email marketing

5 Tips to Take Your Email Marketing to the Next Level

email marketing tips

How does a 4,200% ROI sound?

According to Hubspot, that is a very real number for small businesses with a solid email marketing strategy, which can generate $42 for each $1 spent.

In a world where digital marketing is exploding, email marketing is a necessary component. But only 64% of businesses utilize it, and many of those who already do could likely improve.

If you’re ready to go above and beyond with your email marketing, here’s what to do.

Have a Solid Call to Action

Are you talking at your subscribers or to them? If it’s the former, you have some work to do.

An email should be a precursor to a future interaction, not the whole interaction. You sent the email for a specific purpose — to get the subscriber to act. Whether you want them to buy your product, book a demo, sign up for a service, visit your website, schedule a sales call or stop by your brick-and-mortar location, you’re trying to get them to do something.

If all you’re doing is saying the same thing over and over again with no clear direction, you’re wasting your time and theirs. Have a solid call to action so your subscriber knows the next steps to take.

Allow Customers to Choose Which Emails They Receive

Even people who love your small business might not want to get every single email you send. Some people may not want a new blog post each week but do want to be notified when you’re running a special promotion; others love your how-to videos but couldn’t care less about your loyalty program.

By allowing people to opt into the specific emails they want to receive, you’re making it more likely that they’ll act upon them.

Practice Segmentation

Your subscribers are not all created equal, and you shouldn’t treat them as such. They all have different wants and needs, are in different stages of the buying cycle, and have different demographics.

A one-size-fits-all email approach is a recipe for disaster. Instead, create separate emails for each of your target groups. You still might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but segmentation allows you to get closer to your mark.

Trim Your List Down

A loaded email list is great, right? The more, the merrier!

Wrong. Having a billion subscribers doesn’t mean anything if only a small fraction of them are engaged.

By trimming your mailing lists down, you can get a clearer picture of how your campaign is going without uninterested people muddying your results. You’re also cutting your risk of Google automatically marking your messages as spam, which can definitely happen if too many of those uninterested people are flagging your emails.

Use a Subject Line Tester

It doesn’t matter how awesome your email is if no one opens it. And without a killer subject line, no one is going to open it.

Subject line testers (like this one) allow you to enter a potential subject line and receive a score, then tweak it to see how it compares with other variations of the same thing. For instance, “There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Cat” scores a mere 42, while “How to Skin a Cat” comes in at 51 and “5 Ways to Skin a Cat” earns an impressive 63.

(Note: No cats were skinned in the writing of this blog post, although one was repeatedly discouraged from chewing on the author’s laptop.)

How Do Your Emails Measure Up?

If you’re already using email marketing, great. If you’re not using it at all, it’s time to start. And if you want to make it better than ever, the above tips will get you where you want to go. Dollar for dollar, it’s the best bang for your marketing buck.

Not thrilled with your current email marketing ROI? Hand Mischa Communications the keyboard. We’ll help you create emails that get excellent results. Send us a message!