With the popularity of social media sites such as Pinterest and Twitter, email is an often overlooked marketing channel. Email marketing messages are not only delivered directly to your audience, but they also increase your brand exposure by getting your company’s name and logo out there for all of your readers to see.
According to Gigaom Research, marketers consistently rate email as the single most effective tactic for awareness, acquisition, conversion, and retention. But how do you get potential customers to read your emails? We share three email marketing hacks that will help you drive engagement.
3 Email Marketing Hacks to Elevate Engagement
1. Identify your target market
Before you can send out your first email marketing campaign, you need to know who you are writing for. Each target demographic will respond differently to promotional emails, so it is important that you understand your customers’ likes, dislikes, and the type of message that they are most likely to read and interact with. Without understanding these things about your audience, your emails will most likely end up unopened and deleted
2. Create a captivating subject line
Your email’s subject line is the first thing recipients will see, and should give them a sneak peak into what content the email contains. There are several types of subject lines that will help you maximize the clickability of your email:
- Make it a question.Making the subject line of your email a question could get your audience to think about how the information may be relevant to their own lives. For example, “Do you struggle to wake up in the mornings?”
- Try the ‘how-to’ subject line.Most consumers are interested in reading articles and emails if they hold valuable information that pertains to their own lives. Creating useful content may pique the interest of your readers, as well as leverage you as an expert in your industry.
- Give them a deadline.Sometimes, giving a potential customer too much time to think about a product or service could result in a lost sale. Create a subject line that mentions a sale or limited product or service and give them a deadline to make the purchase. For example: “Get a free t-shirt if you subscribe in the next hour!”
3. Add an Incentive
People love to get things for free and will most likely continue to read an email that they know will contain a special reward or instructions to a surprise. For some, just reading a tip that could better their lives is all the reward they need to be happy. However, for others they are looking for something a little more tangible, such as a giveaway, product, or discount. Give the people what they want by adding a little incentive in the email to ensure it gets read.
Creating powerful emails is a science that can sometimes take several tries before you create one that resonates with your clientele. These email marketing hacks will help you create emails that will not only get read, but will also get you business.
