Email Marketing: 3 Areas to Improve for Better Results

Big companies and large eCommerce sites do a lot of fancy email marketing. It’s pretty. It’s customized. It’s driven by highly segmented databases that know a lot about you and your buying habits.

Those same companies have staff members that work on email marketing all day, every day.

I’m assuming you don’t have staff members working on email marketing all day, every day.

And that’s ok!

Email doesn’t have to be complex to be effective.

Business Owners Should Give a Fox About 3 Things to Improve Email Marketing Results

Here are three areas of email marketing that you can focus on for real results, plus quick checks you can use to make sure your company has them right.

The finer points of your email strategy will depend a lot on your goals and your business, but keep these three things in mind to make sure your email marketing is on the path to measurable ROI.

1. Subject Line

Throughout my career, I’ve seen several instances where subject lines were afterthoughts in email marketing. They were decided in the 11th hour, right before an email was sent.

That’s crazy!

If your subject line is bad, your email will not get opened. And if your email does not get opened, the time and money you spent creating that email is null and void.

That’s why email marketing subject lines deserve your focus.

Writing a good subject line is a topic in and of itself. But in a nutshell, it should:

1. Be short enough for people to see in their inbox (think 30-50 characters)
2. Give people a reason to open your email

To check if you’ve got it right: read your proposed subject line as if you didn’t already know the content of the email. Is it compelling? Would you open the email if you were on the receiving end? If not, try again.

2. Mobile Readability

Even if you’re selling to other businesses or the majority of traffic to your site is desktop, there is no doubt that people read email on their phones. As a result, a solid mobile strategy is particularly important for companies to succeed in the inbox.

If you’re skeptical, consider the following.

More than half of people open emails on mobile devices. Plus, 75% of smartphone owners are highly likely to delete an email that doesn’t render well on their phone, according to Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey.

Mobile-friendliness depends on two things.

1. Layout
2. Content

Here are some tips to make emails sure your company’s emails are mobile friendly and will still perform on desktop:

• Stick to a one column layout. They render well, and are easy to read. Email marketing tools like Mailchimp have preview capability for mobile testing to check how it will look from the beginning.
• Use images and design sparingly and purposefully to increase both opens and click through (or consider not using them at all in favor of an all-text email).
• Avoid long form content, and break it up with descriptive headlines, short bullets, and numbering to help your reader more effectively scan their email.

To check: have a test of your email campaign sent to your email address. Look at it on your phone while you’re in line to order lunch, or in between meetings. Can you read and understand it easily? If not, try again.

3. Value + Thoughtful Calls to Action

The first two points in this post were about getting your email read. That’s the first hurdle.  Giving your customer something worthwhile to read and act on is the next hurdle.

Everyone is sending email. Many are sending good content. Many are sending discounts.

What makes your email valuable to a customer? Does it build your relationship with them? Does it have a clear path to helping people do business with your company if they are inspired to do so?

Writing valuable email content is another topic that deserves a separate post (or seven) to cover in any real depth.

But here’s a good check: think about the last few marketing emails you received. Which ones made you feel good about the company that sent them? Which made you look for the Unsubscribe button? Think about your own email with that same lens, and adjust accordingly.

Email Doesn’t have to be Complicated to Work

Whether you are doing emails yourself or paying someone to do them for you, focus your Fox in these three areas for email marketing results. If you need one-on-one counsel to get your company on the right path, I’m here to help.