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- 📧 Getting the most out of email marketing
Hey 👋
Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #16 - easy to implement digital marketing ideas straight through your metaphorical letterbox.
I hope you’ve had a good week.
Today’s email is about email. I’m emailing you this email to tell you how to use email better.
Glad we’ve got that sorted.
👉 By the way, if you’ve missed previous newsletters you’ll find them here.
📩 And if you’ve been forwarded this email you can subscribe here.
Sending emails that work 📧
Not all digital channels are created equal.
Email marketing is particularly important because it’s an “owned channel.”
What does that mean? 🤔
Well, unlike social media and other platforms, you ‘own’ and control your audience’s data.
Instagram, X, TikTok et al are so volatile there’s no guarantee there’ll be there tomorrow. More likely, they’ll change their business model, or algorithm, or anything else that will leave you powerless.
Which is why converting people to your email list should be a high priority.
That being said, how do you get the most out of it? Here are 5 things to take your email strategy to the next level:
📧 1️⃣ Create an enticing package
People get millions of emails a day.
So why does yours stand out?
To succeed, you have to give people a reason to get excited.
Chances are, that won’t be by telling them about your new product/idea/service etc.
To be blunt, people don’t actually care about your brand that much.
But they do care about what problem your brand helps them solve.
Put some extra thought into your email offering, and ask “how do we bring as much of the value from our product/brand/service into the email itself?”
Take these delightful newsletters.
I could constantly tell you how amazing we are at what we do (we are), or how successful we’d be at taking on your digital channels (very successful), but you’d soon stop reading.
Instead, we deliver 90% of our best thinking, direct to you with no strings attached (and keep the 10% absolute gold for our clients 😉).
📧 2️⃣ Subject Line > Content
Make sure your content is good, but the subject line is where you should spend most of your creative energy. It should do one of two things:
Be intriguing enough to get someone to open your email
If they don’t, still be able to tell them something about your brand/service/product.
Chances are, the majority of people who receive your emails won’t open them. So what do you want them to understand from your subject line?
All is not lost: Unopened emails act like push notifications, alerting your audience to a snippet of your messaging.
So make them count.
📧 3️⃣ Think about acquisition
Email lists get stale very quickly.
If you picture a funnel, email marketing represents the middle part of the funnel. Unless you’re continually filling the top, the middle gets empty pretty fast. 🚰
So make sure you have a specific strategy to grow your email list.
Choose a couple of other channels to consistently promote your email, but (linked to point 1) you have to make your email list sound interesting enough to join.
“Sign up to get updates” is the worst proposition any one has ever heard.
4️⃣ Clean your lists
Open rates are helpful to monitor, but they have their drawbacks.
One of the biggest is because they include people who’d never, ever open your emails, no matter how hard you try.
Perhaps they no longer have access to their email address, or they blocked you, or they have no interest in what you offer.
Why are you stressing over getting someone to open your email, if they haven’t interacted with you for years?
Consider excluding anyone who hasn’t opened an email once in the last 2 years.
That’s scary.
Most people say “well I might as well send it to everyone just in case.”
That’s not wrong per say, but being able to view open rate and click rates from active subscribers gives you a better indication of how your email marketing is performing.
📧 5️⃣ Create automations where you can
Creating automated journey’s for your subscribers helps you match their specific demographics, preferences and behaviours with tailored messages.
There’s a bigger benefit too:
Setting up, monitoring and tweaking your journeys helps you more effectively track and optimise content, timing, and audience segmentations.
A data-driven approach is crucial for refining your email marketing strategy and improving overall campaign effectiveness over time.
Most email service providers come with automation options, so make sure you’re making the most of them.
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That’s it for this week - would love to hear your questions, thoughts and ideas on email marketing.
See you next week ✌️
What we’re looking at 👀 and listening to 👂
Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍