The term “direct marketing” often makes us think of those cheap flyers that are stuffed into our dormant letterboxes. Mostly utilised by advertisers like plumbers, estate agents and sangomas, they rarely strike a chord with us. More often than not, the flyers just end up in the bin. But direct marketing doesn’t deserve this bad rep. When done correctly, direct marketing can work effectively. Email marketing, as a form of direct marketing, is often something people get wrong. Read on to learn how to send marketing emails the right way.

Why email marketing?

Email marketing isn’t dead. It remains a great way to communicate with your market. It’s a quick, cost-effective and measurable marketing tool. There is a disclaimer though: email marketing must be done right. If it is done incorrectly then your emails will just end up in people’s spam folders, along with thousands of other emails. Take this advice to send marketing emails that work:

How to send marketing emails that work

Don’t send everything to everyone

The better targeted an email is, the more likely it is to work. Your business likely has many aspects to it, but not everyone in your market wants to know about everything in your business. Try to get as much information about your market as possible, as this will help you to segment your market and then send them information that will resonate with them. People will open and read emails that are relevant to them. If it’s useless to them then you will just get people clicking on the unsubscribe button.

Engage personally

What will make your email the most relevant is if it is personalised to each recipient. Start off by addressing the recipient by name. That’s just the start though. It’s easy these days to set up automated emails that are triggered based on certain actions taken by the user. For example, maybe you have done some online shopping and abandoned your cart, and the next moment you receive an email reminding you that you left some items in your cart. Or perhaps you have had LinkedIn send you jobs that would be perfect for you. Each recipient on your database is unique – keep that in mind. Don’t get consumed with sending emails to as many people as possible, rather focus on sending personal, relevant, engaging emails – perhaps to fewer people, but with better results.

Make your emails less spammy

It’s important to stick to the rules when it comes to email marketing. The first rule is to ensure that you always have an unsubscribe button on your emails to make it easy for people to opt out of receiving communication from you. If this is not in place then people will inevitably get frustrated and they may even mark your emails as spam. To prevent your emails heading straight into spam, make sure people have subscribed to receive your emails (avoid using purchased database lists), don’t use spam trigger words, use clean content and focus on sending quality emails.

Get your timing right

Some days are better than others to send emails. It all depends on who your recipients are, where they are based (e.g. what timezone they are in) and what you are sending them. You can schedule your emails to send at certain times, so use that option wisely. Track the success rate of your email campaigns and adjust them to find the best times.

Make it readable on mobile

The fact is that most people are going to read your email on a device other than a desktop/laptop, so it is fundamental to ensure your email is readable on mobile devices. Always test how your emails will look on different devices and systems before sending.

Make readers take action

What is the goal of sending your email? You most likely want your readers to take some kind of action that you can measure like purchasing a product, contacting you for more information, signing up for a service or RSVPing for an event. Think about what you want your readers to do and make your call to actions clear.

Include creative content

Text on its own will not work! People tend to shut off when they see lots of text as their busy lifestyles don’t usually allow them the time to read it all. Simplify your text and make it creative. You will also get higher engagement levels if you include images and video in your emails. Make your email content interesting and easily digestible for your reader.

Don’t send and forget

There isn’t much point doing any marketing if you don’t assess its effectiveness. After sending emails, it is important to look at the results of each campaign. That way, you can learn what worked or didn’t work and change it for next time. Check all the stats on the engagement levels, CTAs clicked, people who unsubscribed, etc. If you do A/B tests, evaluate what works best and move forward with the best option.

If you want to send marketing emails that work, give us a call today.