Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your customers, partners and suppliers – both current and future.

Through an eDM (electronic direct mail), you can maintain and increase your engagement with consumers, strengthen your brand and marketing campaigns and, ultimately, increase sales. Having said that, poorly executed email marketing can fail to capture attention – or worse, attract attention for all the wrong reasons.

Here are our top tips to nail your email marketing and make eDMs work for your business.

Know the lingo

In order to track your email marketing campaign, there are a few key phrases you should know about.

1. Open rate: This is the percentage of recipients who have opened your email. For example, if you sent your email to 400 recipients and 150 opened it, you would have an open rate of 37.5 per cent.
2. Click-through rate: This is the percentage of recipients who clicked on any of the links included in your email. For example, while 37.5 per cent of your recipients may have opened your email, only 20 recipients (5 per cent) may have actually clicked on the links contained within it.
3. Conversion rate: This is the percentage of recipients who actually did what you wanted them to do after they followed one of the links in your email – this could mean purchasing a product, answering a survey or following your social platform.
4. Bounce rate: This is the percentage of emails that could not be successfully delivered to a recipient. Some email marketing platforms will differentiate between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ bounces – this article by leading email software Mailchimp explains why.
5. Unsubscribe rate: This is the percentage of recipients who unsubscribed from your future eDMs after receiving an email. A high unsubscribe rate, for example, could indicate that you are sending newsletters too regularly, too rarely or that you don’t offer enough of an incentive for people to stay subscribed.

Know your audience

According to email marketing platform Campaign Monitor, personalisation is one of the most important elements to nail in every campaign. Beyond addressing your subscriber by name – which can be automated in the backend of most platforms – you can personalise your campaigns by staying relevant, sending timely emails and anticipating your subscribers’ needs.

It is important that you understand why your database has subscribed to your marketing material, and behavioural targeting can help you do it. By monitoring campaign engagement, website engagement, purchase behaviour and app engagement (if you have one), Mailchimp, for example, can help you create more personalised campaigns with little effort. From there, you can automate targeted messages, offer incentives and personalise your campaign to ensure your audience loves it like you do.

Know how to write a subject line

It’s the first interaction your recipient will have with your eDM, so you want to make sure it grabs their attention. According to Mailchimp, a great subject line should give your audience a reason to open your email and should…

1. Be short and sweet: Subject lines with fewer than nine words and 60 characters are said to perform better.
2. Use no more than one emoji: While emojis can draw the eye and imply a fun, casual tone, they can trigger spam filters when paired with spam-like phrases. This article details some common spam triggers. You also need to make a decision on whether using emojis is aligned with your business’s brand voice.
3. Avoid using too many punctuation marks: Excessive question marks, exclamation points and even capitalisation can come across as spammy. Use these punctuation marks sparingly.

Our top three tips for email marketing

1. Always look for opportunities to build your email database: As a captive, interested audience, your database can be your most valuable marketing tool. Build your database in person (through talking to potential customers at trade shows and expos, for example), via social media, via customers’ visits to your website, via ticket sales and/or check-ins to your events etc
2. Send regular emails (but keep them interesting): Your audience won’t mind hearing from you often if they are interested in the content. Some readable and compelling ways to promote your product include interesting blog posts (which link your eDM to your website, to increase traffic), customer stories and testimonials and business updates. Birthday emails can also go down a treat. As always, make sure any written copy is error-free and polished. Just like professionally shot photographs are leaps and bounds ahead of amateur snaps, professional writers can boost your business profile through compelling, error-free communications.
3. Test, test, test your emails before you send them: Send the test email to more than just yourself. The more eyes over it, the better. You will be amazed by how many mistakes can slip through the cracks when you alone are trying to research, write, edit and send a piece of copy.