Nine ideas to keep your email marketing fresh

Many of you probably feel you get too many marketing emails. But you’d probably also admit that every now and then, you buy something based on an offer that’s dropped into your inbox.

Email marketing works – if you do it properly. Recent Hubspot articles states that “email ROI is an impressive $36 for every $1 spent” and that “77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months”. 

There are lots of great reasons to use email as a marketing channel:

• Emails go straight to your target audience
• They allow you to build a connection and relationship
• You can offer specific, tailored offers
• It builds an engaged, interested audience
• You can test new products or services
• You can measure responses quickly and accurately

Your emails must be interesting, relevant and useful to your audience, and they must be written, designed and delivered in a way that stands out from the tens of marketing emails that people get every day.

We work with clients to create engaged email marketing – from regular newsletters to specific campaigns – and we wanted to share our top ideas for keeping your email marketing fresh.

1. Make the most of your content

If you can use your content across more channels than just your email marketing, you’ll be creating a consistent message that your audience will come across several times. According to emailtooltester.com, warm leads – that’s people who have heard of your business and might be on your email marketing list – need between 5-12 interactions with your business before they buy.

If they are seeing a myriad of different offers or content, it’s likely to be confusing. Plan a campaign with a clear message in your email marketing and then repurpose that content to go on your website, into your social feeds, your networking messaging and more. Even better, spend some time and create some long-form content that can be central to your campaign and then section this up for your different marketing channels as short-form content.

2. Recheck your target audience

If you’re worried about your current email marketing results, it might be time to go back through your mailing list, making sure that the people you have on there are the people you want to sell to. If you have a good CRM system, you’ll be able to see their customer relationship with you and this could help you to revise your list.

From this, it might be worth putting together a campaign to increase your mailing list, so you are reaching more of the right people.

3. Think about segmentation

Segmentation allows you to market much more directly to specific sets of customers. If your list allows, you can send emails about a certain product range, budget range or service offering to people you know that would be interested in that particular offer. Segmentation enables you to be more focused in your messaging and often produces better results.

4. Try A/B testing

Testing allows you to send out two versions of your marketing email to see which one gets the most engagement. This will give you some valuable direction in terms of the tone of the email, the content and the subject line – the most critical part of your email. Testing is straightforward to do and can deliver game-changing insights.

5. Up your content game

If your email marketing has been fairly straightforward in the past, perhaps it’s time to up your game. You could add video, quizzes or polls, links to useful external content and email-only offer codes. By experimenting with the type of content you share, you could increase opens and engagement.

6. What works for you?

There will be a few emails that drop into your inbox that you always open. Take a minute to think about why that is. Have they made the content particularly relevant to your interests? Do you always learn something new? Do they share great resources? Do you like the offers? There’s no shame in adopting great ideas – that’s how creativity works.

7. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes

It’s great to have a target audience, but have you really thought about what they want? Perhaps they need more product education – they might want to know how it’s made, what your sustainability commitments are, how you choose the packaging. Perhaps they need to see your product in action to know whether it’s right for them. Or they need to hear from other people to give them confidence in your capabilities. Taking people straight to a sale only works in very specific sectors – so put yourself in your customer’s position and give them the content they need.

8. Ask for something specific

As you’re talking to an engaged audience, why not ask them to help you out? Perhaps you can use your email marketing to encourage online reviews or to ask people to follow your social media channels. Maybe think about whether you can offer a referral voucher to people who send more business your way.

9. Connect your email marketing

Instead of making every email different, why not put a series together? This allows you to explore deeper messaging and encourages your customers to open the next email in the series. This is different from an email campaign because it will have different goals but it does help to keep your customers connected.

We manage email marketing for a range of clients, and we’re always happy to talk about how we can help you to keep your approach fresh, engaging and results-driven. Reach out to us for more info – we’d love to help.