Email marketing has proven to be one of the most effective ways to promote products, and services online for many. The major benefit of email marketing for bloggers is that it is affordable and cost-effective as compared to other forms of marketing.
I downloaded this e book on email marketing which is full of great email marketing tips. I strongly urge reading this – The Rebel’s guide to email marketing.
Now, I am no expert when it comes to email marketing. I have only recently started to create email campaigns to send my latest blog posts to my subscribers. Depending on the topic of the article some email campaigns have received a very high Open rate and CTR whereas, some articles have had less than 2% open rate.
In the process of my email marketing efforts I have learnt quite a few lessons which I thought would be worth a share!
So here are my top 5 lessons for effective email marketing for bloggers that help to grab attention of your readers!
1. The subject line or the heading of the email
The subject of your email should be short, clear, easy to scan and catchy it should have an exciting gist of what’s inside, so that recipient opens the email. It is best to be clear in the subject line whether the email contains, a new product announcement, an event invitation, promotion of the existing product, press release, holiday greetings and so forth.
Here are two examples from Neil Patel’s emails.
The first EDM subject clearly conveys that the email is about a latest blog post/ guide to URL structure for SEO.
The email second subject succeeds at creating an urgency and conveying that the email is about his marketing programe.
2. Body of the email
The email body should be conversational and not “Newslettery”. Newsletters are for boring corporates. Bloggers should stick to conversational tone as if you are speaking to your readers personally! Include your blog links and affiliate links in the email body.
Unless absolutely necessary avoid using a lot of images. Usually images do not load in many email browsers, therefore use short and crisp text format for the email body.
Here’s a great email example from Jeff Bullas. The email is very personal, includes 2 CTA’s and the length is just right! Note there are no images!
3. Timing
Another point to remember is the time when you send your email. The timing of the email is of crucial importance to target the specific audiences. Working days are best to grab the bulk of audiences. Coschedule Shared an article on what 10 Studies Say About The Best Time To Send Email. According to the article the three best days to send an email are:
- Tuesday: This is hands down the #1 best day to send emails according to the majority of the data from these studies.
- Thursday: If you send two emails a week, choose Thursday for your second day.
- Wednesday: While no single study showed that Wednesday was the most popular, it came in second place several times
4. Email layout & design
The design & layout of your email is important. It needs to be presented such that it is readable on any device with appropriate font size. Always do a test run for your email to one or two emails of yours and colleagues/friends to testify the delivery time, formats, spam filter, attractiveness, understanding etc.
5. Spam test/Primary box test
You might have noticed that many emails land up in your ‘promotions’ or ‘social’ tabs in Gmail. Your email could very well land in one of these tabs or in Spam. Always do a test with few of your friends using different email service providers (eg: yahoo, gmail, outlook etc) to see if in any of these your email slips into spam. Avoid using words like ‘free’, ‘discount’ in your subject line.
Your subscription process may also affect how your readers receive the email. If you have an two step opt-in process its less likely that your email will land in spam. But if you don’t have a two step opt-in process your email may land up in spam. That is why it is always recommeded to use two step opt-in.
(currently I do not use two step opt-in, reason being my focus is on collecting as many use emails via subscription. This does bring in a lot of spam id’s which i clean up on a weekly basis)
Conclusion
Most importantly make sure that the email must be sent to the relevant customers to increase business productivity. Do not lose credibility by sending emails to the wrong targets. Failure notices must be noticed to prevent future blacklisting and unnecessary costs. Subscription and unsubscribing should be easy to prevent complaints. Cross browser testing is mandatory.
If you are keen to learn more here’s an e-book on email marketing that covers everything you need to know on email marketing in detail.
The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing – $13.33
Retail Price: $19.99
You Save: $6.66
Wow.. didn’t know about the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday thing… Nice share!
Thank you glad you found it interesting 🙂
Interesting post. I learned a few things by reading it. Will surely try to imply it soon.
Great! Let me know if you need any help
That’s a very comprehensive guide for email marketing. I didn’t know there’s differences with which day of the week you email people.
Yep, the day does matter. Glad you found the article useful
Need to buck up on my email marketing! I like the research on the 3 effective days and will definitely use these tips ❤
I loved the tips you gave. I am going to implement them when I send emails next.
this is one good sharing and ishould apply on this too… Thanks a lot!