4 Tips for Boosting Your Email Marketing Strategy

Every business owner wants to expand and grow their client base, and email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for both getting and nurturing leads.

A few years back, there were a lot of marketers who loudly declared email marketing was a thing of the past. Yet, they were obviously wrong.

Email marketing is evolving as rapidly as the rest of technology, and helps ensure you get one of the highest returns on the resources you’re investing in your marketing efforts.

However, you know not every email is going to get opened. Some of them go straight to spam, and some are just ignored. And then BOOM, there’s the end of your email marketing campaign for that lead.

That’s why you’ve got to step up your game, and these four surefire tips for boosting your email marketing strategy are going to help you do exactly that.

Implement Effective Opt-In Options

In order to have effective email marketing campaigns you need…well…email list subscribers.

But, don’t go rushing out to buy lists. None of the people on those lists asked for you to send them content, and it’s hard for you to be sure they were okay with their information being shared with third parties.

If the people on your list are receiving content they didn’t sign up for, it’s very likely not relevant to them in any way. At best, they ignore it. At worst, it gets flagged as spam. If that happens too often, your brand reputation and server reputation will both take a hit.

Don’t let that happen.

Instead, build a healthy email list the right way:

• Include incentivized email subscription opt-in forms on your website, complete with a compelling call-to-action. Placing the box near the top of the website is proven to be highly effective, and pop-up boxes can work well when done correctly. Let them know there is a CLEAR benefit to subscribing to your list and receiving your content.
• Do some A/B split testing to determine if your particular website visitors respond best to single or double opt-in forms. Single forms don’t require the user to confirm their subscription, whereas double forms do. The former means you may end up with a lot of spam or false emails, and the latter means the user may completely forget to confirm. However, single forms are fast and convenient, and double forms are secure. This is why testing is important, as it helps you figure out what works best for you and your business.
• Encourage your social media followers to sign up for your list, giving incentive such as giveaways, giftcards, whitepapers, eBooks, or other value-driven offers.

Remember: Quality is always better than quantity. You could have a list of a million followers, but they sure won’t do you any good if none of them are interested in your products or services. It would be better to have only a thousand subscribers that all want to purchase something from you.

Having a healthy list of prospective customers will boost your open rates and, in return, your sales.

Optimize for Mobile

If you haven’t taken the time to optimize your email marketing campaigns for mobile, you’re missing out on HUGE opportunities for building up your list and boosting your sales.

Over the past few years, mobile email opens have increased by about 180%, and this number will only continue to grow as people check their email several times throughout their day.

That may sound great, but those opens aren’t going to do you any good if your emails and website aren’t optimized for mobile. You want the messages to be well-formatted to work on a variety of mobile devices, and the emails should load quickly and be instantly responsive.

When you create your next email marketing campaign, test the message on several different devices before you send it out to your list. Why waste your time on creating a great campaign if it’s not going to do anything to further your business?

Give that mobile optimized campaign a significant boost by adding texting to your business communications.

You’ve undoubtedly seen this as a consumer yourself: “Text COFEE to 55-555 for exclusive discounts from your favorite coffee shop.”

Encourage your subscribers to visit your site for exclusive offers and value-driven content, using text to give your campaign a boost.

Add Video Content

Video content has rapidly expanded over the past few years, though incorporating video content in email marketing campaigns is still fairly new.

But, it’s no secret that consumers and internet users love videos – and that interest isn’t just limited to cute videos of cats playing piano.

In fact, there are roughly 1,300,000,000 videos on YouTube alone, with nearly 5 billion videos being watched on there every single day within an average month.

According to an eMarketer report, four times as many consumers prefer watching videos about products or services they are considering purchasing, as opposed to just reading about them.

Adding videos to your email marketing messages tend to increase click-through rates up to three times and can bring about a return on investment boost of 40 percent.

Sounds great, right?

While there are some email systems that are unable to support video, you can just send an animated GIF thumbnail in the email message that has a button that looks just like a video. When that person goes to play it, they get redirected to a landing page that has the embedded video set to autoplay.

Not only have you just directed traffic to your site, but you’ve also kept them engaged with your content and seen your products.

Have Effective Website Design

If your site isn’t laid out in a way that lends itself well to following a sales funnel, it’s going to be pretty hard to get the conversions you need to boost sales or gain more list subscribers.

The design is actually the very foundation of a business website – if it’s too hard to navigate or too cluttered, people are just going to jump ship and head somewhere else.

You’re essentially driving your customers right into the arms of your competitor. But, by having your site laid out in a way that is conducive to sales, you can implement other aspects of email marketing, like your blog.

Once they get a feel for the type of content you produce on your blog, they know what to expect from you and you can ensure them the exclusive content they will receive in emails is even better.

If your blog content is already great, imagine what the exclusive content has to offer them!

Final Thoughts

Email marketing is far from dead and, as technology increases, so does the various ways by which you can drive traffic to your site and grow a healthy email list.

As you can see, email marketing is truly the cornerstone to growing your business, regardless of which industry or niche your brand is part of.

Implement these tips and watch your list grow!

Do you have any comments or additional tips for those looking to boost their email marketing efforts? Let me know in the comments below, or get in touch with me over at www.alexiapbullard.com

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