Email marketing can be a very effective marketing approach. People are on their emails all the time. However, because they usually have to weed through tons of email everyday, you risk having your message not read if you do not execute your email marketing campaign effectively. Here are some suggestions on how you can make sure that your campaign is well-planned and effective.
Because of the prevalence of spam, many people are leery of subscribing to any type of email subscriptions. They fear that once they give up their email address, they will receive endless amounts of useless emails. As a responsible merchant, you must make it clear that your subscribers can unsubscribe at any time. Make the process simple, without requiring the customer to jump through hoops. Your subscribers will appreciate this reassurance from you, and will be more willing to sign up if they know that they can opt-out at any time.
You also need to reassure your subscribers that you will never share their private information with any third-party. In fact, on your website, you should have a page that outlines your company’s privacy policy, and you should provide a link to that page on your subscription form. Having a privacy policy further affirms that you take your customers’ privacy very seriously, and that they can rely on your commitment to honor that.
Certain words in the email subject line can trigger email filters that filter out spam. Do some research on what those words are, and avoid using them in order to minimize the chance of your emails ending up in a spam folder. Use other words that can convey the same message.
No one wants to spend a long time reading an email. No one likes to read an email that is poorly formatted, making it difficult to read. In fact, emails of poor visual quality will most likely get deleted because there are other emails to be read. Therefore, keep your email format simple. Keep your images down to a minimum so your message can load quickly.
The best thing you can do to make sure that you have your customer’s permission to send him emails is to use a double opt-in system. Basically, when your customer inputs his email address into your subscription form and submits it, an auto-responder will send him an email with a link which he must click in order to confirm his choice of subscription. This prevents any misunderstanding about how his email will be used. Using the double opt-in system will assure you that the subscription is intentional and not accidental.
Remember these suggestions as you develop your email marketing campaign. It will take time for you to see if your campaign is successful because your subscriber base will need to be built one subscriber at a time. However, if you are persistent, you can have a successful campaign. Try different approaches and tweak your strategy if necessary. Before long, you will see steady improvement in the response rate of your email campaign.