Back to school time these days seems to be all shopping for back to school supplies, new clothes to start the school year off, and trying to get back into the routine of the previous school year. It is about getting back to the basics of everyday life that isn’t summer vacation.
At this time of year, when your kids are being taught and schooled on the fundamentals of life, you too should take a good look at your existing email campaigns. Take into account the lessons that you have learned in your previous marketing campaigns and also follow these 7 simple practices.
- The Headline is Where the Magic Happens – This is the first opportunity you have to get your message across to the reader. If it isn’t catchy or worthwhile their time they will most likely simply delete your email message unopened. Let’s look at the best common practices for creating that magical headline:
- Keep it short and sweet – no longer than 40-50 characters
- Avoid spammy words such as free, guarantee, and act now
- Avoid UPPERCASE letters
- Avoid excessive use of special characters such as $$, %%, !!
- Avoid misleading or blind headlines
- Make it compelling
- Know your audience – Your audience should set the tone for your email campaigns. Are they buyers, non-buyers, what is their age range, etc. By creating segments or different lists for the same campaign you can use a specific list (ie: buyer list or active) to send messages to your consistently responsive segment and then create a second or third for those that are less active (ie: non-buyers). Being able to relate to your readers is a crucial element in continuing to grow your open rate. Keep your message consistent, but by all means adapt it to your target audience and relative subject.
- Be innovative but simple – Attention spans are ever increasingly dwindling these days, especially with all the technological distractions that we have at our fingertips. So it’s time to start pulling out all the punches. Use videos, photos, or infographics to create a visually appealing email. Make sure to keep it simple and concise. List most crucial points towards the beginning of the email.
- Emphasize your main point – Do this by boldfacing, underlining, or simply changing the color of text to draw the reader’s attention to your key message or call to action.
- Don’t forget a call to action – This might be the second most important element of your email, right behind the subject line. The goal of sending out the correspondence in the first place is to have your reader do something. It might just be to test their engagement or loyalty to your brand. At any rate don’t forget to include a call to action, even if it is as simple as sharing the information given.
- Tick Tock – Timing is key. You want to keep a steady flow of communication in your reader’s inbox, but you also want to maintain a healthy balance between being helpful and spamming. The last thing you wish to do is irritate your readers to the point they unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam. Create a schedule with themed emails so your readers get in the habit of receiving content at certain times or days.
- Clean your data regularly – This is essential for avoiding spam traps or invalid accounts that can damage your deliverability rates. The who’s who of marketers clean their data on a monthly basis.
As your family prepares for back to school, consider what the appropriate lesson play would be for your email campaigns. Getting back to the basics might be exactly what your program needs to ace the next quarter.
