Did you know that email marketing is 40 times more effective at reaching your target consumer than Twitter or Facebook? This number, from a McKinsey and Company study cited in Inc.com, shows email marketing is one of the most efficient ways to reach your contacts. However, you don’t get great results simply by throwing miscellaneous information together in an email blast and clicking “send.”
At Aspen- and Fort Lauderdale-based public relations agency Durée & Company, we have crafted email blasts for clients from numerous and varied industries. Through our extensive experience, we have found key takeaways to success that are pertinent no matter what your industry.
Below, we share 5 tips for creating a successful email blast.
- Develop an email marketing strategy. First, identify your goal. Are you trying to get clicks to your website? Sell tickets? Get people to call or email you? Once you figure out your goal, it will be easier to draft the content that you want to include. Use your brand guide to develop a template that is consistent with your brand. It’s important not to spam your contacts with an overload of email blasts. Whether it’s monthly or quarterly, choose a timeline and stick with it so your contacts learn when to expect to hear from you.
- Make sure you know your subscribers. Quality is better than quantity! A good way to start a contact list is to collect emails of clients, friends and family that you speak with regularly. Then, share a post on social media with a link for people to subscribe, so that the contact list continues to grow. If you purchase an email list or add random emails of people who don’t know you or your company well, you may get a high number of unsubscribes and bounce-backs after sending the email blast. This could result in your account being flagged as spam or frozen, depending on which service you use.
- Create a strong subject line. Be sure to keep it short and sweet. According to Mailchimp, you should use no more than 9 words and 60 characters. Try adding an emoji to your subject line to make your email stand out and get a higher open rate. You must be strategic. Too many emojis in your subject line could make the email look like spam. If you use an emoji, do a few test runs because it can show up differently depending on your device. Make your subject line descriptive enough that people will have an idea of the email’s content, but also be concise.
- Balance text and images. Include enough images to draw attention to your email and keep it interesting, but not so many that people don’t pay attention to the text. Also, if there are too many images, the email blast could be marked as spam and not make it into inboxes. To get people to engage, include your contact information and a call to action. Usually, this information resides at the bottom of the email blast.
- Analyze your results. After sending the email blast, wait about 24 hours to pull a report. A good majority of your clicks and open rates will come during that time, which should give you a good idea of how it performed. So, now you have the open rate, click-through rate, bounce back rate and more, but are those numbers good or bad? On Constant Contact, you can compare your results with industry averages to really gauge an email blast’s performance. Also, make note of the day and time you sent it out. According to CoSchedule, the best day for an email blast is Tuesday and time is 10 a.m. However, this may differ depending on your audience.
It’s important to note that email marketing, like social media marketing and public relations, continues to evolve. Our job is to stay on top of these changes and apply them to our strategies where we see fit. If you’re looking for more email marketing tips, contact us at info@dureeandcompany.com today.
About Durée & Company
Durée & Company, Inc. is an award-winning, full-service public relations, marketing and special events firm founded in 1999. The firm has offices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Aspen, Colorado. Durée & Company serves the corporate, agency and nonprofit arenas for local, national and international clients. Services include public relations, social media, marketing, content development, advertising, special events, branding, radio promotions and more. Durée & Company clients include well-known names in business, fashion, hospitality, travel, wellness and CBD, marine and yacht, art and culture, nonprofit organizations, legal and professional services and real estate. Durée & Company is a member of PR Boutiques International™ (PRBI), an international network of boutique PR firms. To learn more, go to https://dureeandcompany.com/; call 954-723-9350; or visit Durée & Company on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DureeCoPR/, Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/dureecopr, Twitter at https://twitter.com/dureecopr, LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/dureecopr or YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/DureeAndCompany.
