We see a lot of business emails in our inbox every hour of every day and for the most part we send them to the junk file!
I can see you nodding in agreement here as all of us are plagued by ‘junk email’ and yet most of us send email daily in response to others and as an attempt to gain new business. So what is it that makes email intriguing enough to be opened? The Headline, the offer, the design?
Email marketing is a technique that developed from direct marketing where you used to receive a personally addressed envelope in the post with over 2 pages of copy enticing you to ‘try’ or ‘buy’ a product or service. Those letters were very carefully thought out and written by experts in making people buy.
Email marketing is the ‘modern’ version but the same principles apply in many ways. Here are a few great tips for you to apply when you’re using email marketing in conjunction with your social media campaign.
1. Remember you have a database in each social media application. Download to csv files and import into one database and keep it updated monthly.
2. Make your email marketing plan the way you ’round up’ your social media activity each month by setting up a monthly RSS email from your blog
3. Don’t put the whole post from your blog into an RSS email, just an excerpt to get them to follow the link to your blog to read more.
4. Personalise the email ie: Hello David, at the start.
5. Personalise the email in the body too. ”I really thought you’d like this David as…..”
6. Use your first name in the signature
7. Put your social media links under your signature
8. Don’t make them scroll too much to read the main link. Put it in the upper half of your email.
9. Only put one more link in the email and make that in the side bar on the left or right not in the main message
10.Make the subject line really enticing. You know the audience. Use an exclamation mark if you can!
There are many ‘tricks’ to email marketing and the one I’d like to end off on is this:
The database you are forming from your prospects on social media are already ‘warm’ at this stage. They’ve liked your Facebook page, tweeted with you a bit and connected with you on LinkedIn. Don’t treat them like strangers. Keep the tone friendly and warm and most of all, keep the email relevant to the niche you’re in.
If you would like more info on how email marketing and social media marketing work together have a read of our post Using Email Marketing with Social Media Campaigns.
If you have more tips about email marketing we’d love to hear them and share with our audience.
