Email marketing is still considered to be one of the sharpest tools in any marketer’s drawer.
The moment you set out to craft an effective marketing email, you need to pay close attention to every single detail. Your target market may have signed up for your email list to get something for free, and these emails need to draw them in to help them realize you are an authority on this subject and can help them with some specific need. You also need to avoid the junk mail folder, and some of the best spam filters, like Everycloudspam filter, could end up keeping your emails from being viewed if they are not constructed with six guiding principles.
Guiding Principle #1: Have a clear purpose in mind.
Your email better be more than just a slick sales pitch. If you’re only offering a limited time deal, only want your clients or prospective customers to know about a special sale coming up, or you use cheesy, cheap taglines, subject lines, and other techniques, it could easily end up in the spam or junk mailbox.
You need to have clear purpose in mind for every email finder. What information do you wish to share? How important is it going to be for your target market?
Most importantly, how will this information help them realize you are a prime candidate to solve whatever problems they face with regard to the services or products you offer?
Guiding Principle #2: Know your customer base.
How well do you know your target market? If you have a generalized target audience, such as any ‘adult who enjoys going to the movies every couple of weeks,’ that’s a pretty loosely defined market and it’s going to cause a lot of problems for marketing emails.
Every single marketing campaign you develop for your emails should be specifically tailored to a narrow audience. For example, 35 to 45-year-old stay-at-home moms would be a focused audience. 18 to 24-year-old college males would be a focused audience.
Be very clear and well-defined with regard to your target audience.
Guiding Principle #3: Talk about pain points.
This doesn’t mean your target market is in pain or is dealing with some kind of health issue, but they signed up for your email list to get something in return, right? Maybe it was a free e-book on how to solve certain problems.
When you target those pain points that are common for your target audience, they will be more inclined to open and read what you have to say, especially if you give clear solutions to some of their problems.
Guiding Principle #4: Do not send attachments.
Under no circumstances should you ever send attachments with a marketing email. This could easily find the junk mail folder and your target audience, if they are savvy enough to realize it, may assume you’re trying to trick them into downloading a virus, cookie, or something else that could be harmful to their computer or other system.
There’s no need to send attachments unless a specific individual has asked for more information and is expecting it.
Guiding Principle #5: Give more valuable content than you think is necessary.
This email could take you hours to create. Good. It should. The more value you put into this email, the more valuable your target audience is going to see it. The more valuable they see it, the more likely they are to follow calls to action, links, and ultimately become customers of yours.
Guiding Principle #6: It all starts with the subject line.
This could very well have been the first Guiding Principle, but we put it here for good reason: we want you to remember it.
Once your email has been completed, go back and review the subject line and make sure it hits all the fine points, grabs attention within few words, and the email completely answers whatever the subject line addresses.
When you follow these guiding principles, your marketing emails will have better open rates, view rates, read rates, and click through rates and that can help your bottom line.
About Carson Derrow
