If you’re not using email to market your business, you’re missing out on a highly effective tool.

Consider:

  • 28 percent of online shoppers in the U.S. subscribe to store or product emails.
  • 66 percent of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email-marketing message.
  • 82 percent of customers open email from companies.
  • The click-through rate (CTR) on marketing emails is 1.7 percent, as opposed to the .1 percent rate on banner ads.

As for your advertising dollar, one recent study showed that email marketing has a return on investment (ROI) of $42 for every dollar spent, as opposed to a $2 return on every dollar spent on Google Adwords.

So if you’ve decided to take advantage of this lucrative form of marketing, here are seven tips that will let you make the most of your email marketing.

1. Give them control

First of all, be sure your recipients have opted in to receive your emails. Second, make it easy for them to unsubscribe from your emails. If you let them know they’re not your captive, they’re less likely to report your emails as spam (see # 7, below) and more likely to want to keep receiving your emails.

2. Capture attention

People are bombarded with emails, so how do you make yours stand out? Start with the subject line. The subject line should be: compelling, brief (five to seven words), and succinctly summarize the content of your email. You need to pique their interest without appearing spammy (see #7, below).

Also, use one of the widely available automated email tools to personalize the subject line with the subject’s name. People are automatically attracted to seeing their name in print. In addition, such personalization will make your email seem more legitimate.

3. Make it visually attractive

The best ads in any medium are appealing to the eye. Use lots of white space and short paragraphs. Break up text with photos, but no more than two per email. Also, be aware that some email providers as well as recipients block photos, so don’t rely on them to convey your message. Use them to visually enhance the email rather than convey important information.

Use bullet points to summarize your main points. Get your point across with as few carefully chosen words as possible.

In this era of Instagram Stories, videos will always capture attention. Surveys show a video can help increase the CTR by as much as 300 percent.

4. Keep it short and sweet

If you’re going to send emails, make them something that busy people will be able to digest quickly. That means they should be short and convey the most amount of information in the least amount of time.

So hit the high points, pique their interest, but don’t give them the entire sales pitch for your product or service. Save that for when they click through.

5. Keep mobile in mind

Since surveys show that 70 percent of people who read their emails do so on a mobile device, be sure your emails are optimized for mobile use. That means keeping subject lines to fewer than 50 characters, ensuring your images fit the screen size, and increasing the size of links and CTA buttons.

6. Make it easy to respond

Make your CTA button stand out in the body of your email. Consider having at least two of them on the page, top and bottom, in an eye-catching color. You can also phrase each of them differently: Order today! Find out more! Download now!

7. Avoid the SPAM file

In response to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, make sure your recipients actually get to see your emails. That means avoiding things that can get your correspondence sent to the spam file. 

To ensure this, Mailchimp offers these key points:

  • Never use deceptive headers, “from” names, reply-to addresses, or subject lines.
  • Always provide an unsubscribe link.
  • Be sure the unsubscribe link works for at least 30 days after you send the email.
  • You must include your physical mailing address.

Bonus Email Marketing Tips

avoid too many capital letters and exclamation points in your subject line or in the body of your email. Also, triple-check for spelling and grammatical errors, a key tipoff of spam mail.

For more sure-fire tips to get the most from your email marketing campaigns, be sure to consult our advertising and marketing experts today!