Email Marketing gets tougher every day. Like most internet marketers, I work hard to get the best email marketing results.
It’s not easy, though.
I mean, it’s not easy to get people to open your auto-responder emails, and that’s only the beginning.
Then you have to give them interesting, relevant and valuable content. That’s not easy, either. And it’s not even the end of the process.
You then need to have them start trusting you, and engaging with you at some level.
And finally, the best email marketing results are achieved when you get your readers to complete a targeted action. That usually involves a “click through” of some sort.
The Best Email Marketing Starts With Optimizing Your Open Rate
Create compelling headlines that entice people to open your email messages. Make sure your email subject lines scream “value” and not “promotion”. Don’t use spammy words like “free”, “must have”, “best deal ever” and so forth.
Study your open rates in your auto-responder statistics.
Which subject lines get the best open rates?
Test it with split tests.
If you’re getting a decent open rate with “learn the basics of wordpress”, try it again with a different group of subscribers like this… “learn the basics of WORDPRESS”. Then, maybe “find out how WordPress works”, or “you must get the basics of WordPress down pat” and so forth. Run more emails with the most popular headlines, ditch the others and move forward.
If your email doesn’t get opened, it doesn’t matter what your message is. Nobody will see it.
You Must Build Engagement
Once your email is opened, people will scan it quickly to see if you care about them.
That means, if your “learn the basics of WordPress” is focused on getting your readers to buy a WordPress course, you’re telling him/her that you mostly care about making a sale. Not about them learning to use WordPress.
If the same email gives one or two tips, and then a link to a survey saying something like “what’s your biggest challenge with your WordPress site”… your subscriber will probably feel much more like you care about giving them good, valuable information.
You may ask for a sale in your email, or maybe in a follow up one. But don’t let the promotion be the biggest point to your message. Let VALUE be the biggest point.
When you lead with value, your readers will engage with you more. That’s because you are telling them that you want to build a relationship with them, not just sell them a product.
The Best Email Marketing Results Ends With Click-Throughs
When you follow the “engagement” path, readers will start completing the actions you call on them to take.
They’ll start answering your surveys, liking your Facebook links, joining your webinars, clicking links to your blog posts, commenting on them, etc.
This shows you that your subscribers now value YOU. As a result, they will follow you much more closely than if you treated them like a statistic in your sales spreadsheet.
That results in better click-through rates (CTR).
It begins with them opening your email messages more often, but ends with them clicking through on the links you provide them. Those links may go to surveys, blog posts or sales pages… but they’ll click them because they’ve begun to trust you.
Don’t violate the trust.
Make a small portion of your links go to sales pages, and the larger portion to value based content like blog posts and surveys. Make some of them even go to bonus offers, like a free webinar or ebook.
Again, watch your statistics carefully to study the CTR metric. Split test one link against another to see which ones are getting clicked on most. This will guide you as to what works best with your list.
Your final goal is to build the CTR into a robust interaction with your subscribers.
My Latest Strategy For Getting The Best Email Marketing Results
One of the biggest problems my clients encounter with their email marketing is just WHAT to send to their list.
I’ve certainly struggled with this issue, as all email marketers have.
I’m going to start rolling out a strategy I like based on an article I read by my friend, Rachel Lavern.
Rachel mentioned that she likes to develop content based on “themes”.
Now, that’s a simple enough idea, but the more I thought about it, I realized how powerful it is.
Instead of sitting down a couple times a week and thinking, “what should I write about to my subscribers today?”, you go straight to your theme outline and just start pumping it out.
A “theme” for a fitness blogger might be something like this: “nutrition for optimal cardiac function”, or “weight loss” or “aerobic exercise routines”. Now, you can choose a 6-week period, or a calendar month or any other unit of time you choose and superimpose your theme on it.
So, for the month of January, for instance… you can develop 4 weeks of content to deliver to your “fitness” list. For the first week of January, you’ll take up the subject of aerobic exercise. You might want to write a 3-day series on some beneficial aerobic routines.
Monday, you can email about running, Tuesday you can email about step exercises, and Wednesday you can send an email about a webinar presentation on the aerobic exercise, or maybe send a link to an aerobic exercise video series that you are selling or affiliating.
Week two in January, you can send emails about reducing cholesterol.
You get the idea.
By the end of January, you’ve delivered 4 weeks of fitness emails.
In February, you’ll do the same thing, but this time your theme will be anti-inflammatory herbs and juices.
Over the year, you’ll have written email sequences within 12 themes highly relevant to your niche.
I love this idea because instead of aimlessly thinking of what kind of emails to send your fitness group, you have targeted themes within which to develop and deliver content.
You decide which of these emails or email sequences will actually point toward products or services. Then you build up your sequences to support your marketing goals.
Now, this may not be exactly what Rachel had in mind, but I’ll give her the credit for inspiring the development of this strategy that I will be putting into place in order to get the best email marketing results in my business.
If you’d like to get your own best email marketing results, you might like to check out the online business training group that I’ve started with my wife, Donna. Click to see how the WhirlWind Successs VIP Club can help you get the best email marketing results, or build any other aspect of your online business and blog.
Now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear about your email marketing strategies.
