Ninety-seven percent of small businesses are using email marketing to reach their consumers. Having a core group of subscribers and appropriate content are essential, but why put in all the time and effort if they’re not even opening it?
The hurdle of actually getting your consumers to open the email can be hard to overcome. One thing small businesses should ask themselves when using email marketing as a tool for engagement should be:
Would I open this email if I received it from another company?
Are you making a good first impression? Typically recipients see two things when sifting through their inbox: Who the email is from, and what the subject line is. This step is probably your biggest chance to increase your open rate. Does the consumer know who you are? Has your subject line enticed them enough to want to inquire further?
Timing can be your best friend. How are you ensuring your email doesn’t get lost in the inbox shuffle? If you send too early, it could get missed. If you send too late, the reader may skip over it with the intention of coming back to it later (they almost never do). Experimenting with time frames will be essential for small businesses to develop the appropriate time to reach their target audiences.
Don’t spam your subscribers. Spam filters analyze a huge list of criteria. How is your business avoiding this trap? Some suggestions include:
· Don’t use all CAPS
· Avoid using too many: !!!!!
· Stay away from spam phrases like “Once in a lifetime opportunity!!!”
Purge your dead weight. The more targeted your subscriber list, the more likely they are to engage and open your emails. They signed up for a reason. Some email marketing programs allow you access to see who or how many people are actually opening your email and how many are bouncing back. This can ensure you are utilizing your time and investment wisely.
Are you making it easy for consumers to sign up? As a growing small business, you owe it to yourself and your customers to make it easy for them to receive additional offers and information from you and your business. The harder the sign-up process, the less likely they are to do it.
Once you’ve worked through and fine-tuned these steps, I’m sure you’re questioning what a successful open rate actually is. Email marketing campaigns will differ per industry and your target market.
It's an interesting balance in today's market, trying to find the best way to communicate with people. You want to reach everyone how they want to be reached, but how can you meet everyone's individual communication style? Some of my clients are phone people. If it's not through a call, it's not happening. Others don't like being interrupted by the phone, and would prefer to correspond through email. So what happens when you reach out to a phone person by email or vice versa without knowing? how can you anticipate how the prospect might react to each communication method? It makes for a very complicated system of communication, that probably alienates half of the list right off the bat.
ReplyDeleteI think the address the email is coming from is really important. If the email address does not include the name of the company (which I would recognize) then I delete the email for fear of getting a virus on my computer. I don't think twice about trashing an email from an unknown sender. I have too many things that are important to me on my computer to risk loosing it all because of my curiosity over an email.
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to see how the measurement will evolve. I do not open any email I do not recognize for fear of a virus. If the company is familiar I will go to their website and research what they are selling. It is logical companies will attempt to use email for advertising. Sticking with their target market could bring in more customers by way of that audience forwarding the email to friends.
ReplyDeleteWhen I go to a website and it is time consuming to get more information I will stop because it is not worth my time for that special offer, I can do without.