Up Your Email Marketing Game

Staying in front of past, current and potential clients is important. And sending useful, interesting or entertaining emails is a good way to do it.

It surprised me to learn that a Marketing Sherpa study found that 91% of adults in the US like receiving promotional emails from companies they do business with. But statista.com reported that 56% of global email in March of 2019 was spam messages.

No matter how funny or helpful your email is, it doesn’t do you any good if it never reaches the intended inbox. And email providers are getting so good at identifying spam it seems like they are more likely to send legit emails to spam than a spam email to your inbox.

So, what can you do to increase the odds that your emails will get read?

Don’t write spammy emails

To get passed the spam-bots, don’t write spammy emails. That seems straightforward but you might be surprised. Punctuation in the subject line, particularly exclamation points and, more recently, question marks can be a problem.

Trigger words

It is also worth mentioning that not just the subject line is analyzed by the bot. Using trigger words in your email content will also cause your email to go undelivered or, at best, end up in the spam folder. Words and phrases to avoid include:

% off
As seen on Oprah
Bad credit
Bankruptcy
Cash
Cheap meds
Cialis, Viagra
Diet
Discount coupon
Discount shipping
Earn your degree
Easy income
Foreclosure
Free download
Free gift
Free laptop
Free shipping
(Just avoid “free” in general)
Gift card
Holiday savings
Home mortgage
Huge deals
Huge sale
Job alert
Lottery
Millions
Money
Pay your bills
Problem with shipping
Problem with your order
Reduce debt
Regarding your order
Replica watches
Store credit
Take our survey
Timeshare
Weight loss
Work from home

Both your email and your website need to be mobile friendly

You’ve written a great subject, avoided all the words that might cause a spam bot to eat it and you’ve sent it to someone who is interested in your content. In between meetings or in the back of a taxi they open your email on their phone and they get teeny tiny copy they can’t read. You passed the big hurtles only to end up directly in the trash.

Unless you’ve done specific market research that shows your customers only open messages on their computer, both your email and your website need to be mobile friendly. This means it opens up optimized to be read on a phone and a tablet without requiring manipulation of the text to read it. Mobile internet users are projected to hit five billion in the next five years. Your clients are more than likely among them.

Your images need to be set up to scale to the size of the device on which they are viewed.

Images are another issue when it comes to mobile devices. Have you ever opened something on your phone only to discover the image takes up your entire screen? Worse, you can’t figure out how to move or close it so you can see the text. When that happens what do you do? Delete!

Your images need to be set up to scale to the size of the device on which they are viewed. That means you can’t just put any picture anywhere (ask your email marketing expert to help you).

Share something about you

Sometimes you should share something about you. Your clients and potential clients aren’t connected to a business. They are connected to you, as a human being. Or to your employees as people. It’s a good idea to sometimes share a story, a picture, a snippet into your life. Do a behind-the-scenes video or tell them about your new puppy or kitten, or even tell them about losing a pet. You want to be seen as human. Not just as a blank bot that sends out emails.

Email marketing is designed to keep you, the person, top of mind. Have fun. Answer questions you hear over and over. Share tips your clients can use. Most of all, be consistent. Let their subconscious know they can count on you.

Have questions? Need help? Email me: RussB@RgBDesignGroup.com