I’ll venture a guess that your inbox is full right now. Email, invented to be a time saver, has become a major time suck for everyone, especially busy professionals. The thought of trying to stuff one additional email into my inbox scares me but email marketing statistics don’t lie:
• 91 percent of consumers use email at least once per day.
• Email conversion rates are more than three times higher than social media.
• When marketed to through email consumers spend on average 138 percent more than people who do not receive emails.
So how do you write emails your clients and prospects look forward to receiving?
Write what they want to read
One of the most common mistakes in email marketing is forgetting who your audience is. It’s easy to get excited about a topic you’re passionate about within your industry, but if it’s not relevant to your readership (i.e. your clients and prospects) you should not be covering it in your client newsletter. You aren’t writing to your peers, you’re writing to add value to the lives of your clients and prospects. Make sure you’re covering the topics and questions they are interested in learning about. Also, lean on your team to help you with content creation, as they likely have additional insights into the minds and worries of your clients.
As a starting point for compiling topic ideas you can survey your clients. Simple survey software such as SurveyMonkey makes sending a professional looking survey a five minute process. You can ask open ended questions to find out if your clients already have something on their mind or, if you have some general areas or topics in mind, you can include those to gauge interest in the topics you’re considering.
Focus on your subject line
The quality of your email doesn’t matter if your recipients aren’t opening the message. Subject lines are crucial. It may be tempting to put together a subject line at the last minute but challenge yourself to spend some extra time on this step.
Keep subject lines brief. Ask questions that piques reader interest and leads into the subject of your email. Include deadlines if they are relevant. And finally, don’t bait and switch your reader. Controversial or eye catching subject lines might get someone to open your email but the minute they find out you tricked them their trust in you (and your future open rates) will plummet.
Mobile is a must
Roughly half of all email is read on a mobile device and that rate is expected to increase. Your emails must be easy to read on phones, tablets and computers. After writing a phenomenal article and a compelling subject line it would be silly to lose readers because they can’t see your email on their phone.
Luckily, beautiful, easy-to-use, mobileoptimized email clients are readily available. From Constant Contact, to MailChimp to Aweber, their templates are optimized for viewing across all devices and adding your branding is as easy as drag and drop. With services like these you also have real time statistics on your emails. These statistics will help you optimize and improve your emails instead of wondering what’s working.
If you are still trying to send mass emails through your Outlook or Gmail account consider switching to a dedicated service such as those mentioned above. Beyond the mobile compatibility you’ll also find a number of other perks you’ll wonder how you lived without.
Take action
Writing emails your clients and prospects want to read is not as difficult as you may think but it does take some work and planning. Get together with your team and compile a list of topics you think would be relevant and interesting to your readership. Then, divide the writing amongst contributing team members. Once you start sending out your new content keep an eye on your email statistics to see what subject lines, topics and articles are attracting the most attention.
Stephanie Gordon is the founder and CEO of Psych’d Marketing, a boutique marketing firm based in Gainesville, Florida. She holds degrees in both psychology and business from the University of Florida. Psych’d offers full service, concierge marketing solutions for small to medium sized businesses. Stephanie prides herself on connecting phenomenal businesses with the people who need them. www.PsychdMarketing.com