Am I the only one who has an email address solely dedicated to all things online marketing? It’s the one I use when I buy something online, when I don’t notice that I’ve accidentally signed up for someone’s eNewsletter – it’s the Spam account. While most of the emails either get trashed or left unopened, there are a few that I always open: the emails that offer me something I want, the emails that give me the content I’m interested in, and the emails that trigger my curiosity.
When beginning any new email campaign, it’s likely that your open rate will be low, and that is to be expected. But if you have marketed to your clients through your website and social media effectively, the people who sign up for your emails want to hear from you. Even so, there has to be something in that email that they want. Depending on your services or products, that could be coupons or new product announcements, or it could simply be a moment to touch base with past, current and future clients about what you’ve been up to.
The key is figuring out who your customers are and what they want to hear from you. Once you’ve established that, here are some tips for keeping them interested and growing that email list.
- Be consistent. Whether you’re sending a newsletter every week or once a month, choose when you want your clients to hear from you and stick with it! They will come to expect to hear from you at that time, and when you consistently show up in their inbox when you’re supposed to, you’re building trust between you and your clients.
- Mix it up. If you do the same thing as everyone else in your industry, what’s going to make you stand out? Research what others in your field are doing and try to make your presence different. Don’t make every newsletter about the same thing; that is what will make your clients want to engage!
- Offer value. It is so important to offer value to your clients above and beyond selling something! In business we tend to think of value purely in terms of dollars and cents. In marketing, it’s about so much more than that. We are marketed to constantly throughout the day. It’s 25% of our Facebook feeds, for crying out loud! We don’t need another email in our inbox trying to sell us something. It’s why most emails end up in the trash. Businesses that only sell to their email subscribers have a higher unsubscribe rate than ones who also teach, entertain or empower its readers in some way.
- Be intentional. Email newsletters don’t have to be held to any certain word count to be within the realm of best practices. Who made that rule, anyway? Like storytelling, your newsletter should have a beginning, middle and end, and whether that happens in 300 words or 750 makes no difference if you are being intentional about what you are communicating.
If you need help growing your email list and expanding your client reach, we are here to help!