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Email Strategies - 2

The previous Email Marketing strategies we discussed 2 Email Marketing strategies:

• Clean and Nurture Your Email List
• Enhance Your Segmentation

We will continue in this article to mention another 3 important Email Marketing Strategies.

3. Review and Refine Your Opt-in Campaigns

Now is a good time to perform a checkup on your opt-in processes. Review everything from the data fields you’re collecting to the confirmation emails you are sending afterwards. Small changes can mean big gains in new audiences, as well as setting the proper expectations for subscribers.

Can you increase opt-ins by reducing unneeded data collection?

• Are you prominently directing web visitors to sign up for email? Can you place this on more pages, or in more visible locations?
• Do you clearly define significant benefits for subscribers signing up for your email? Does the email you send confirming the opt-in restate the benefits?
• Can you set expectations and ask subscribers to “add this address to your safe list” in the opt-in process?

The language you use, the support graphics, and the staging techniques you employ can make a huge difference between being ignored and creating an evolving, dynamic relationship that can enhance database precision, enrich dialogue, and help you showcase a larger scope of services.

If you’re not using strict opt-in policies, now is the best time to start. As consumers continue to tire of unwanted email, you’ll continue to see declining response rates if you are not using an opt-in-only process.

4. Design for "Images Off" and Preview Panes

Currently, you’ll find your audiences are increasingly looking at your messages without images turned on (it may not be their choice, but rather the default of their email client or a corporate IT policy). Make sure your messages are still readable and compelling without images. This may mean designing messages using fewer images, or including a short list of articles at the top of your newsletter. This technique works well for people who are viewing your message through a preview pane as well. Making sure enough content is placed at the top of the message to give recipients something to act on will be important to success rates.

Without designing your messages with “images off” in mind, your campaigns may end up looking like this to recipients:

5. Integrate Social Media into Your Email Program

Like email, social media has quickly become one of the most widely used communication mediums on the web, so it only makes sense that integrating the two can serve to increase the overall effectiveness of your online marketing.

The power of social media lies in the ability of its users to quickly and easily share information with their contacts, which might then turn around and share with their own contacts. If the information being shared is, for example, a piece of content from one of your emails, this type of “word-of-mouth” marketing can extend the reach of your message by a tremendous margin.

Here are a few ways to integrate social media into your email program:

• Incorporate a social media bookmarking tool into your emails, allowing subscribers to share your newsletter to their contacts on various social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Develop and maintain a company profile on various social media networks, and prompt social media contacts to consider subscribing to your email newsletter(s)
• Promote your social media presence on your emails in order to build a larger social media following
• Start a company blog and use your emails and social media profiles as traffic generators