Effective Email Marketing Content

Email marketing is almost as old as the Internet itself and for that reason, many will have you believe that it’s no longer relevant in today’s digital marketing. This is far, far from the truth though; email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools in the marketing arsenal and those that discount it, will lose out.

The Importance of eMarketing

The digital age is in full swing. It’s brought with it limitless opportunities for the ordinary man and woman on the street to make their mark online. Some simply want to inform others of their passion in life, some want to help and support others, and some want to make their fortune by becoming one of the hundreds of thousands of new onlinepreneurs. But whatever your goals, you’ll need some form of digital marketing to raise awareness of your brand, and to attract followers which will hopefully convert to customers.

The Different Methodologies

There are many different methodologies when it comes to digital marketing. They include:

• Search Engine Optimisation
• Content Marketing
• Pay per Click
• CPM (Cost per Mille) Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Email marketing
• WOM (Word of Mouth) marketing

The methodologies that have received most attention in recent times are content advertising, (even more so following the recent publicity about Google’s Hummingbird Algorithm changes), and social media advertising following the huge boom in the popularity of social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest etc.

Email Marketing still alive and kicking

Email marketing seems to have fallen by the wayside, certainly in terms of hype; but it is still very much alive and kicking. In actual fact, it is still, the most effective way of marketing, on a cost per sale basis. The problem is that many people have bad experiences with using email marketing, but this is mostly as a result of one thing – ineffective content.

Sows’ Ears and Silk Purses

They say that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. In other words if the raw material isn’t up to the job in the first place, no matter what you do with it, you’re still going to end up with a bodged job. It applies to anything and everything, including email marketing. You can have the best product or service offer in the world, but if the emails telling people about it are poorly constructed, you’ve just shot yourself in the foot.

What Constitutes Effective Email Marketing Content

In the final analysis, it makes absolutely no difference what the product or service is that is being advertised. The following principles of effective content still apply, and these include:

• An attention grabbing headline
• Great lead in
• Relevant content
• Use of info graphics
• Effective data collection and processing
• Good follow up

Attention Grabbing Headlines

Even if your recipients have previously given permission for you to send them marketing emails, they may still decide to delete them if they suspect they are boring and run of the mill. So you need a title or headline that will:

1. Grab their attention
2. Tempt them into opening the email.

Now I’m not going to even attempt to tell you what an attention grabbing headline for your particular marketing campaign or business niche might be. You should know better than anyone, and if you don’t (marketing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea), then you need to find yourself an email marketing campaign management service provider to work with.

Suffice it say however that any attention grabbing headline can be:

• Direct and to the point – Blue Denim Jeans at Bargain Prices
• Indirect and more subtle – Fashion-ware for that Cattle Drive
• An actual news headline – Blue Denim Jeans – Prices Drop to all time Low
• A “How to” headline – How to Buy Blue Denim Jean at Bargain Prices
• A “Question” headline – Are your Blue Denim Jeans still Fashionable?
• A “Command” headline – Get your Blue Denim Jeans here at Bargain Prices

Sidestepping the Spam Trap

I expect you’re like most people who use frequently use the Internet and check their emails several times a day. You pay little or no attention to what’s in your spam folder. The majority of us don’t even bother to read it. Instead, we simply delete it without even checking to see what it’s about. So even if your email is wonderfully crafted, complete with a great headline; if it goes into people’s spam folders, it won’t matter a jot. It’ll simply get put straight into the recycle bin.

(Photo credit: tamsinbishton)

There’s another danger too. If your emails frequently get branded as being spam, you stand a good chance of being blacklisted by Google, so you can kiss bye-bye to any prospects of email marketing full stop! It’s also vital that you include an unsubscribe link as this is required by law; you can get software and services (such as ConstantContact) to help you do this and manage your list.

Creating an Email List

By far the best way of ensuring your marketing emails get into your recipients’ inboxes is to use an email list that you have created yourself; one in which all of the contacts you have in there have given you permission to send them marketing emails. It’s not difficult to compile such a list, but if your business is a new start-up, it may take some time before it contains enough permission based contact to merit using it to generate an email marketing campaign.

Consider how you can use your site for this; do you offer different incentives for your visitors to fill in their email address? Perhaps used to ask for quotes/more info, or even better, provide a form with downloadable content so that the visitor has to fill in their email address to access it. This can be anything from white papers to video, but it must be useful and relevant or the reader will feel cheated.

Buying Email Lists

Personally, I wouldn’t bother as you have no guarantee that the list serves your target audience in many cases. However, if you must, use a specialist email list service provider. If you do decide to go down this route, you must research your supplier and ask how they come about these lists. Well before buying anything from. There are unfortunately plenty of unscrupulous people around who will sell you start on neither permission-based, nor relevant to your particular market niche. So look before you leap!

Creating Effective Email Marketing Content

Okay, so let’s now assume that you’ve avoided the spam trap and your email is safely in your recipients email in tray. It’s still no guarantee being read! This is where the actual headline and the content itself now comes into play.

Good Lead-in and Relevant Content

So having read your reader’s attention and having enticed them to open the email you need to get straight down to the point. If your headline was about Blue Denim Jeans, you mustn’t start talking about corduroy trousers for example. Make sure the content is on message, short, sharp, and to the point. It needs to end with a link to your website of course and can include further links in the body.

The Importance of Presentation

You can use a service or software to help you with this as unless you can code with HTML, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to make an effective email that looks nice. I use Constant Contact, so let’s have a quick look at how you would create a mail with their service.

  

Create email in Constant Contact

As you can see, there are templates to help you to choose layout and you can also chose colour schemes to suit your brand.

 

Next, you simply edit the layout, adding colours, backgrounds, images and text using the online editor. Note that at the top of the page there’s a Spam Check button, so that you can keep an eye on how your content is shaping up with regard to spam.

 

Next you add your lists, which you can import from a number of sources and save into groups, so that moving forward you can better personalise. Also notice the Schedule button, which allows you to send out the mail at a time when your research will have told you that your target audience is likely to open it.

 

You can then track how many people opened the mail and how many clicked through to measure effectiveness.

The Follow-up

Although this is nothing to do with effective email content, it has everything to do with converting enquiries into sales. Whilst a small percentage of your marketing emails may result in a direct sale, it is more likely that recipients will click through to your website to have a browse. Nine times out of ten, that’s all they will do, so little much more reminder, as a follow-up, is always a good idea. It simply good email marketing campaign management.

Email Marketing is still King

Despite all of the new innovations and technologies that have been introduced recently, although it’s not sexy, email marketing is still King. When carefully constructed and filled with effective content, email marketing campaign offer an ROI of up to 4,300% according to the DMA.

In fact, personalised email is now the way to go, hence using different lists for different targets, allowing you to really drill down exactly which customers you want to send different mail to.