EMAILING MARKETING: A FINE ART

When we have news to share with our clients, there is no better way to keep them updated and develop your customer relationship than a personal email newsletter. Everything can be neatly packed into an attractive email and sent to your entire customer database. There is a far better chance of your clients taking a look at an email than searching through hundreds of other feeds on social networks or taking the time to read your blog each week.

To make the best use of email marketing there are many tricks and lessons to be learned about how to send the perfect email and gain a high-click-through rate as a result.

Here are a few ways which you can improve the effectiveness of your emails:

Be Human

Quite often businesses can try too hard to maintain a professional image and tone, whereas this formality may actually turn people away from reading your email.

So, if you are wondering whether to address your customers as a company or a person, it is a safer bet go for the latter. In fact, an A/B test from Hubspot showed that personalising an email with a name can help gain a much higher click-through-rate: the company achieved 131 more leads by signing-off the email as ‘Maggie’, rather than ‘Hubspot’.

If you feel that your clients would better respond to a member of staff than your company name, then it might be appropriate to change your signature. But if it is your firm’s title that they know and trust, then may want to stick with the formal tone. Why not try your own A/B split test and find out for sure?

Know Your Subject

It doesn’t matter how much you plan to pack into your newsletter, don’t scare off clients with confusing subject lines – keep it short and keep it sweet. Hubspot recommend that a subject line be under 50 characters, allowing the writer to outline the contents of the email, without alienating the reader with too much information.

Also, when you take into account that many people are now reading their emails on the mobile web, another great reason to keep your subject line concise is to fit it on the small screens of smart phones. This is when having a title of under 20 characters is a wise option.

Dan Zarrella, Social Media Marketing Scientist, also highlighted in a HubSpot webinar that ampersands, brackets, and parentheses used in titles gained slightly higher click-through rates than usual whilst question marks and hash tags did the opposite.

However, nothing puts a reader off like exclamation marks in a subject line. In fact, these emails will likely be sent straight to the spam folder.

Timing Is Everything

The prime time to send emails, according to Zarrella, is at 6am. This early start generates a high click-through-rate, with a decent rate also achievable from 10am-12pm and a further peak in the late evenings.

Zarella’s data also pointed out that the “lowest click-through rate (and highest unsubscribe rate!) occurred on Tuesday, with Wednesday and Friday coming in as the weekdays with the highest click-through rates”.

In addition, he stressed not to hassle clients with constant emails to the point they feel surrounded. Spacing out emails generally achieves a higher click-through-rate and are more likely to be read by your customers.

Now What?

While Hubspot’s A/B test and Zarella’s data is useful, remember that it is always worth conducting your own experiments to uncover your customers’ unique preferences. You may find that your customers respond better at certain times, on certain days, or to different subject lines.

Studying your own click-through-rates is the best way to steer your email marketing strategy in the right direction. However, if you would like professional advice on how to use emails and other digital media to advertise your business, give us a call today on +44 (0)207 226 0099, contact us to find out more or take a look at our work.