Among the huge range of marketing techniques, email marketing remains a lucrative one, especially for small businesses. It has been a powerful lever for lead generation for almost twenty years.
Email marketing is serving well within the arsenal of inbound marketing tools. The best email marketing services are being offered by experts no matter where you are. Bloggers are availing email marketing services to keep their readers engaged with their content. Retailers make use of it for sharing promotional stuff to drive more customers and B2B marketers use it to generate more revenue.
Still, most people struggle to leverage its benefits effectively. The reason behind it is they miss to reach subscribers with value. Since we know what the problem is, why not break it down?
First of all, make sure before you start blasting out emails, you must do one thing if you want successful results i.e. prepare an email marketing strategy. If you don’t know how to draft an effective and optimized email marketing strategy, have a look at the following 8-step cheat sheet. Continue reading if you are curious to know more.
1. Get a professional email address
Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail are free domains designed for personal use. If you are using these domains for email marketing, you will never reach your final destination. Yes, that’s true! The marketing campaigns you run with these email addresses do not pass DMARC policy. So, it is essential to run campaigns from your domain email address if you clearly want to communicate who you are to your subscribers as well as to the spam and DMARC authentication filters.
2. Build a healthy list of subscribers
This is the most crucial part of email marketing. Your list of subscribers decides the success of your email marketing. So, try to build a healthy one!  Having a healthy list of subscribers keeps your bounce rate low and ensures that you avoid a negative “spammer†reputation. Always remember that a small email list of quality addresses is better than a large one with no value.
3. Have a real, live, human username
If you have a “from†address with someone’s real name, it gives a personalized touch to your emails. Try using the name of a real, living, and breathing member of your marketing team. Test different formats of your sender name (e.g. First Name Last Name vs. Last Name First Name).
4.Write enticing subject lines
In your email marketing strategy, the subject line of the email plays a vital role in generating the leads. If the subject line pops up and grabs the reader’s attention, half of your job is done. The key is to make it attention-grabbing without sacrificing the message. Keep it relevant so that your subscribers will be eager to learn more and end up doing so.
5. Pay extra attention to your call-to-action
It is a very crucial part of your email marketing. If you don’t make it specific to your offer, there are chances that you might lose the reader’s interest. So, try to make it specific and tie it with a sense of urgency. For example, “Download now!†Avoid vague one-words like “Submit†and “Registerâ€. Instead, you may say, “Register for the Webinar Now”.
6. Send the right amount of emails
Now that you know how to draft a perfect email, next is to figure out how often you should send it out. This survey will explain it well – a survey done by Technology Advice with 472 U.S. adults. The question asked was “For what reasons have you marked a business’ emails as spam?†45.8 percent of respondents gave a reason that they were receiving a lot of emails from a particular company. So, it is essential that you avoid flooding your subscriber’s inbox and send the right amount of emails.
7. Create campaigns and measure them
Setup successful email marketing campaigns to reap more benefits. Make sure you track your campaigns and measure the results when they are underway. If the results are not according to your expectations, track each element of your campaign and try improving it.
8. Provide an Unsubscribe Link
It is essential that you include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your every email marketing message. This helps you to violate the CAN-SPAM regulations. As if that happens, it would cost you the loss of your company’s credibility and disturb your marketing budget as well.
Final Thoughts
Hope this cheat sheet sounds interesting to you. So, start your way in email marketing by keeping this 8-step cheat sheet ahead and wait for good results in the short-term. If you need assistance in setting up your email marketing strategy or run email marketing campaigns, get in touch with the expert marketing team of best email marketing company – SoftProdigy. They offer the most reliable services to their clients across the globe. Contact now!