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Tips to Increase Email Opens

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Email is one of the most powerful marketing tools for building customer relationships, increasing brand awareness and driving sales. It’s a worthy part of your digital marketing strategy, but impact hinges on getting people to open your messages. Here are some tips for boosting your open rate.

Personalize

Personalizing email marketing based on customer behavior, history, interests and preferences can increase open rates and conversions.

Segment your list so that you can tailor messages to specific needs and interests. Personalization increases relevancy and builds trust and relationships with customers. Data from Statista shows that open rates for personalized emails average 18.8% compared to 13.1% without personalization.

Invest in the Subject Line

Spend as much time perfecting the subject line as you spend on the rest of the content. Readers make split second decisions on whether or not to open an email and that decision is based on the email’s subject line. A marketing email can be visually appealing and contain great content, but if the subject line is not compelling, the email won’t be opened.

Subject lines should be short and attention grabbing. Use action words that motivate the recipient to open the email. Use 40-50 characters and 4-6 words. Emojis that add to the meaning can be effective. Use strategically and sparingly.

Provide Great Content

Email newsletters should include content that brings value to the reader. Content should be brief, attention grabbing and relevant. Giving customers information they want to receive makes it more likely they will open the email.

Design with Your Brand

Your email design should reflect your brand. Don’t let the recipient question the legitimacy of the message because it does not look like it came from you. Use eye-catching images, short blocks of text and white space that allows the eye to rest.

Invest in ROI

According to the Data & Marketing Association, every dollar spent on email marketing has a return on investment of $42. To achieve that ROI, you need to send emails that people open. Take time to create email campaigns using these tips and you are on your way!

How to Start a Digital Marketing Strategy to Guide Online Marketing

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Do you have a digital marketing strategy to guide your online marketing? If not, you are likely not clear what you are doing or if it is having the right impact. It’s never too late to develop a strategy to set yourself up for success.

The digital strategy process begins with a discovery phase. During this initial phase of the process, the goal is to gather the information needed to develop the right strategy for the needs of your business.

Collect Marketing Information

Review materials you already have on hand, such as your business and/or marketing plan.

You may also need to conduct some research:

  • Interviews with key stakeholders, including internal staff, partners, and or customers
  • Review of available research related to your industry
  • Focus groups
  • Competitor research

Ask the Right Questions

Goals

  • What are my marketing goals? Leads, sales, exposure, etc. Be as specific as possible.
  • Do my online goals differ in any way?
  • What are the valuable target keywords for my business?

General Marketing

  • How do I market my business? Review any related documents such as marketing plans, market data, etc.
  • What makes my business unique? What makes people become customers? Repeat customers?
  • What are my current sources of new clients?
  • What is my desired style, tone, voice, messaging, brand positioning?

Audience

  • Who is my target client/audience? Be as specific as possible.
  • Ideally, what should my target client say about me?
  • What do I provide that is of the greatest interest/need to my audience?

Competitors

  • Who are my top competitors?
  • What are the components to their digital strategy?
  • Is there anything that my competitors do online that I know or think helps them? Hurts them?
  • What makes me different from my competitors?

Website

  • Do I need to change my website, including adding or deleting any current content or features?
  • What tools are used to provide content and functionality for my website?
  • What does Google Analytics tell me about how my website is currently used?

Social Media

  • Which social media do I currently use? Document how often and what you post at each.
  • What does my following look like on each social media channel? (Include follower numbers, types of people, and anything else that defines who you are engaging with.)
  • What types of posts result in engagement (comments, likes, shares, emails, etc) from my followers?
  • Which social media do I want to consider?

Online Marketing

  • Where else am I online? (Google it!)
  • What opportunities are available at each location?
  • Considering everywhere I am online, what is working and what is not? How do I know?

Resources

  • What financial resources do I have to apply to my digital marketing? Human resources? Other?
  • How much time can I reliably invest in digital marketing activities?
  • What content sources can I draw from for my digital marketing – That I create? That others create?

Online Marketing Success Starts Here

If this seems like a lot, it is. The more insightful information you collect, the better the digital marketing strategy to guide your online marketing will be.

Of course, I am here to help!

5 Inspired Infographic Ideas

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Infographics help you tell a story in a visual way. Online, the visual appeal combined with minimal text can attract more attention than text-heavy approaches.

Creating an infographic takes time. You need to research your message and the points you want to share. And, you need a compelling visual way to present that data.

It can be discouraging to spend hours working on an infographic that get’s no engagement. It is important to have a clear message that engages with your target audience.

Here are some ideas to help you to develop infographics that gain attention.

Solve a problem.

Put yourself in the shoes of your target customer or audience. Then, speak to a problem they need solved. Answer a question that you are uniquely qualified to answer for them.

Be sure that the data and the information you include provides value and positions you as a thought leader in your industry.

Provide a unique point of view.

Share your unique insight and perspective to stand out. This is a great way to position you and your company as subject matter experts to listen to.

Creating content that challenges the status quo can feel risky and will often generate controversy and debate. But these types of pieces tend to get the conversation going and truly differentiate you from others.

Offer insight.

Every industry has a knowledge base that is commonly understood. At least we often think so. Often, we toss around words, phrases and references that aren’t as understood as we assume. This makes for great infographic material.

Explain something that is often glossed over. Explain the origin, the data behind it, and anecdote that illustrates. Offer insight that others aren’t providing.

Interpret data with a filtered lens.

When surveys and research are done, the data interpretation is often very general. Provide value to your audience by interpreting the data more narrowly, focusing on the parameters that matter most to them. Your take may vary quite a bit from more global analyses of the data collected.

Bring related content together.

Your industry and your specific client make a unique combination. Creating infographics that bring separate items together to create context and meaning can illustrate that point. Bring data and information together to tell a story that you are best able to tell.