You may have seen various tips, tricks, or “hacks” around the web for email marketing — ways to increase conversions, clicks, open rates, and sign-ups, just to name a few. Well, this article has a little bit of everything, all in one place! These email marketing hacks will increase everything with your email marketing, from conversions to sign-ups. Lets dive right in.
Create an Email Marketing Calendar
Did you know you’re twice as likely to succeed if you have your plans in writing? Whether it’s psychological or not, having a written plan keeps you on track and ensures you never miss an opportunity like Cyber Monday. All you have to do is write down what content is going out when in your calendar, like the one shown above. You can use any calendar app – I personally love Google Calendar.
Follow the “Rule of 7”
According to the rule of 7, you should wait a minimum of 7 days before trying to sell your products or services to a new lead. Instead, send them high-value, free content like an eBook, a link to a helpful article, a video guide, or some sort of downloadable content like a powerpoint template.
Send Other People’s Content
While you’re planning your content for the months ahead and brainstorming what to send that isn’t promotional, why not send other people’s content? Don’t be afraid to send your list content that isn’t your own — as long as they’re not your direct competitors!
Don’t Create, Curate
Rather than creating brand new content of your own, try curating the best content on the web into one place. These 20 hacks are a perfect example — I found them from various places and brought them here in one easy to digest article. Just make sure your content is unique — don’t copy + paste it from others, put it in your own words.
Write Great Headlines
The headline of your email is the first “gate” you must get your customer to go through. It doesn’t matter how good your email content is — if they don’t open it, you may as well be sending them an empty email. The key to a great headline is piquing the reader’s interest with emotional wording. You need to invoke their curiosity, fear, humor, or anger. Check out HubSpot’s 18 email subject lines to get some ideas.
Use FWD: and RE: in Your Subject
Two of the most underused subject titles are the simple abbreviation “RE:” and “FWD:”. These work great because people assume your method is either a response to something they previously sent (meaning it’s important) or you’re forwarding them useful information. Keep in mind, however, that if you use these headlines as tricks, or overuse them, you’ll likely upset your readers and see more unsubscribes.
Keep Your Headline Short
My third and final tip for the email headline/subject is to keep it short. If it’s too long, the last few words might get cut off.
Pro Tip: Use this cut off to your advantage! Try sending subject’s like “I Lost 20 Pounds! All I did was…” to make the reader curious what you did.
Don’t Overuse Images
Images are a great way to increase the scannability and value of your emails — but overuse of images could get you flagged as spam. Try to limit yourself to 1 or 2 high-quality images per email, or even test an all-text email! Marketing is all about testing and analyzing, after all.
Include Customer Testimonials
People care far more about the opinions of others than they ever will about the opinion of the business trying to sell them. By providing some social proof of the credibility of your business and the quality of your product or service via customer testimonials, you’re breaking down some of the barriers your readers have to purchasing from you.
Embed Tweets
One of the easiest ways to show social proof is by embedding real tweets from your past customers right into your emails.
Send Stellar Email Receipts
I love getting good looking email receipts that offer easy tracking information. I hate getting email receipts that look like they were made in the 1990’s. Maybe that’s just me, but I’m willing to bet other people feel the same way. Try using a tool like Receiptful (shown above) to improve your receipt game.
Use More Buttons!
Insert “Click Me” button to something funny
Who doesn’t love pressing a button on the internet? Buttons usually mean something cool will arrive on your doorstep in a few days, or you get to download something for free. Buttons have a higher click-thru rate than hyperlinked text, so try using a button as your call-to-action (CTA), which leads to a sales page.
Add a Personal Touch
What do people love hearing more than any other word in the English language? Their name. A person’s name is like gold. If you have it, use it in your emails. Most email marketing platforms allow you to insert shortcode which automatically pulls their name from your database.
Encourage Readers to Reply Directly
Rather than sending emails with “Do not reply” at the end, tell them to reply! Make the conversation process as easy as possible for them. No one wants to look up the support email address, compose a new email, and send it. We’d rather hit reply and be done with it. Just make sure you’re actually responding!
Send Fewer Emails
This doesn’t apply to everyone, but if you’re sending an email every day, you should tone it down. Of course this depends on your industry, but I would send no more than 1-2 high-impact emails per week. Make them count!
Use Email “Drip” Campaigns
Email drip campaigns are a series of emails which you send out in a specific interval (i.e. “drip” out through the funnel) which is designed for a specific purpose, like converting leads, educating new members, or encouraging them to view a video series.
Write an Awesome Signature
Your email signature is a great place for inspirational quotes and links to your website. I personally love Buddha quotes, but you can find plenty of good ones here.
Proofread, proofread, proofread!
OK this isn’t so much a hack as a bit of personal advice. Being a writer, I find it lazy and distasteful when I get an email full of spelling errors. Being a consumer it makes me doubt the legitimacy of the company sending me the email. Always make sure you rid your emails of spelling and grammar errors before you send them.
Don’t Be Afraid to Resend Unopened Emails
Any time you send an email campaign, keep a list of the people who don’t open your email — and resend the email to them in a few days.
Split-test Your Email Campaigns
An A/B split-test is when you send two different versions of a particular email to your audience — one to audience A (50%) and one to audience B (50%) — in order to see which performs best. The key is to only make one change at a time. If you change the subject line AND the images, how will you know which one made the difference?
Email marketing is still one of the highest-converting methods of marketing, and it’s only growing as people tune out other marketing methods and install ad blockers. I hope these 20 marketing hacks help you grow your business, increase sales, and become a more successful and impactful company!
Bill Widmer is a Content Marketer and Inbound Specialist of ChannelApe