How to Spice Up Your Next Email Campaign
It’s easy to get caught up in the number of subscribers and focus on increasing your audience while simultaneously ignoring your current one. This can lead to a lot of frustration when you don’t see these subscriber numbers translate to sales, donations, or leads.
Why’s that?
Well, you’re focusing on the wrong numbers!
The metrics to prioritize are ones that will show you how your audience engages with your content: your clicks and your shares. These numbers show what your audience likes, finds important, and cares about, which will help you to write and create better content in the future.
Here are 3 things you can do THIS WEEK to spice up that newsletter and get those clicks.
Personalize Your Emails
There is a human being on the other end of that email, so you have every incentive to sound like a real human being when you’re writing up your content. Make sure your copy is conversational and personal, and your audience will be more interested in what you have to say.
You will be hard-pressed to find an email platform that doesn’t offer ways to easily and automatically personalize your emails. For MailChimp, it’s as simple as making sure to click a button before sending… IF you’re collecting the right information in your sign-up process.
Take a moment to make sure your sign-up form (you know, the form people fill out to subscribe to your email list) includes, at the very least, First Name and Email. Then you can take some time to learn about Merge Tags, which help you personalize your emails for each and every subscriber.
Personalization is more than First Names, though. Personalizing an email includes writing to your audience like you’re sitting in front of them in real life, chatting over a cup of coffee. (Remember what that was like?) Read your copy out loud when you’re done and make sure it sounds natural and flows easily; if you’re stumbling when you’re reading, you need to do some more editing.
Use a Branded Template
A branded template helps set expectations for your readers, so they know what they’ll be getting week over week. A template helps you organize and write your content, and your reader can more easily find the parts of your email that they really care about, so they’re more likely to open your email over time. Consistency builds trust, and reinforces to your audience that you have your s%^# together.
Create a template using your brand colors, and break up your content with headers, images, or icons. All of this helps the reader navigate your content without feeling overwhelmed. Need some inspiration? Check out these examples.
Capitalize on GIFs and Videos
If you’re subscribed to the Slice, then you have seen how much we love a great GIF. More and more companies are using animated GIFs and videos in their communications, since consumers prefer it.
GIFs have become so popular that Facebook dropped a cool $400 million to purchase Giphy.com, the #1 GIF library to date, to integrate with Instagram. Worth every penny!
Follow these steps to add GIFs to your emails. If you’re going this route, think about your audience and pick visuals that match your message, brand, and audience. Sassy or edgy GIFs might not be the best fit if you’re writing emails to parents about activities for their kids, right? Stay on theme!
And follow these steps to add videos to your emails, making sure they are high quality. Test them out and make sure they’re easy to watch on a mobile device.
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to convert readers into clients, donors, or customers. Take the time to optimize those emails, so you don’t miss out on some serious business opportunities!