Email marketing is believed to be one of the most effective strategies within a business’ marketing efforts. Proof for this is that 66% of consumers have made an online purchase after receiving a promotional email message, according to
What works well for your newsletter strategy?
#1. Engaging information
First, the information you share in your newsletters needs to be engaging. Always put yourself in the shoes of your readers – would you like to read empty sales talk all over? A content that adds value for your consumers will definitely prove out to be more effective.
Telling your readers what the newsletter is about saves them time and spares them from deception. Don’t promise free gifts in the email headline, if you don’t offer them. Relevant titles encourage readers to move on to the rest of your content.
#3. Be honest
Honest communication will always win over more prospects and customers. Don’t try to use tricky tactics, hoping to increase your conversion rate. Eventually you will be exposed and you will risk losing customers rather than gaining new ones.
#4. Layout
Your newsletter’s layout may be more important than you think. As we rely on visuals, the ones that aren’t attracting are not effective either. Watch out for your newsletter format to integrate well into the email body and test to see if it looks good after sending.
Let people confirm they want to receive your newsletters. That means using an opt-in system, where a new subscriber confirms they really signed up for your content.
#6. Check the opens
Pay attention to recipients who don’t open your emails at all, who mark them as spam, or who ask you more or less politely to remove them from your emailing list. Continuing to send them promotional emails will just annoy them and cause you problems.
#7. What’s the best frequency
Find the frequency that works best for your recipients. Don’t overwhelm them with tons of emails that’ll make them unsubscribe, but don’t let them forget about you either – meaning keep your position as top of mind. Decide between emailing your recipients quarterly, monthly, bi-monthly, weekly, daily, depending on what and how much you have to say, on the industry your business belongs to, on your business model and on the time of the year (Christmas, for example, sees more newsletters than a random spring month).
Make your Unsubscribe option visible in your newsletters, as not providing it interferes with legal terms. Of course you don’t want people to make use of it, but sometimes there’s just no way out.
And what about getting new email subscribers?
Having an effective newsletter strategy is not enough in order for your email marketing to show its best side. You also need a constantly growing newsletter subscriber list. To gain such a list, you’ll first have to position yourself as a great content provider, with help of the tips shown above. Then, you’ll need a means for people to actually subscribe to receive your email messages. Email signups are generally done with help of newsletter subscription forms.
This is how you make your email subscription form more powerful:
- Tell people what they will get when they sign up. Something like “Sign up if you want to read more about cars” or “Get more interesting news about organic products” can serve as an example.
- Include a minimal number of fields. Your recipient’s name, email address and a terms of service box should do. If you really want to find out more about your consumers, you can use progressive profiling and build their profiles in time.
- Place your newsletter subscription form in a visible spot on the website, and include it on all landing pages, blog posts or social channels where it makes sense for your audience to see it.
- Changing the standard button copy from “Subscribe” to a more personalized CTA like “Send me the news” can work magic in terms of convincing people to subscribe.
- Insert a multiple choice menu for newsletter content, if you know your content is diversified. This way, you could ask people what they are more interested in receiving.
- Link your form to email marketing software such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, aWeber, GetResponse and others. Contacts from your respondents will be automatically added to your email marketing database with each new form submission. From there, you can manage them within your email marketing campaigns.
So here is how a nice, engaging newsletter subscription form could look like:
Image courtesy of: 123ContactForm
Image courtesy of: Pixels Daily
Image courtesy of: Content Marketing Institute
Image courtesy of: Web Marketing Today
Image courtesy of: Wade Harman
Images: ”Newsletter and Computer mouse with white background/ Shutterstock.com“
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