E-mail marketing is a cost effective marketing tool that aims on building long term relationships with your customers. With clear objectives and messages, e-mail marketing can effectively support your marketing efforts on and off line with a relatively low budget. As the objectives can vary depending on the industry and the audience, we decided to focus on the contact list development which is probably the most important part of any serious e-mail marketing strategy. In this article we will share with you 20 tips on how to increase and maintain your subscribers and on how to develop a solid e-mail marketing campaign.
1. Identify your target audience’s needs
Find out what could provide value to your target audience and brainstorm on the content.
2. Build a landing page for the subscription form
A dedicated landing page should include all the features that are needed in order to make user understand the reasons why to opt in to your newsletter. You can read more on how to develop effective landing pages on the article “Build effective landing pages to Increase conversion rates”.
3. Use A/B testing
Use A/B testing to check which subscription box works better. Experiment with styles, colors, fonts andcall to actions and let your target audience indicate you the sign-up box that they prefer.
4. Subscription Form Visibility
Add the subscription form above the fold. This practice increases the possibility of subscribing since it makes the call to action and the subscription form more visible to the user.
5. Easy Subscription process
Make the subscription process easy. By keeping the numbers of required fields as low as possible and by eliminating the obstacles you increase the probabilities of subscribing.
6. Social Media integration
Integrate the subscription form with your social media campaigns. You can provide either a subscription form within your Facebook fan page or drive traffic from your social media efforts to the landing page of the subscription form. Both practices work but their results vary depending on your target audience.
7. Publish your Newsletters
Upload your previous newsletters on your blog and share them through social media. This practice enables you to show what you are offering to your subscribers. On the other hand, you generate new content and links supporting your SEO efforts.
8. Keep stable frequency
Remember that e-mail marketing is a tool that empowers your efforts for long term relationships with your clients. Consequently you need to stay in touch and keep the frequency stable.
9. Inform users about the frequency
Make clear to the users that you will not send e-mails every day and inform them about the frequency. It may seem obvious to you, but this is a sign that you are not a spammer.
10. Have a clear Privacy Policy
Privacy is a hot topic for millions of people. Thus you should make users feel safe, state clearly your privacy policy, let them know why you collect their information and how you plan to use it.
11. Mind the Timing
Ask for a subscription at the right time. When a user is satisfied with the experience you offered within your website there are more chances to collect their information.
12. Newsletter Templates
You need to focus on the template of your newsletter. Make sure that not only it is attractive and well designed but also that it is simple and easy to understand even before images load.
13. Add Sharing buttons in Newsletters
Make sure you add sharing buttons within your newsletters. This will give to the users the opportunity to share easily the posts that they find interesting.
14. Add call to action in your Blog
Add a call to action on the footer of each blog post and encourage users to subscribe to your newsletter. The user that took the time to read your article is more likely to subscribe to your newsletter in order to get “more like this”.
15. Segmentation and topics of interest
Provide users the option to select specific topics in order to ensure the relevance of the content that they receive. Use multiple newsletter lists or groups of interest to create more effective e-mail campaigns.
16. Focus on the Quality of the Content
Make sure that you provide relevant content to your subscribers. Also note that you can add more value by providing access to exclusive content. Remember that e-mail marketing success is not to increase the number of subscribers but to maintain and keep a fruitful relationship with them.
17. Offer E-books or Guides
Offer downloadable e-books and guides in exchange for their email addresses. People love a free piece of information, especially when your website is known to offer great content.
18. Run Contests
Contests can help you gather email addresses, attract more visitors and generate buzz around your website. Check out our previous article “Social Media Case Study” to find out how you can run successful contests by using social media.
19. Get user’s Feedback
When a user unsubscribes from your email list, make sure to get his feedback. This will help you understand what went wrong, whether you should improve the frequency, the relevancy of the content or something else. Also make sure that you run surveys and ask your subscribers what you can do to improve your service. This will give you new ideas on how to maintain and increase your subscribers.
20. Give Incentives
Provide bonus or incentives if someone forwards the e-mail or accepts to participate in a survey of yours. Make sure you reward the people that help you and rest assured that they will return the favor.
As we always stress in these blog posts, you should never forget to be honest with your users. By beingpatient & creative, by thinking out of the box and by following the above tips you will certainly be able to develop a solid email marketing campaign, increase your sales and improve the relationship with your users/customers.
No comments:
Post a Comment