Want People to Read Your Emails?

Email marketing can be so effective and should be a part of your business development strategy. That's if you can get your subscribers to read them, right? So how do you get people to read your email and how do you ensure sucess with your email marketing efforts?

1. Create an email marketing blueprint for the year

Your annual blueprint is a snapshot of all the email marketing activities you have planned out for the year. This helps you keep organized with timelines and have a bird's eye view of your plan. Your blueprint doesn't have to be overly complicated and it should be flexible and fluid because let's face it, your business goals, focus and priorities can change throughout the year. But you want to have a general idea of when you should send those emails, what type they are and to whom you should be sending them. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail".

2. Identify your target audience and the purpose of your campaign

First, be clear on the purpose of your email (why are you sending one?). Next, be clear on who your target audience is.

You probably have a target market for your business (if you don't, you should). But within that target market, you could have different audiences. For example, if you're an insurance broker, your target market could be homeowners with homes over $900K, 2 cars under 10 years old, a boat and a cottage. And as an insurance broker you sell life, home and auto and business insurance, so your client list is broken up into different segments. 

When you send your email campaign you're sending it to your target market, but within that market, there's a specific audience. You wouldn't necessarily need to send business insurance related emails to your client who doesn't have a business. If you do, your emails will just get deleted, unless you are sending a campaign specifically to target clients for cross selling - this goes back to knowing what the purpose of your campaign is.

When you understand the purpose of your campaign, you can better understand who your audience is and vice versa, to make your campaign relevant to them. The more relevant your campaign is, the more success you'll experience with it.

3. Automate - use technology to assist with your conversion

Use technology to help you segment your audience into different groups. With a segmented list, you can create a funnel that is relevant to your specific audience. By setting up trigger emails, you can help move your prospects from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, where you want them to go. 

There are many different email technology available to help you with your email automation - MailChimp, Active Campaign, Constant Contact, Convert Kit and of course our Bloomtools Database Marketing, to name a few. So head on over and check each one out, figure out which one works best for you and start automating your email campaigns.

4. Content is king

I'm sure you've heard this one many times over. Content is king. But not just any content. It has to be great content, relevant content. If you're sending out emails that aren't relevant, or aren't interesting, you can bet your behind that they're going to press delete faster than you can spell it. They might even hit the "unsubscribe" link. Yikes! So let's not go there. Keep your content relevant, interesting, well-written, clear and to the point. 

Don't forget that your subject line matters as well. Sometimes direct is better, sometimes it's too boring. Play around with different subject lines and do an A/B test if necessary to figure out what your clients gravitate towards.

5. Call-to-Action

Congratulations, your subscribers are reading your email but now what? Should they just close your email and move on to the next one in your inbox? Not before they cilck on a call-to-action  (CTA) so don't forget to add a CTA and make sure that it is tied to the purpose that you've identified before you crafted your email campaign.

That's it. Follow the above 5 tips and you'll see an increase in your open and click rates soon enough.