Your email list is pure gold if you increase the effectiveness of the campaigns.
This means:
- More email opens
- Better response rates
Don’t have email blasts going yet?
That’s a shame because the list is really where the money’s at.
Use our email marketing guide to get things going.
For everyone else?
You could be doing a few things with it that seems somewhat successful.
It’s not giving you the type of ROI you were expecting.
No worries.
We’ve got six ways to improve email marketing (and improve response and open rates)…
1. Set a Higher Threshold to “Weed Out” Unresponsive Subs
The consensus is that you create some kind of enticing freebie and have visitors opt into your list.
This is good an all but what often happens is that your list becomes populated with “freebie hunters” and others that are less likely to take action.
Setting thresholds, or “limiters”, for your list may be a good choice because it presents additional barriers to block these types of individuals. In the end, you will craft a list that is far more responsive than allowing anyone to join in.
Try this: Setup your email list where the first email delivers the freebie but then asks for them to join an exclusive list. Here you will weed out the people that are only looking for the download but giving others the chance to get onto the true list.
Remember the 80/20 rule, here, because you don’t want to waste your time with people that aren’t going to take action.
2. Treat the Email List as a Publishing Platform
A lot of marketers treat their email list as just something to send new promotions. Or, updates from the blog but that’s really setting the bar low when you consider people subscribed to hear great, exclusive information.
Smart marketers understand their subscriber’s needs. They know they’re on the list because they want something of value without being overloaded by messages.
Try this: Treat the email list as if it were your blog. Regularly publish exclusive content to the list which makes your subscribers feel special. Also, work with product developers to secure exclusive deals that you can share only to subscribers to keep them around.
A little extra effort goes a long way.
3. Republish Blog Content to Increase Newsletter Stickiness
So if you did treat your email list like a completely separate channel then the content you were producing should be good enough to be published on your blog.
Publishing these pieces over a staged set of time will give email subscribers a chance to take early action which, in turn, would encourage non-subscribers to get on the list since they’ll feel like they’re missing out.
Try this: Reformat the emails so they’re easy to read – like a blog post. Create a new section of the site called ‘Newsletters’ where you publish these pieces otherwise just put them in their normal categories. For a bonus, you can use a content locker and get people to share or follow you on social channels before they can access this work.
You’ve already done all the hard work making that exclusive content so you may as well get the most of it by publishing it to the Web.
4. Try a Few Special Characters to Increase Open Rates
Say you wrote an awesome headline but it just didn’t get the attention it deserved. It happens and especially so since we all seem to get overwhelmed with new emails each and every day. There are a few ways you can add some flair to the emails, though.
Look at these:
- ☀
- ☎
- ☺
- ♪
These are just a few of the special characters you can create on your computer. In some email clients, these can show up which means you could introduce an eye-catching element to the email.
Try this: Take a look at the miscellaneous symbols you can use, pick one, and add it to an email subject line. Send a test version of the email to yourself to verify it can be used, and then send it out to the list.
It’s not much but it’s something I’ve seen used in newsletters and it always stands out from the rest.
5. Point People to Your FB Page to Keep Discussions Going
Email is okay for responses.
But, you’re wasting a lot of potentials to share your response with everyone when you’re limiting it to the form.
Instead, you should consider sending people to your Facebook business page.
This is where they can engage one another around the topic of the email.
Try this: Write your email and FB fan page copy side-by-side. Go ahead and publish the FB post and then copy the link to the specific post and include it as part of a “Discuss this topic on Facebook: [link]” type of copy in your email.
Placing the discussion on Facebook will help increase your Edgerank and keep the ideas, responses, and opinions rolling along since there are multiple people participating at any given time.
6. Test and Try New Signatures to Slide Call-to-Actions
It’s easy to forget your email signatures.
It’s generally at the bottom of your todo’s since you probably only touched when setting up your list.
However, the signature gives you a great opportunity to encourage additional readership and sales.
Try this: Create a signature which says something like “This is my current, favorite product: [aff link]” or something like “My Latest Blog Post: [Link]”.
Remember that people aren’t always coming back to the site so they could have missed out on a post or one of your promotions. Injecting it into the email will give them that opportunity to come over and it may lead to a conversion.
