Tag: email marketing

Improve Your Email Open Rates – Part 2

Nancy Boisvert Newsletter , , , , , , ,
writing engaging copy

Learn the secrets to writing engaging copy.

In our last post, we talked about the important role that the subject line plays in your email open rates.

But getting the subject line right is really only half the battle. It’s really just a few words, acting as a headline, to draw the attention of your audience. Now you have to provide interesting and engaging copy to your audience.  And that can be a lot more difficult!

Review these seven tips to help write engaging copy for your audience:

1. Be sure to keep your copy short. After all, this is an email, not an article or an e-book. If your engagement is suffering, heavily edit your copy. Less is more.

2. Write as though you are writing to a friend. Make your email personal and don’t be afraid to add some humor, if appropriate. Your readers want to interact with a human, after all.

3. Write your email as though you are writing directly to another person. Use the word “you”; it provides a powerful personal connection to your reader. Remember, your email should come across as a two-way conversation.

4. Write your email quickly. When you let the words flow, it helps your email come across as more natural and inviting. You can always edit once you have your ideas and your content written.

5. Don’t to follow a script. If you use the same technique with every email, your content comes across as staid and boring. Spice it up, and use emotive words.

6. Use different greetings. Write whatever comes naturally. Call people by their name, or use “hi” or “howdy”. Friendly greetings will create an immediate response from your reader. Avoid being mechanical.

7. Occasionally, write longer copy when you feel like it. It’s good practice and can help improve your sales. But remember, only do this open occasionally. Changing it up keeps your audience wondering what you’re going to offer next.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

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Improve Your Email Open Rates – Part 1

Nancy Boisvert Newsletter , , , , , , , ,
email open rates

We all know the stats. Open rates for emails often suck.

In an era when inboxes are flooded with emails on a daily basis, all screaming for attention, how do you get noticed?

Email communication is the norm. But getting people to open your emails and to engage with the content is a challenge. In an effort to help you improve your open rates, we’ve decided to post a three-part series on improving your email open rates. Today, in Part 1, we are offering you seven tips to help you write enticing and engaging subject lines.

Your subject line may just consist of just a few words but, just like the headlines in print media, it is the most important part of your email. If you haven’t captured the reader’s attention and created some intrigue, it is unlikely that your email will be opened.

Here are seven tips to help you with your subject lines:

1. Be sure that you are offering your audience something of value. Avoid providing rehashed content that can be found anywhere on the Internet.

2. If you have something great to offer, be direct. You don’t need to add fluff.

3. Get your readers attention by creating some intrigue. Don’t reveal the whole story.

4. Make sure that your subject lines are personal. Treat your reader like a friend and your email is more likely to be opened.

5. Don’t get hung up on grammar. I know, I’m one of those folks who is a bit of a stickler for correct spelling and grammar. But in some cases it pays to be more conversational. You’re not writing an essay; you’re communicating a message. Just be sure that your message is clear and that you’re not confusing people (for instance, affect and effect have completely different meanings).

6. Experiment with your subject lines. Regardless of the email service you use, you should have the option for A/B testing. Try out different lines and see what gets you the best open rate.

7. The golden rule is to always offer quality content. If your subscribers are used to getting great content from you, you’re more likely to get a great open rate even if your subject line isn’t the best.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Get Better Results from A/B Testing

Nancy Boisvert Newsletter , , , , , , , ,
AB Testing

Are you using email marketing in your business?

I’m sure you are. Digital communications and digital marketing constitute a large portion of business promotion.

Nearly everyone has some form of email communication, whether it is a newsletter, a product promotion, or business prospecting campaign. And, if you are looking to achieve better results, you should be employing some form of A/B testing.

Simply put, A/B testing is trying different subject lines. We all know, just like in the “old days” of print newspapers and magazines, headlines are what draw the reader into the story. With people receiving hundreds of emails every day, it’s important that your subject line is one that will attract the most opens. After all, if your email is being opened, you’re not engaging your audience, nor are you selling any product.

With this in mind, consider the following for points to improve your A/B testing:

1. How do you develop an A/B test concept that actually gives you the results you looking for? As marketers, just like most people immersed in their own industry, we can’t always trust our own ideas. One of the ways to develop a great a be split test is to engage a handful of your clients and ask them to work through your sales funnel. Then, have them go through a competitor’s sales funnel and let you know how yours compares and where it can be improved upon.

2. What were the results from your last A/B test? Like every other marketing campaign you undertake, it is critical to review your results. Take your last campaign and compare the open and engagement rate as compared to previous campaigns. If you’re results were better this time, why were they better? Conversely, if they were worse, what changed?

3. What was it about the more successful version that users preferred? Was it the topic you covered? Was it the way it was presented? Were there too many or too few words in the version that did not work as well? What did users prefer about the winning version?

4. Was there anything that they preferred about the version that did not perform as well? Never negate the value of something that doesn’t perform as well as you want or expect. We build on things that are less successful to create winners.

All marketing campaigns, in order to either be successful or to allow you to build success, require a “post-mortem”. By tearing apart all aspects of your campaign, you can more easily identify those elements that were successful and those that did not perform as expected. An email campaign is no different, and proper utilization of an A/B tool can be a trailblazer to a successful email marketing campaign.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

5 Questions For Optimizing Email Marketing

Nancy Boisvert Newsletter , , , , , , , , ,
email marketing

Hard to believe, but email as a means of communication has been around for well over 20 years now.

Since the mid-1990s, people have been communicating with each other via cyberspace. In fact, a whole generation has grown up accustomed to this method of communication, as opposed to sending letters and messages in a physical format.

Oh yeah, there were growing pains!

Internet service providers came and went, various email providers came and went, but eventually electronic communications became the norm, overtaking the “old” traditional way of interacting.

And as marketing online became more and more accepted, email became a preferred way to reach out to prospects and clients.

In the early days of email marketing, it was kind of like the old West. Anyone with an email address was open to receiving unsolicited emails from any number of businesses. But as this method of advertising services and products became more and more common, boundaries and rules had to be established. Anti-spam legislation is now in place in most countries, and a new kind of business has evolved – the email service provider.

As businesses have turned more and more to email marketing, inboxes have become repositories of unwanted and unsolicited emails, not unlike “junk mail” of past times. Most of us in business are used to receiving dozens, if not hundreds, of emails each day.  The big question is, how do you ensure that your email is not lost among these emails, and how do you improve your open rates?

So, to optimize your email marketing, ask yourself the following five questions:
  • Why are users opening some of your emails more than others?   Do you find that some of your emails are being opened more than others? Most email service providers provide the opportunity to do A/B split testing for your email campaigns. What subject lines in treat more people to open? Is there a day of the week, or a time of the day that your recipients are more likely to open emails? Reviewing these types of questions can dramatically improve your open rate.
  • Will your target market understand and engage with your next email campaign?  When planning your email campaigns, make sure that you are providing something that is relevant to your target audience. Sometimes we can get caught up in what we want to tell our prospects and clients, rather than responding to their needs and desires. Make sure that when you are planning out your next email campaign that you are delivering something of value to the recipients. If necessary, split out your email list, based on specific messages relevant to subsets of your target market. The closer you get to solving a prospect or client’s problem, the more likely your email is to be opened and engaged with by your target audience.
  • What would users change about your emails if they could?  Are your prospects and clients satisfied with the emails that you are sending? Consider asking your email recipients to respond to a quick poll. Ask them if they like the content they are receiving, the format in which it is delivered, or the frequency with which they are receiving it. The key here is to give your recipients what they want.
  • Do your users receive emails from other companies in your industry?   It is highly likely that your clients and prospects are also being targeted by your competitors. Do your research. See what your competitors are sending and make sure that your emails are more engaging.
  • What do the users like and dislike about those emails?  Just like question 3, find out what your email recipients like and dislike about the emails that they are receiving from your competitors. If your competitors are successful at sending emails that are engaging a larger percentage of your list, you need to find out what they are doing. Discover their strategies for email marketing and see what you can implement to improve your own open and engagement rate.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

What’s Up With Email Marketing?

Nancy Boisvert Newsletter , , , , , , , , , , ,
newsletter

Everyone is familiar with the concept of email marketing.

Of course, the definition of email marketing is using email to promote, sell, teach, or otherwise engage your clients and prospects. Over the past several years, using email as a marketing tool has become increasingly popular. This is because it is a relatively inexpensive way to keep your product or service uppermost in the mind of your prospects, increase repetition of visits from your existing customers, and interact with many people at one time.

However, the increased popularity of email marketing has created a double edge sword. Along with the growth in email marketing came a massive increase in email spam. Inboxes have become flooded with the digital equivalent of junk mail. And some of this junk mail isn’t innocuous, but contains viruses and Trojans. This enormous increase in spamming has resulted in the passing of antispam legislation in North America; Canspam in the US, and CASL in Canada.

Antispam legislation has impacted how email marketing is operated. A couple of examples of this are; marketing emails must clearly delineate that they are for marketing purposes, they must go to a targeted audience, and recipients of marketing emails must have opted in to become part of your email list.

But these changes have not eliminated the potential of using email marketing. There are still several valid ways to integrate email marketing into your overall marketing plan.

Of course, for any type of online purchase or e-commerce transaction, email is vital. For the purposes of online purchases, email serves as a confirmation of purchase and provides the purchaser with a receipt.

In many cases, businesses will offer e-books or white papers to encourage people to join their email list. This is sometimes referred to as an “ethical bribe”, and is very commonly used as a way to increase a company’s list of prospects while giving something of value in return to the person for providing their name and email information.

Informational emails are also very common. They often take the form of an eNewsletter, and are generally sent on a regular basis such as weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. The purpose of these newsletters is to continue to keep your clients and prospects engaged and informed of happenings within your business. They can provide reviews of what the company has been doing as well as updates of what to expect in the future. If you are providing a newsletter to your clients and prospects, it is important to be sure to provide opportunities within the email for them to share the information via social media channels or by email. This can help to grow your list of prospects.

There are several email service providers, such as MailChimp, Aweber, Get Response, etc., and it is very beneficial to utilize one of these services for your email marketing requirements. They allow you to segregate your clients and prospects into various lists, permitting you to target your offerings. They also allow you to run campaigns and will provide you with statistics, as well as A/B testing to see what is working best in your email marketing. Templates are available within these applications as well, which enables you to design an email that is consistent with your brand.

Getting people to join your email list is becoming more and more difficult. Visitors to your website are digitally inundated with offers of e-books, white papers and various other ethical bribes, and are becoming weary of that approach. But by providing something of value for joining your list, and continuing to provide quality information on your website, you can continue to attract subscribers.

Be respectful of your subscribers and be sure to protect their privacy, and you will build a loyal following.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

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