Tag Archives: Email Marketing Strategy

June 24, 2021 · 9:23 am

6 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing

Email may not be new and it may not be flashy, but for many marketers, it remains an absolute essential. There’s just no better way to establish direct contact with a customer or client than to send carefully honed content directly into their email inbox.

When done right, email marketing can yield significant benefits for your business: Increased traffic, improved sales, and a stronger rapport with your clientele. If you’re not seeing those results, it may be because your strategy is askew. Here are a few things to consider as you seek to get your email marketing efforts back on track.

How to Do Better with Email Marketing

1. Get the frequency right.

How often should you send marketing emails? Often enough to keep your business top-of-mind, but not so often that your readers feel like they are getting spammed. There’s no one right answer, but Grammar Chic generally recommends that our clients opt for once or twice monthly.

2. Get the timing right.

Exactly when should you send out marketing emails? The day of the week and the hour of the day matter. Experiment with different times, track the data, and try to arrive at a sweet spot for email opens.

3. Get the layout right.

Hopefully, you’re working with an email marketing platform that makes it easy for you to optimize for mobile. Also be sure you choose a layout that’s easy to skim and to read, and where links and calls-to-action are plainly evident.

4. Get the segmentation right.

Generally speaking, you’ll want to divide your email subscriber list into multiple groups, allowing you to more carefully hone your content to match your audience. You may have a list for leads and another for returning customers. Or, you may have different lists to match your varied services.

5. Get the subject right.

The subject line is arguably the most important part of your entire email, because without a good subject line, the rest of it is just going into the trash can. Good subject lines are never misleading; they convey the contents of the email through a clear value statement or a provocative question. And oh yeah: You’ll want to keep them brief!

6. Get the content right.

If you want people to engage with your marketing emails, you’ll need to offer them something of value. This might mean rounding up recent blog posts and videos, providing breaking company news, or even providing subscribers with special offers, discounts, and coupon codes.

The Right Partner for Your Email Marketing

With the right approach, your marketing emails can help improve your bottom line, and produce significant ROI. If you need a hand putting a strategy into place, or simply need a writer to help develop content, we invite you to give us a call.

Reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. to set up an email newsletter consultation. Contact us at 803-831-7444 or www.grammarchic.net.

Email Marketing After COVID-19

Across the country, there’s a palpable sense of optimism: Following a long COVID winter, things are finally starting to go back to normal. People are getting vaccinated, government restrictions are being phased out, and people are resuming many of their normal activities.

For many business owners, this represents a significant shift, and an important chance to pivot. Following a year in which you encouraged your customers to shop online, order curbside delivery, or enter your brick-and-mortar store only while properly masked, your messaging now may look considerably different. For many companies, the message is simply this: Come one, come all! We’re fully open for business!

The question is, what’s the best way to get this message across, and to re-energize the clientele who may have kept their distance (justifiably so) over the past several months?

Using Email Marketing to Announce Your Reopening

One significant part of the equation is email marketing. If you haven’t already done so, consider sending an email blast to all the folks on your subscription list, simply letting them know things are back to normal at your brick-and-mortar location.

A few tips:

Reintroduce yourself. Keep in mind that the people on your email list are likely previous customers and clients, but some of them may have stayed away during the COVID-19 lockdown. It may be worth offering just a couple of sentences to remind people of who you are, what you do, and how you can improve their lives.
Explain where things stand. If your business really is back-to-normal, say so. Express your enthusiasm to see shoppers once more. And if you do have any ongoing COVID precautions in place, or if you continue to offer accommodations like curbside pickup and no-contact delivery, emphasize that, as well.
Note your safety precautions. For some businesses, it might make sense to reassure customers that, even with COVID concerns tapering off, you’re still thinking about health and safety. For example, if you run a medspa, dental practice, or hair salon, you might mention that your employees have all been vaccinated and continue to wear masks.
Sweeten the deal. If you really want to use your email marketing channel to entice people back to your store, there’s no better way to do it than with a promo, sale, or special offer. If you’re able to launch a promo or offer a discount, use your email list to announce it.

These are just a few tips to keep in mind as you use email to inspire your clients to return, and to revel in post-COVID optimism.

We’d love to help you get your messaging just right. If you have any questions about email marketing strategy, contact the writers at Grammar Chic, Inc. You can reach us at 803-831-7444 or via www.grammarchic.net.

3 Ways to Send Marketing Emails That Get Results

Business owners don’t send marketing emails into the void. They send emails to their customers and leads, hoping something good will come of it—hoping they can boost brand loyalty, drive traffic to their website, or perhaps even close a sale. These laudable goals can only be achieved through quality emails, though—and unfortunately, in many businesses, email construction is something of an afterthought.

It doesn’t have to be that way, and it’s not difficult at all to put together emails that are thoughtful, appealing, and loaded with value. We’ll show you some basic strategies you can implement today to help you develop emails that get bottom-line results.

Make Sure Your Emails Look Good on Mobile Devices

It’s simple reality: Most email recipients are going to be looking at things on a smart phone, and as such it’s critical that your emails can easily be read from the smallest of devices. If your emails require a lot of zooming or scrolling, or if the buttons within them cannot be easily clicked on, recipients will become frustrated and just stop opening your emails altogether.

Some specific tips:

If possible, use a program like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp, both of which will provide you with mobile-friendly templates you can draw on.
If you don’t use a pre-existing template, do ensure that your font is size 14 or higher; anything smaller can prove difficult to read.
Make buttons that are easy to tap. Simply using text links doesn’t always work well with all email platforms. Real buttons are better.

Write Subject Lines That Snag Attention, but Resist Clickbait

Your email subject line is your one chance to make a favorable first impression on recipients, prompting them to open the message and see what’s inside. As such, it’s critical to avoid spammy clickbait titles (which often backfire) and instead convey real value.

Some tips:

Avoid “You won’t believe this,” or similarly over-the-top turns of phrase.
Also avoid using CAPS, which just makes it seem like you’re YELLING.
Be relevant and truthful; your subject line should accurately reflect the contents of the message. No bait and switch!
Use numbers whenever you can—5 reasons, 10 tips, etc. The human brain connects with numbers, and they can make your email feel more valuable.
Try phrasing your subject line as a question, which is often a good way to pique interest.

Deliver Value in Every Email

Finally, always ask yourself: What’s in it for my reader? Each email should convey something actionable and valuable—and if it doesn’t, you shouldn’t send it. The bottom line: You want people to associate your company’s emails with something truly empowering, enriching, or simply entertaining.

As such, your emails should always contain at least one of the following:

A meaningful offer or discount.
Education about your industry or niche.
Delight—something that helps your recipients to feel like they’ve discovered a solution to a problem.

Send Meaningful Marketing Emails Today

You can start moving the sales needle today with smart, savvy marketing emails—and we can help you. To build on these tips and truly transform your email marketing, reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. at www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444.

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Tagged as Business Email Marketing, Business Email Writing, email marketing campaign, Email Marketing Strategy, Email Marketing Tips, Email Marketing Writing, Email newsletter writing advice, Email newsletter writing tips

July 8, 2016 · 3:45 pm

Make Your Email Marketing a Summer Success

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Here’s a phenomenon you may have noticed: During the grueling hot months of summer, you’re much more likely to get out-of-office auto-responders from the people you try to reach by e-mail. It’s not that everyone’s avoiding you. It’s just that everyone’s on vacation—or so it seems, sometimes. Certainly, the summer season is touch-and-go when it comes to emails, which may tempt you to pack in your email marketing campaign for the summer, perhaps revisiting the ol’ email list when September rolls around.

That’s not an illegitimate temptation, nor is it necessarily a wrong one: Certainly, there is an argument to be made for scaling back on your marketing emails during the summer months, if not disbanding them completely.

No matter how many marketing emails you send over the next couple of months, though—just one or a baker’s dozen—we encourage you to implement some simple tweaks to your strategy, which can make those emails much more enticing to your recipients—and thus, likely to get opened and acted upon.

Get Your Marketing Emails Ready for Summer

Keep those subject lines succinct. A lot of your readers may be getting those emails while they’re waiting in line for movie tickets, a plane ride, or a trip down a roller coaster. They don’t have time for epic-length headings. Shoot for subject lines between 30 and 50 characters—never any more.

Cozy up to emojis! Summer time is fun time, right? There’s no better season to adorn your subject lines and your email messages with a few tasteful smiley faces or other festive icons. Don’t go overboard, and don’t sacrifice actual words for emojis, but do feel free to use them as they fit.

Resist the temptation toward click bait. Drop two swimsuit sizes in a week’s time may seem like a tempting promise, and if your product can actually deliver it, then good for you! Don’t fall into the trap of making cheap promises that you know you can’t keep, though, nor of writing subject headings that aren’t actually relevant to your content. You may get click-throughs, but you’ll also get a lot of annoyed customers.

Don’t let your emails fall into the junk pile. Nobody has a lot of time to sort through their junk folder, so avoid letting your emails end up there. Cut down on spam triggers, as we talked about in this previous post.

Need some further assistance getting your marketing emails summer-ready? We can help you strategize, write, format, and send. Reach out to Grammar Chic today at 803-831-7444 or www.grammarchic.net.

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Tagged as Business Email Marketing, Business Email Writing, email marketing, email marketing advice, email marketing campaign, Email Marketing Strategy, Email Marketing Tips, Email Writing, Email Writing Advice, email writing tips, how to write an effective email marketing campaign, marketing emails

January 13, 2016 · 12:53 pm

This is How to Write a Compelling Email Subject Line—and Boost Your Open Rates

email-marketing

Report after report and study after study suggests that email is the most effective digital marketing tool.

So if you’re not seeing much of a benefit from your email marketing program, you’ve gotta wonder why.

Maybe the reason people aren’t responding to your emails is because they aren’t even opening them in the first place. Obviously, that’s a problem. A low open rate means your email marketing strategy is dead in the water.

Your open rate is even more significant than your total subscriber number. Think about it this way: Having 1,000 subscribers who all open your emails means much more exposure for your brand than having 6,000 subscribers but only a 2 percent open rate.

No question: You’ve got to get your emails opened. And the best way to do that is to tweak your subject lines—but how?

Tip #1: Make your subject lines longer.

Both the conventional wisdom and the natural instinct is to make your subject lines short and snappy. We’ve offered that very advice in the past. But one new study suggests that maybe longer—like, 60-70 characters, if not more—is the way to go.

Perhaps the rationale is simply this: When you’re working with just a couple of words, it’s hard to offer more than salesy platitudes and generalities. But if you give yourself more space, you can actually convey value and specificity to your readers.

So maybe it’s worth trying long subject lines for a while, just to see how they work.

Tip #2: Write in all lower case letters.

All caps screams of desperation, and can be pretty annoying. Mixing upper and lower case—you know, like you would in normal, everyday writing—is fine. But consider: a lot of the emails you get from your friends and family members probably come with all lower case subject lines.

Writing an all lower case subject line can convey intimacy and familiarity, then—and that’s not such a bad thing for your brand!

Tip #3: Provide value—but don’t give everything away.

As for the actual content of your subject lines, something we recommend is focusing on the value you offer—the benefits your email will provide—without getting into the specifics.

Show your readers what’s in it for them to open your email, but not necessarily how they’ll get it.

Example: Try a subject line that promises something like this: “Drive traffic to your website… and turn it into paying customers!”

You’re showing your readers exactly what they stand to gain from reading the email—but to learn how they’re going to gain it… through SEO, email marketing, or whatever else… they’ve got to open the email and read it.

Try some of these tips in your own email marketing—and see how your open rates improve. Talk with us about it by calling 803-831-7444, or visiting www.grammarchic.net.

How to Develop a Winning Email Marketing Strategy

You can call it old school if you want; you can even call it old hat. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that email marketing has lost its importance for businesses of all sizes. Email marketing remains the cornerstone of any content marketing endeavor—and if you doubt it, just think about how many marketing emails you’ve received this week from big companies like Amazon.com.

Actually, the percentage of professional marketers who heavily use email marketing has increased in recent years—and most small business owners who follow their lead say that email marketing produces significant ROI.

Don’t discount email marketing, then, but embrace it—using the tips we’ve offered below.

Tips for Developing a Strong Email Marketing Program

First, your email marketing campaign is only as strong as the email list you assemble—so ensure that you make it easy for people to sign up for your list. Put an easy-to-use, prominent signup box on your website, and also include links in any emailed receipts and invoices.
When you send email blasts, include a short but value-loaded subject line; draw attention with a subject line that promises immediate benefits, like a discount or a special promotion.
Develop and nurture your audience. Whatever email marketing platform you use—and we recommend Constant Contact first, MailChimp as an alternative—you should be able to track the views and opens you get. Keep tabs on which kinds of content seem to get opens, and use that knowledge to inform future emails.
Don’t restrict your call-to-action to the bottom of the email; place one above the fold! (Or better yet, avoid the kinds of lengthy emails that require scrolling.)
Be smart about recycling your blog content, press releases, and even Facebook posts. You don’t necessarily need to craft a huge new message for each email newsletter you send out; at Grammar Chic, we often send out emails that essentially round up recent blog entries. We know of other companies that send out email roundups of Pinterest posts, which can be another practical way to recycle your best content and get it in front of a new audience.
Always include contact information, including a telephone number and a link to your website. Remember that more than half of your emails will be opened on mobile devices, so you want contact information that can clearly be seen and clicked on.

To learn more about what an email marketing campaign can accomplish for your brand, contact the Grammar Chic team today: Call 803-831-7444 or visit http://www.grammarchic.net.

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Tagged as Content Marketing Advice, Developing a Strong Email Marketing Program, email marketing, Email Marketing Strategy, How to Develop a Winning Email Marketing Strategy, professional writing services, Social Media Content Management, Strong Email Marketing Program, Tips for Developing a Strong Email Marketing Program