7 Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool at the service of brands and small businesses (also of bloggers).

It helps you gather new customers, connect with your audience and get to know them, understanding their needs and problems.

But if you really want to get benefits from your email marketing, you need to have a scrupulous plan and not leave anything to chance.

People don’t give away their email addresses so easy, and even more, they can unsubscribe from your newsletter in a matter of few single clicks!

In this post, I’ll give you some tips to improve your email marketing.

1. Think Mobile

The emails are not read just on a desktop PC.

I can tell you more.

Some studies indicate that today, in 2014, emails are opened even more often from mobile devices than from desktop ones.

Therefore, it is surely a wise move to set up your campaign to be well displayed on mobile, as many of your users will read your email from their smart phone or tablet.

According to ReturnPath’s Email in Motion study, more than 60% of Americans and 40% of Europeans would not read or even erase emails not properly structured for mobile.

It’s time for you to use a responsive template, as you don’t want to lose precious subscribers.

2. Build a Clear Design

Create a simple and clean design.

In short: put yourself in the shoes of your subscribers and think about the design usability of your emails.

This means transforming a mass of indistinct words, images and call to action into a clear layout, which must be readable and understandable.

The more your design is clear, the more your users will feel at ease navigating within your emails or landing pages.

Be sure to use your logo and consider your company or website’s colors when designing your email template.

Tip : Do you need a tool to create your landing page? Check the landing page creator from GetResponse, and build the perfect lead machine (you can try it for free).

Obviously, you want to put the button or the link of your call to action above the fold, that is in an area of the screen that is clearly visible!

Also, please note that normally a single column design converts better than a multi-column one.

3. Use Social Media

It’s important to add in your emails the sharing buttons for the major social media networks.

If your subscribers are satisfied with the content you deliver, they are likely to share it via their personal social profiles.

And this is an excellent way to strengthen the dissemination of your email marketing. If social signals are good, this is an indicator that your campaign is going to perform well.

Tip : Want a customized and Dynamic Email signature? Check WiseStamp to make yourself a nifty Email signature that increases engagement and looks professional.

4. Be a Resource

Think about your newsletter as a valuable resource for your audience, your emails should represent a real value to your target.

A secret to sell more through your email marketing campaign is to be perceived as an expert in your field.

Your users should consider you as an authority in your niche.

Moreover, you must not just aim to present yourself as an expert, but as a professional of the highest level that can give useful advice to brands and small businesses within your industry.

In order to differentiate your email marketing campaigns from all the others, think about creating real value for those who will read you.

You must be considered as an indispensable resource!

5. Satisfy the Needs of Your Niche

Try to understand perfectly what are not only the needs of your audience, but also their habits.

If you know well the people to whom you must read, your email marketing campaigns will have open rates and CTR never seen before.

In short: the more information you can retrieve from your target, the more you can make the center, that is to give them what they want to read.

Tip : emotions are key to sales success, so think about this principle when setting up your next call to action or adding your affiliate links. The keyboard of the future may reveal your emotions as you type, may be there will be a tool to discover the feelings of your subscribers when reading your emails!

6. Create Simple Call to Actions

Place your optin in a visible place on your website pages (typically above the fold, top sidebar).

Also, be sure they are easy to fill out.

A good way to create effective optin boxes for email marketing is to keep absolutely limited the number of fields to be filled.

The less information you request to the people, the less work they will do to subscribe to your mailing list.

Pay attention to this, as it’s not a joke. People hate to fill online forms and give away their data, included their emails.

Therefore, try to facilitate the subscription of your newsletter as much as possible!

7. Do Not Spam

It seems an obvious suggestion, but often you can be flooded by tens of messages, just right after signing to a new mailing list.

This is really annoying and makes me unsubscribe right away.

Remember, be sure to check the CAN-SPAM act to avoid any problem.

Basically, you are allowed to send your messages only to people who have given their permission to receive your email marketing communications.

You must behave the right way because, if you spam, you may even have some legal type troubles.

Also, there is a principle related to marketing: if you send email in a reckless way, your credibility may fall deep down.

You run the risk to be labeled as a trivial spammer and not what you aim to be : an expert in your field, a professional able to create real value for people.

Conclusion

I hope these few tips may help you to set up your next email marketing campaign and get results, impacting positively your audience life.

What do you think of these straight suggestions?

Based on your experience, do you have any other tips to add?

Please let me have your views in the comments below, thanks!