If you’re hitting a wall with your email marketing efforts, you’re lucky because you’ve found the answer right here! Learn how to boost your email response rates and build a better relationship with your audiences.
Step One: Define Your Goals
The first step to getting more from your email marketing is setting tangible goals for yourself. What do you hope to see from your email campaign?
Do you want to see more traffic? More engaging content? Or perhaps you’d like to see your emails recognized as a trusted source of information by the audiences you’re trying to reach?
Whatever your goals are, write them down and set a date by which you’ll beat them. For example, you might want to achieve a 25% open rate by the end of the month.
Step Two: Build a Data-Driven Foundation
Now that you have your goals in mind, you can work towards building a more robust foundation for your email marketing campaign. Start by looking into the data surrounding your mailing list.
Do you have a lot of unsubscribers? Have you ever considered that your emails may not resonate with your audience?
It’s important to look at the types of emails and content to build a clearer picture of why your subscribers are unsubscribing in the first place. Some signs that your emails aren’t connecting with your audience include:
- Highly targeted emails – have a look at your unsubscribe rates. You might consider tightening your targeting if your audience is unsubscribing because of unsolicited marketing emails. Try segmenting your list by looking into the buying patterns of your subscribers.
- Low engagement with emails – remember that your subscribers are only human and might be skimming over your emails to find the relevant information they’re looking for. Ensure that your emails contain enough value and interest your audience so that they’ll stay engaged.
- Emails that aren’t moving the needle – now that you have a clear picture of how your subscribers interact with your emails, you can consider adjusting your strategy to make your messages more effective. Look at your analytics and see which emails are performing the best. Once you know what’s working and what needs to be tweaked, you can return to the drawing board.
- A lot of unsubscribers – sometimes, the cause of high unsubscribe rates isn’t obvious. It could be that your messaging is off, or you’re sending the emails to the wrong audience. High unsubscribe rates often indicate that you must revisit your strategies and start from scratch.
- Lots of unsubscribers due to content issues – similar to the previous point, sometimes the reason for high unsubscribe rates isn’t obvious. In some cases, it could be that the content of your emails is off-putting or that you’re sending them to the wrong audience. Consider rethinking your strategy and what you’re sending out to get the best results possible.
- Emails going straight to spam – as we’ve established, not all unsubscribers are bad. It’s possible that your subscriber has unsubscribed because their email client flagged your email as spam. In this case, you need to revisit why you’re receiving the spam email in the first place.
- Many unsubscribers are due to broken links – Look at your unsubscribe rates. If you’re emailing a link and half of your audience is immediately unsubscribing, you might reconsider that strategy. Ensure that the links you’re sending out are relevant and of good quality.
If you suspect your emails are falling into the junk folder or being marked as spam, it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate your strategy. You can either choose to fight spam or you can choose to give in to it. The choice is up to you.
Step Three: Craft a Better Subject Line
Crafting a better subject line is easy to boost your email response rates. People are more likely to read a subject line that’s short and to the point. Therefore, your goal should be to craft a line that’s as attention-grabbing as possible while remaining professional and avoiding any clichéd phrases or words that might make your audience roll their eyes (or worse, hit “unsubscribe” due to displeasure).
To ensure your subject line is as effective as possible, consider using a tool like TinyLetter to find the right words that correspond to your email’s content. For example, if your email focuses on travel, you might want to consider using words like “vacation,” “travel,” or “getaway.”
When you craft the perfect subject line, you’ll be able to hit “send” with confidence, knowing that your message will get the attention it deserves.
Step Four: Customize Your Templates
One easy way to improve your email response rates is to use a tool like MailChimp to automatically create and send out personalized emails based on the content of your website. With a tool like this, you don’t have to worry about using the wrong template or writing awkward subject lines – the tool will take care of everything!
There are plenty of customizable templates out there. If you want to create a sense of individuality, you can use a tool like Litmus to create templates with unique colors and graphics that match the vibe you’re going for. MailChimp allows you to use pre-made templates or create your own, so you can be confident that you’re putting your best foot forward.
Step Five: Research Potential Subscribers
A clear idea of your audience and what they want is the key to successfully marketing via email. If you’re just going to send out random emails, you’re likely to annoy or turn off your audience. Consider doing a few surveys to find out more about your subscribers. This will allow you to craft more targeted campaigns and allow you to engage with your audience and find out what resonates with them.
You can start by asking questions about demographics, such as age and gender, and what they value. Consider completing a quick survey that will take only a few minutes.
Step Six: Develop a Better Email Structure
With a clear idea of your audience, you can work towards optimizing the structure of your emails. Are you sending out a lot of content, or are you sticking to one subject per email? How are you presenting the content? Are you using images, or are you relying entirely on text?
The key to effective email marketing is to create a structure that makes sense for your organization’s needs. If there’s a lot of content or a long list of items to discuss, consider sending out multiple emails or using several blog posts in one email. However, if you’re worried about annoying your recipients with too much content, consider breaking up the longer emails into smaller bite-sized chunks so that your audience doesn’t get overwhelmed.
Step Seven: Measure the Success of Your Campaign
Last but not least, we have the important task of measuring the success of our email marketing campaign. We all want to see instant results from our efforts, but it takes patience to know how effective our campaigns are. For that reason, you need to set a benchmark and consider looking at data from several angles before you draw any conclusions.
One way of measuring the success of an email campaign is to look at your emails’ open and click-through rates. If you’re sending out many emails and you have a high rate of unsubscribers, it might be a sign that your emails aren’t compelling enough to keep your subscribers interested. Consider looking into other metrics, such as the cost of acquiring each new subscriber or the time it takes to click through to a website from an email.
You might consider looking at many different metrics to measure the success of your email marketing campaign. Not only will this make you more mindful of your efforts, but it will also allow you to find ways to improve your campaigns continually.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, you’ve found this article valuable and informative. Email marketing is a powerful tool for any brand or business, but it can be tricky. By taking the time to plan out a robust strategy, you can ensure that your emails are impactful and will drive action.
