Tips for Warming Up Your Email Lists to Your Content

Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to attract new customers, as well as cultivate the business generated by the loyal patrons of your company.

In addition to being a highly effective marketing tool, emails also create a more personal relationship with all of your customers. Even though email tends to be effective, it can be difficult to bump up low open rates.

Let’s look at a few email marketing statistics.

• More than half of all emails today arrive on mobile device platforms
• Mobile devices are the most popular platform for sending emails to new subscribers
• Marketers are six times more likely to click an email than to read a tweet
• Personalized emails enjoy a click-through rate that is nearly 20% higher than emails that lack a personal touch

How to Warm Up Your Target Audience

In the world of baseball, a pitcher “warms up” before taking the mound to start a game or come in for relief during a game. What exactly does that mean? Well, it means pitchers slowly increase the rate and strength of their pitches during warm-up sessions to prevent arm injuries.

What does baseball have to do with email marketing? The answer is the same “warm-up” philosophy. Successful email marketing campaigns test the water, so to speak, before plunging in with a strong push to increase the number of repeat customers.

Here’s how an email marketing professional warms up his or her target audience:

• Send emails to the most engaged members of your target audience. Engaged means customers that have purchased products recently, such as the past 30 or 60 days
• Refer to email lists that have the most active members
• If you have less than 50,000 contacts, send emails to the most engaged members within the first two weeks
• If you have more than 50,000 contacts, work with our Success and Deliverability Team to create a customized warm-up strategy
• Businesses that send out large volumes of emails need to understand the limitations placed on emails by mailbox providers
• Slowly bring mailbox providers like Gmail on board before increasing the volume of emails sent
• Integrate less engaged contacts starting after the first two weeks of an email campaign

Email marketing requires a much different content approach than the content sent out through social media channels. The content created for email marketing campaigns should look similar to the content you upload to your business website. It should be more personal, as well as more dedicated to reaching your target audience.

Here are 10 tips to improve your email content.

Personalize, Personalize, Personalize

There is that word “Personalize” again. Get used to it because it is the most important term for email marketers. First, use the first names of contact to generate a personal touch right off the bat. Second, target your content to different contacts that have different personalities. Finally, speak directly to contacts as if you are sitting across from them.

Make the Subject Line Attention-Grabbing

We do not mean screaming your marketing message by using printed words. We mean creating an attention-grabbing subject line that motivates your contacts to open up the emails and see what is inside. Consider the blank subject line as the lock that opens your emails. The key for opening the lock comes in the form of an appealing subject line.

Subject Lines Have to Relate to Content

One of the mistakes some email marketers make is to write catchy subject lines that do not relate to the content inside of the emails. If your subject line does not relate to the content, you will diminish your credibility in the eyes of the contacts that open the emails. Credibility is what you need to build the level of trust among your contacts that lead to the purchase of your business products and services.

Clear Language Means Interested Readers

When you write the content for email newsletters, you are not trying to channel your inner Faulkner or Hemmingway. You have to use clear language that steers clear of confusing industry jargon. If you want to see what clear email language looks like, read some of Neil Patel’s digital marketing content on his blog. Although it is a blog and not an email, his writing style for blog posts is the one to emulate for writing email content.

Second Person References

Here is another no brainer for savvy email marketers: Use words like ‘You” and “Yours” to further personalize the email content. Referred to as second-person references, your audience will feel more engaged if it appears you are speaking directly to them. Second person wording of content also improves the likelihood of your contacts opening future email newsletters.

Why Listing Benefits is More Important Than Features

Every email campaign ultimately leads to an offer that provides several benefits for contacts. Notice the word “Benefits” and not the word “Features.” Your target audience cares less about the technical features of a product or service than how much they care about how the product or services benefit them in their daily lives. You can bullet point the features towards the end of an email, but you need to highlight the benefits of a product or service near the beginning of your email content.

Keep Emails Short and to the Point

How do you feel about long-winded speeches that never seem to get across the main point? You probably drift into another world like contemplating what you are going to do after the long-winded speech ends. You have to remember that feeling when you write email content. Short and to the point does a much better job of maintaining reader interest than meandering content that does not deliver the main point.

Spam is only Good when it is Cooked

Spam is the enemy of email marketing campaigns. It might even be the number one sin committed by novice email marketers. You must send out content when you have something of value to write that helps your contacts solve difficult problems. Moreover, avoid using trite sales jargon that will send your emails to the trash bin.

Convey Your Personality

We have talked a lot about capturing the personalities of your contacts. Now, make sure to let your unique personality shine through your email content. You want to be professional, but by adding a little humor or writing an anecdote, you have a much better chance of maintaining the interest of your target audience.

Relevance Rules the Day

Writing about yesterday’s news will turn off your target audience. Keep your content relevant and even better, reach out a little bit into the future to explain how something will affect your customers.