Email marketers know that seeing the full value of a transformed marketing strategy doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to realize returns on your investment. That doesn’t mean you have to wait to see any effect, though. Quick wins – instant results for your marketing team as they move toward a more effective strategy – are vital to generating momentum. Here’s what you can do right away to get better response rates on your email marketing efforts.
Hire Expertise
Email’s one of the most important lead generation tools for B2B businesses, yet many companies consider it an afterthought. Working with a company that has an encyclopedic knowledge of email marketing is an instant upgrade for any organization that doesn’t regularly clean its in-house mailing list, use a large database for data append services, and have access to additional lists that can selectively broaden the scope of email marketing efforts. When you find a marketing company to manage your email marketing program, you see increased response rates and better deliverability with the first campaign.
Redesign Preference Pages
If your current email marketing program gives recipients only two choices, you risk losing audience members who want to hear from you on their terms. Preference pages that give readers the chance to opt down instead of opting out let you keep lines of communication open, which translates directly into higher response rates. By letting your audience have the power to choose whether to receive all communications you send or select just those that are of direct interest to them, you automatically create mailing lists that are more relevant – and relevance leads to responses.
Find Their Motivation
You know why you’re writing to your audience, but how well do you understand what motivates them to read? What are their concerns? Where are they in looking for solutions to those problems? How does your email content fit in with those solutions? Are they moved to open more by a positive stimulus, such as a free estimate or bonus white paper, or are they looking to avoid the negative consequences of missing out on a new product that can transform their industry? Understanding the motivations of your audience, both positive and negative, is critical to getting a response.
Think Like a Reader
Your audience isn’t just a passive lump waiting for your emails to tell it which direction to move. It’s composed of individuals, each of whom has questions to answer and issues to resolve. Talk to them as people, not as data points, to capture their interest. That means writing email content that’s respectful of their time, addresses them at the appropriate level of product knowledge, and gives them meaningful information instead of just a hard sell.
Convenience Is Key
More than half your audience probably reads your emails on a mobile device. If you’re still designing email for desktop technology, you’re potentially losing huge portions of your audience before they do more than skim your subject line. Mobile-first email design needs a concise but descriptive subject line, useful content in the sub-header field, responsive design that fluidly rearranges content to fit the device, and overall simplicity that works on smaller screens. By upgrading to mobile-friendly, responsive email design, you immediately increase response rates.
Make Responding Simple
You’re writing to elicit a response from readers, but if you don’t include a single clear call to action, you’ve made giving that response a challenge. Don’t put roadblocks in your audience’s way; make it easy for them to act on what you’ve shared with them. Calls to action should be direct, clear, and readily available in more than one place on the email. If you and your marketing company use marketing automation tools, testing calls to action is simple and can dramatically increase response rates from the outset.
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