, then the email has a 5% open rate. Anything above 2-3% would be considered a success for a click-through-rate.

Now that you’re an expert in email marketing terminology, let’s run through JSL Marketing & Web Design’s top email marketing tips and practices.

1. A/B Test Your Emails

Let’s say you’re the owners of Ristorante Dulce, a fictitious Italian restaurant in Dallas, TX. You’re about to send out an email newsletter to your contact list but are torn about what subject line you should use. Should you recap the wine tasting you had last week or highlight the month’s appetizer special? Send out two emails with two subject lines to A/B test those subject lines and see what resonates best with your audience!

And you can use this technique with multiple aspects of an email, not just subject lines. You can A/B or even A/B/C test everything from imagery and promotions included, to email body text and more to help determine what is most impactful for your readers.

It’s important to remember to use A/B tests, often called ‘a split test’, over the course of a long period of time before making data-driven conclusions. Don’t send out only one A/B test and then make huge changes to your email marketing based on the results of one email. To really harness the learnings of your tests, conduct multiple runs over a longer time period to see if one version really is dominant. After all, it’s easy for data to be skewed with only a small number of tests and recipients. In our Ristorante Dulce example, the owners learn over the course of six months that subject lines about specials result in higher open rates and click-through-rates.

2. Keep Your Emails Succinct:

There’s a time and a place for long-form content and content marketing, but it’s not in an email. Your users will only spend so much time reading your emails before they decide if they want to take action. Don’t write the next great American novel; write a short, but punchy email that captivates and communicates in 300 words or less. We’d recommend that most emails be kept to 150-200 words for best results, with a clear call to action near the end of the email.

3. Build Your Email Subscriber List:

This one goes without saying. The more people you have on your contact list, the better. You can ask for these email addresses on your website, on intake paperwork, or in person with clients. However, while it is important to grow your email marketing list, there is one important caveat…

4. Target Different People on Different Email Lists:

Don’t just gather every email you can and then send out spammy emails to that entire list. Remember, the goal of email marketing isn’t to send out emails for the sake of sending out emails; it’s to communicate with a qualified audience. Make sure that you’re growing your list with the addition of QUALIFIED leads.

In that same vein, your customer base is probably pretty diverse. Don’t use cookie-cutter emails to speak to everyone on your list. Target the different segments within that list with different promotions, imagery, and copy for best results. The owners of Ristorante Dulce, for instance, could create a list for “Wine Enthusiasts “to alert them of changes in the restaurant’s cellars and “Wine of the Month Club” while also sending out the monthly newsletter to the entire list.

5. Use Branded Imagery & Videos in Your Email Body

The verbiage you use in your email copy is critical. However, don’t spend hours perfecting every word and then forget to include a high-quality, high-resolution image or video that will catch your reader’s attention. For bonus points, make sure that you include an image that shows off your branding. Even better, include a video. Emails with video have a 19 % higher open rate and a 65% higher click-through- rate, according to Campaign Monitor.

6. Use Email Automation For the Little Things

While there will always be set up work and fine-tuning involved, email marketing can be automated. For instance, let’s say a jewelry store has an e-commerce option on their website. By enabling an automated email campaign that automatically sends out promotions every month, they can grow their business without investing a ton of work! Automated email campaigns can also be staggered so that different users receive different emails at different stages. For instance, let’s say 70% of people do not open the initial email. This jewelry store can set up their campaign to resend the initial email of the campaign with a different subject line to JUST those who didn’t open.

Of course, this requires constant monitoring and adjusting on the backend to ensure the campaign is firing. The right automated email campaign can’t just be set and forgotten. However, it can streamline manual work and allow your business to constantly draw users closer to purchase with less effort. At JSL Marketing & Web Design we’d much rather focus on strategy over “busy work” and automated email campaigns are a great way to live that philosophy.

Award-Winning Email Marketing Services

If you have any further questions about how to use email marketing to reach your customers, never fear! Our team is on standby to answer your questions. We’ve been growing businesses with our award-winning digital marketing services for years and would love to do the same for you. Call us at 877-514-0276 to discuss further.

March 09, 2020

Content Marketing 101 – The What, The Where, & The Why

Content marketing is more than just putting some words to the page or writing blogs. Content marketing actually covers all of the words you read on a screen. From website copy to emails, case studies and white papers and yes, even blogs.

Here are just a few of the areas that content marketing can include:

Website Copy – think keywords and your brand’s unique online ‘voice’
Blogging – answers, articles, information, and entertainment
Emails – from personalized to automated, email marketing is content marketing
Infographics and eBooks – writing to inform and creating lead magnets along the way
Scripts – video is huge, and writing for your video scripts needs just as much care as designing them
Case Studies – these tell your company’s story, successes, services, and build trust
Social Media – every tweet, post, or photo caption should reflect your business and your voice

Content Marketing for Any On-Page Copy

The words on your website aren’t just for your customers, in fact, in order to even get those customers, you should be writing with Google in mind.

A large part of content marketing is, of course, the keywords – but where should you put these keywords? How many? And how many should you even target per page? Luckily, we’ve been at this for a while, and we know just how to craft the perfect content for your webpage.

Keywords

We recommend targeting 3-5 keywords (or keyword phrases) per page. Make sure you have your keywords in these four locations for the biggest impact:

Page SEO Titles: Your page title is one of the most important places for your keyword to appear. Your page title is the purple text below and is the ‘title’ that shows on search engines for users to click to visit your webpage. Each page of your website should have a unique title between 40-60 characters that includes relevant keywords for that page. A recommended formula is: Page | Relevant Keyword | Company
Meta Descriptions: Metas are the grey text above, showing a snippet of what is on the page. This is a great place to put keywords, so the user knows what to expect on the page. A good meta is between 140-160 characters, too short and you are wasting prime real estate, too long and it will be cut off by Google. Like titles, metas should be unique to each page.
Headers (H1, H2, H3): Your headers are like an outline of your content with H1 being your subject at the top of the page (in the biggest font). You can have multiple H2, H3, H4, etc per page, but only one H1. Since headers are ‘subject lines’, they are weighted more heavily by Google and a great place for keywords! Instead of having your H1 be your name (JSL Marketing) use keywords (Web Design & Digital Marketing That Convert | Dallas Web Design) as this gives multiple keywords and includes location factors. Keep headers under 70 characters for the best results.
Content: Content is any written word on your page, the text you read. Of course, having your keywords in your H1, title, and metas are more visible and therefore most helpful, but if you are going to talk about a subject fully and thoroughly, then these keywords and phrases will naturally be throughout your on-page content as well. Google likes to see ‘in-depth content’ that shows you know what you are talking about – it’s one of the ways it judges your expertise!

Blogging

Blogging is essentially like on-page content, in the way that it is a new ‘page’ you are able to create weekly that gives you more space for content. This content can teach, entertain, or inform your readers and should be both in-depth and keyword rich – just like your webpage copy.

If you can write a solid Home, About, our Services page, then you can create a great blog too – just remember to update it often (weekly or at least monthly) and provide helpful topics related to your industry. You really are trying to give value to your readers when you write a blog, so give them useful and actionable information!

Email Templates

Email templates should be personable and personalized – because no one wants a generic email sent out to thousands. And if that’s what they think yours reads like, it will go right into the trash bin

Write in a conversational way, show your value, and never be pushy. Writing emails or email templates are less about keywords, and more about making connections and (once again) giving value to your readers.

Scripts

As video marketing grows and shows no signs of slowing, then the art of creating content for scripts must also be growing, right? Unfortunately, a lot of people write scripts like they would an email template, with little thought towards SEO. But actually, the words you say in a video can and should be uploaded as the transcription. And if they are words on a page, then Google is reading it!

Think of your scripts for videos more like blogs than email templates, as you are producing content that gets ‘read’ by Google and should therefore include relevant keywords and have a length that shows you know what you’re talking about.

Additionally, make sure you are still being friendly, conversational, and interesting, as most people don’t want to watch a droning 15-minute video that will put them to sleep.

Contact JSL Marketing Today for More Tips, Help, or Our Professional Content Marketing Services

We’re here to help you in any way you need, whether that be an on-page content audit, information about digital marketing, email marketing or blogging, or in case you want someone to take the whole project off your hands so you can focus on your business.

We are here and we are ready to help!

Contact JSL Marketing & Web Design to start your content journey today!

August 19, 2019

7 Tips to Make Your Email Marketing Efforts Worth It

Email Marketing has great potential both in ROI…and in annoying your customers into hitting that spam button and never looking back – let’s make sure you’re getting the former, not the latter.

If you are serious about Email Marketing, then the first thing you need is an email list, or, someone who actually wants your emails.

I repeat – do not buy names, emails, lists – because those people clearly do not want to be reached by you. Buying email addresses will only get you ignored at best and blocked at worst – so, don’t do it.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s jump into our top 7 tips for doing email marketing right!

Your Subject Line Should Be Your Top Priority

Your subject line is like the title to your book, and it needs to be good if you want your average reader to pick it up and flip through it. Oftentimes email marketers ignore the subject line or make it something nondescript that doesn’t intrigue or entice the reader to open it – this is your first mistake, but it’s a big one.

Preview Text Matters (A Lot)

Right after your title, there’s preview text, and again, this is important. This preview text on your email tells what the email will be about, and you should craft it with these tips in mind:

Don’t let your preview text get cut off right when you’re getting to the point
Don’t make your email preview text bland and boring – no one will click
Never let your preview text sound spammy as it might not even make it to their inbox

NEVER YELL AT YOUR READERS!!

Speaking of sounding spammy, nothing is worse than multiple exclamation marks, all caps, or other clearly spammy-marketing techniques. Avoid these telltale signs of bad email marketing and instead, opt for truly attractive subject lines and preview text to interest your readers.

Write for Real People

Now that we’ve gotten past the text you can see without opening the email – let’s dive into how you should craft the actual content of your mail.

Make sure it’s conversational, educational, or gives value to the reader, much like when you write content, blogs, or articles online. It’s the same audience (people online) so you should hold to all the same principles.

Remember that you don’t want to ask them to give something (time, money) unless you are giving them something as well. And in email marketing, you are giving value and information in exchange for their time and their contact information – don’t make them regret giving it to you!

Psychology Has a Place in Email Marketing

Did you know there is actually a lot of psychology in email marketing (and marketing in general)? If not, prepare for a crash course:

Time-limited discounts actually work very well, because as a culture we never want to miss out on something good. This means that (within reason) use scarcity and urgency in your email to encourage clicks or your specific CTA
Humans are very curious creatures, this means we will most likely give you a click if it means we can finish the story, blog, or are intrigued into wanting to know more. Consider not posting your entire blog in your email, or beckoning your readers to finish the story or article on your website
Colors can have a large impact on your reader’s feeling about your deal, product, even business, check out more on color psychology here, and remember to make your CTAs pop by making them a different, vibrant color
We look where others are looking, this means using faces or pictures of people who are looking towards your CTA or products can be helpful in increasing your click through rates
Personalization is a huge influencing factor that merges both psychology and email marketing…in fact, it’s such a great tip, it should get its own category…

Personalization Goes a Long Way

Have you ever read an email and just know, deep down in your gut, that it was sent out to 1,000+ other people too? How’d you feel about that?

Sure, if it was a huge store like Walmart sending out an email about back-to-school specials, I don’t need it to be personalized, because I know they aren’t sending it just to me. But if you’re sending out an email to see if someone wants to do business with you, or partner with you, it better be personalized.

Mention their company name, their area, their own name, or at least make sure the email caters to their specific and unique needs.

Choose a Goal & Stick to it

Too many CTAs can be messy at best and confusing at worse, make your email clean and clear by only including a single goal.

Want them to visit your website? Have a button or two, anchor text, and pictures that link back to your site. You don’t have to have only one CTA button or one form of CTA in your email, but you should avoid housing multiple CTAs for different goals in the same email.

Do You Need Help with Your Email Marketing? JSL Marketing & Web Design is Happy to Assist!

We love email marketing and we love the ROI we’ve seen first-hand, but if you’re still struggling to make your email marketing strategy work for you, then let us help you create the perfect strategy for your online goals!

April 12, 2019

What Are the Best Practices for Email Marketing?

The Digital Marketing industry often seems split when it comes to email marketing, and clients are often even more split on the issue. Some love email marketing and swear by its ROI, while others think it is annoying, spammy, or interruptive.

So, which side is right? Who is the winner and loser of this time-worn debate?

Just like in many areas of life, the truth is not nearly as black and white as you might think. Some email marketing is amazing and can have a high ROI, whereas other email marketing schemes are just that – schemes, and are therefore annoying, spammy, or interruptive.

The best way to tell the difference between good email marketing and bad email marketing is by using the golden rule.

Not the golden rule of marketing or sales or algebra – the original golden rule. Treating others how you would like to be treated.

Would you like to be getting the emails you’re sending? Would you like to be bombarded daily or would you prefer to receive emails of quality that offer value instead of sales pitches? That answer is easy.

Now that we’ve laid that argument to rest, let’s look at some best practices for email marketing – the good kind, of course.

Best Practices for (the Good Kind of) Email Marketing

Don’t Know What to Do? Test it!

Split testing can be your best friend when you aren’t sure which CTA, subject lines, times or segmentation will work best.

Instead of guessing and wondering – make your emails compete against each other in a battle to the death! Or, more accurately, a battle for which gets more opens, more clicks, and more engagement.

Split testing might seem like it involves a lot of statistics and math, but really, it’s simply changing one thing in a particular email, sending it out to half your email list, and sending the original (unchanged) email out to the other half. Then you just sit back and compare the open rates, engagement rates, and click-through rates.

Simple and effective, a digital marketers’ favorite words.

CTAs Aren’t the Enemy

CTAs are actually helpful – just make sure you’re keeping that golden rule in mind. What would make you click something? What would seem natural? What would seem spammy?

This will greatly vary due to your industry, customer profiles, and services, but let’s use an example we can all agree on.

You are a holistic health expert and you want to have people contact you for online mindfulness and meditation sessions through your email marketing strategy. You could use a CTA that says, ‘Try my services now!’ or you could use something like, ‘Let’s journey together’.

Which anchor text or button would you click?

Of course, you could use a split test to find out, but using some common sense and deduction skills about the expected customer profiles, I bet we would be correct in choosing the second option as the successful CTA.

Create a Story, Not a Sale

Creating a story and inviting your customers to view that story with you has been proven to get higher engagement rates than sending sales pitch after sales pitch.

In fact, because we are constantly inundated with marketing strategies from commercials to billboards, radio ads to print ads, it’s pretty common for all ‘pitches’ to be sent right to the trash unless there is a huge sale or incentive.

So, what do people open? What do people actually read in their inbox?

Value, quality, and creativity.

If you tell a story, give useful information, or give value in other ways through your emails, then your audience will see them as an equal price for their time. But if your emails aren’t being opened, then it’s likely that the value you think you’re giving, isn’t enough to buy the time of your email recipients.

If that’s the case, it’s probably time for a split test or a bolstered content plan.

Segment Your Lists – One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Segmentation sounds scary, but it is truly key when creating a solid, successful email marketing strategy. You don’t want to be sending the same email to your loyal customer as you are to a new potential lead, or vice versa.

A.K.A. Sending your ‘exclusive member sale’ to the person that signed up for more information two days ago or sending your welcome email to someone who’s been with you for the past six months.

You also don’t want to send everyone everything either, because again, spammy. Instead, you need to use email marketing software (like Constant Contact or Mailchimp) to segment your email lists into relevant categories with relevant strategies.

Email Marketing Doesn’t Have to Be a Fight

If the good kind of email marketing sounds like something your company (or customers) would want, then contact JSL Marketing & Web Design by phone or email or form.

We’d love to work with you to set up the perfect strategy and get your ROI rolling!