Effective marketing boils down to this: Find an audience, figure out what they need or want, and then deliver it. Email is one of the best mediums to help you do just that. And it isn’t always about selling them on a product. In fact, that isn’t at all where you want to start. 

Steps In Effective Email Marketing

First, you want to build a relationship with your readers. You want them to get to know you. You want to help them out so they start to like you and trust you. Only then will you be able to make an offer and have them pull out their wallet and buy it. 

Pay attention to your website stats. Programs like Google Analytics can give you a lot of information about where you’re readers came from, what page they landed on and where they were on your site when they joined your list. That data along with demographical information will tell you a lot about your audience. 

Pay Attention to Responses

As you start to email your readers, they will reply and get back in touch with you. Pay attention to what they’re saying. And don’t forget to read between the lines. Let’s say you’re in the parenting niche and you noticed that some of your readers are asking for suggestions on being a more patient parent. They complain about being short-temperate and freaking out about little things. The real issue may be a lack of sleep because the baby or toddler isn’t sleeping through the night. 

Dig deep and see what you can learn about your market. Sometimes what they tell you they want isn’t the real issue. On the flip side, it can be helpful to ask them for suggestions. Keep the questions open-ended if you want a lot to work with. 

Or consider having your readers fill out a simple little survey. It’s quick and easy to do with Google forms. You get some good data and you get your readers to interact. Having them contribute builds a sense of community even via email. 

Analyze Open Rates

Last but not least go back and look at the past emails you’ve sent. Pay attention to open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes. If a large percentage of readers opened the email, that’s a good indication they were interested in the topic. If they clicked a link to additional content, that’s even better. If on the other hand, you got a lot of unsubscribes, that might be an indication that either the topic was wrong or your language and the overall message didn’t click with your audience. 

Use all the data and information you get back to learn more about your target audience and connect with them on a deeper level. The more you know about your subscribers, the more effective your email marketing will be.  

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Keep Them Waiting For More - Using Foreshadowing to Create Anticipation

There’s a pretty neat strategy called foreshadowing that you can use in your email marketing to improve open rates. You may have seen this used on news programs and talk shows. Right before the commercial break, the hosts announce what’s coming up next. The idea is that you’re intrigued enough to sit through the commercial to see the next segment. 

Another good example of foreshadowing is when magazines show images and headlines or short bullets of what’s coming in next month’s issue. Again, the point is to pique your interest and get you to either buy the next issue or even better, get a subscription. 

Adapting This Strategy for Email Marketing

We can easily adapt this for email marketing and it works like a charm. Toward the end of your email transition from what you’re talking about today to what’s coming in the next email. Be vague on purpose, but grab their attention. 

For example, if you’re talking about why email marketing is important and the next email will be about crafting subject lines to get a higher open rate, you may write something like this: “Keep an eye out for Friday’s email. We’ll talk about THE most important thing when it comes to email marketing. If you don’t get this right, nothing else matters.” 

Mix it Up

To mix it up, mention what they can find in the next email in the P.S. of your message. If you publish a weekly newsletter, try adding a section on what’s coming in the next issue similar to what you see in a magazine. Keep it simple and use images for the best results. 

You can even take it a step further and get your subscribers to open a previously sent email. This works particularly well if you’re writing a series of emails on a related topic. Toward the beginning of your email you mention something you covered in the last email, then move into today’s topic and then wrap it up with a little hint about what’s coming next. 

You don’t have to use foreshadowing in every single email. Sprinkle it in here and there where it makes sense. It also gives you a chance to pick up on in the subject line of your next email. Try using something like “As promised…” Even readers who missed your last email might be curious enough to open this one. 

Give it a try and see if you start to see higher open rates and more importantly get your subscribers more engaged. 

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Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a magic formula you could follow or a given schedule that works for everyone? We all wish there was a magic formula that would ensure that we got the best results every time but unfortunately there is no such thing, and there’s a good reason there isn’t. 

Why Isn’t There a Special Formula?

The reason there is no special formula is that every audience and every person is different. Every website has its own needs and needs to draw attention at different intervals. There is no way to make everyone happy with the same actions, but there is a lot you can do to make almost any email frequency work for your website. 

Let’s Lay the Groundwork

One of the biggest mistakes is to have too much time between your marketing emails because then your readers have a chance to forget you. I never recommend for anyone to send emails out less than once per month. For most markets, you will want to send emails at least twice per month. 

On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want to send more than one email per day on average. Some days you may need to send multiple emails but on your weekly or bi-weekly average, you should not send an email more than an average of once per day.

Making A Decision on Frequency

Start with analyzing what you are doing now and how it is working for you. Then figure out how often you want to send emails. Do you need to grow a closer connection to your readers by sending marketing emails more often? Do you need to drive more traffic back to your website by sending out links more often? Do you need to increase your income by sending emails more frequently? 

Making A Plan

Once you have decided where you are with your current marketing efforts, and where you want to be, you can make a plan to help you get from Point A to Point B. What you don’t want to do is to go straight from emailing once every few months to daily emails. It’ll get your readers clicking the spam button like crazy. Instead, start with monthly emails for a couple of months, then let your readers know you have more to share with them and start mailing weekly. Then a few months later, ramp it up to daily emails.

Or find a good reason why you’re mailing them daily. For example, while you usually publish a weekly newsletter with the occasional promotional email in between, running a 15 or 30-day challenge for your readers is a great excuse to hit their inbox daily without seeming pushy or spammy. 

Listen to your audience when you get feedback on email frequency but also realize that there will always be someone complaining. Look at data like open rates to get a better feel for what frequency is working best for you and your audience. 

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Keep it Short

Don’t Make it Sound “Spammy”

Pique Their Interest

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One of the most important tasks you can invest time in is your email marketing efforts. A well-constructed email marketing campaign will draw in readers and customers and help your new and existing content to convert. There are a lot of things to take into account when you are preparing your email marketing strategy so let’s look into Email Deliverability.

What You Need to Know About Email Deliverability

You will spend a good chunk of time each week crafting emails to your subscribers but if you don’t have a good delivery rate it won’t do you any good. If those emails land in your potential readers’/customers’ spam folder, you don’t have much of a chance of making a sale or building a quality relationship with them. Here are three tips to ensure that your emails make it to your subscribers’ inboxes without unnecessary drama. 

Use a Reputable Auto Responder Service

Using a reputable auto responder service is the best thing you can do to reduce the chances of your emails landing in spam folders. Companies like ConvertKit, Aweber, MooSend, and Get Response are extremely popular, and these companies work really hard to make sure that they are in good standing with various email platforms. 

Most autoresponders have the capability to list delivery stats and ensure that your emails are in compliance to keep you out of trouble. 

Set Expectations and Hold Yourself to Them

If your subscribers regularly open your emails, you have a better chance of staying in the primary inbox. The only way to ensure that your customers open your emails is to provide great content to your subscribers every time. To do this, you need to set your expectations high from the beginning and hold yourself to the same high standards every time you compose an email. Let your subscribers know early on how often they will receive emails from you so there is a better chance they will be opened. 

Another great way to remind your customers and readers is to “foreshadow” your messages. An example of this is toward the end of your current email, mention they can look for another email from you next Wednesday. Once you have set this expectation with your readers or customers, do everything you can to uphold that promise. Readers will expect it and they will lose faith in you if you don’t stick to your word. It will also improve your deliverability.

Clean Up Your Mailing List Regularly

A great step you can take to ensure that you land in the main inbox is to clean up your email list regularly. Remove subscribers that have not opened your emails in the last six months because there is a good chance that they are no longer interested in the services or information that you are offering.  

To do this, check your auto responder services manual or help files. This will show you how to delete anyone that hasn’t opened an email during the period of time you have. If the idea of deleting anyone who hasn’t read your emails in the past six months freaks you out, delete people who haven’t looked at your emails in the last year. 

These tips help you to ensure the high deliverability of your emails in general. Doing this will ensure that the emails you send out will make it to subscribers that want to receive your information. After all, that’s the point of email marketing, right? 

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