Email marketing stratergies, if done correctly, can be better at converting your audience into paying customers than your social media accounts. It makes sense,
This can result in un-subscriptions and unopened Emails. There are also other reasons why all of your mailing list just aren’t interested in opening your emails. I hope by shedding some light on to these reasons, your email marketing strategy will improve and your audience will start loving what you send them.
1. The typical bloggers email marketing strategy.
The typical blogger, will have an opt-in to our mailing list at the top of the side bar. They will have a couple of dozen subscribers. They also consistently get 20% open rate, 8% click-through rate with the emails that are sent to their mailing list sporadically every few weeks.
The reason for this is that the typical blogger is focused on building a list without having a strategy for once you have a mailing list. Here are a few tips on how to help you build your own mailing list strategy;
2. Your audience needs to expect and anticipate your emails.
To many bloggers trick people into opting-in with a free gift only to get barraged with unrelated emails later. I don’t know about you, but I don’t open those emails.
However, if you make it clear to your audience in your opt-in area that they’re also requesting to receive blog updates, then they’re going to expect and anticipate the emails that you’ll be sending them.
Yes it may discourage people form opting-in, but there is no value to you in having a list full of people that don’t want your emails.
3. Remind your audience why they’re receiving your emails.
Once a member of your audience is receiving emails from your list, its important to remind them of why they’re receiving them. If you don’t you run the risk of them unsubscribing or making your emails spam.
A great way to do this is to put their signup date and signup URL in the footer of every email that you send. This will jog their memory and hopefully keep them engaged with the content that you’re sending them.
4. Send your emails regularly at consistent times.
What’s the best day and time to send an email to people around the world? For my mailing list I schedule my emails to be sent every Sunday at 12:30. The reason for this is that I want my audience to be relaxed when they read my content and then put to action what they have learnt when they are back at work on Monday.
5. People need to receive you emails easily
Having opt-ins in all popular places on your website, like your sidebar, top of your page, or in your footer, is a good start. You also want to have a page on your blog that’s dedicated to getting subscribers, also known as a squeeze page. This is great because you and your readers can link to that page when you or they’re recommending it to other people.
6. Make sure their information is valid.
after they fill out your opt-in form, they need to confirm their subscription. This is the point where you typically say, “before I can send you the information that you’ve requested, i need you to click the link in the email to confirm your subscription”. The main goal of this page is to get them to open the email and confirm their subscription. Yet, few people ever optimise this small but crucial step.
7. Make sure your emails are mobile ready.
Email is opened far times more on a mobile device these days. So it is crucial that the emails that you send your mailing list are optimised and can be read on a mobile device.
To keep your emails mobile friendly:
- Use a 1-column layout.
- No more than 550-900 pixels wide
- imit slow loading images.
If you link somewhere, try to make sure that website is also mobile friendly.
8. Your audience need to feel a personal connection.
How do you personalise a mass-communication channel? Every email marketing service lets you create multiple lists. Create different lists based on the interest and activities of your audience. Consider segmenting lists for:
- General blog subscribers
- Weekly blog subscribers
- Potential customers
- Paying customers
9. Use your welcome email to learn more about them.
Aside from sending your audience targeted emails based on their interests, you also need to know who your audience is in order to build a personal connection with them. One of the best ways to do that is to ask them to introduce themselves by replying to the first welcome email. You could ask questions like:
- What are you struggling with right now?
- How do you expect me to help you?
- What types of content would get you to open every email?
- Your emails need to add value to your audience.
What reason does a member of your audience have to subscribe if they get all of the same content by regularly visiting you on twitter? To treat your subscribers to something special, set up an autoresponder series that gives them a guide for the information that they want.
10. Offer a weekly email option
Your audience will have a tough time keeping up with reading all of the emails from other blogs that they have signed up to. To get around this, consider offering a weekly subscription option to your readers. That way they can get one email which summarises the weeks posts and they can choose what to read.
Conclusion
Email marketing has two main functions.
- To get to know your audience.
- To send people a message
To many bloggers put too much focus on building their lists. Once they have a list, they don’t know what to do with it. So that list sits there and costs them money. I hope that this post has shed some light on the all too common problem and given you some ideas on how to improve your email marketing strategy.
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