When it comes to trying to reach your franchise’s audience, email marketing remains one of the single best tools to do so. Because consumers elect to subscribe to your emails, you know that the people that receive them are interested in the offers and news you’re sending.
Here, get tips for getting the most out of your email marketing.
1. Personalize the Subject Line + Content
Email marketing has evolved significantly since its arrival more than a decade ago. Now you’ve got the tools to personally address an email directly to each individual recipient. And personalizing your emails pays off: personalized subject lines get 27% more click rates and more than double the transaction rate of non-personalized emails.
2. Make the Offer Irresistible
You’ll see more offer redemptions if the promotion you email your subscribers is really valuable. For example, to get people to initially sign up for your emails, you could offer 25% off of a purchase. That’s a significant savings, and one that’s worth handing over their email addresses.
But continue to drive value with your offers over time. Rather than bombarding people with mediocre offers every week, opt for fewer promotional emails, but make each one really worth opening. And mix up the offers: you could test out a “buy one get one free” one email against a “$10 off purchase” the next email.
3. Pay Attention to Analytics
When you know which offers people are redeeming, you have valuable insight into what your customers want. Let’s say you saw greater redemption of the “$10 off purchase” email. That tells you that you should try a similar promotion in the future.
Also look at unsubscribe rates. If you see more people unsubscribing from your emails over time, you likely have one of the following problems:
- You’re sending too many emails
- Your offers aren’t of interest
Tweak your frequency first to see if that changes the dropoff rate. If it doesn’t, then look at the offers you’re sending.
4. Keep Them Short and Sweet
People who open emails from a brand aren’t looking for a page of text. They have the attention span to scan a few short paragraphs; nothing more. Boil down your marketing message to what’s important: the offer. What do you want people to do after reading your email? That’s your core message.
5. Include a Call to Action
Part of getting email subscribers to take action is to tell them what you want the to do in the email. Note: use only one call to action, otherwise you will confuse subscribers and they’ll do nothing. Some examples of effective calls to action include:
- Click to buy
- Start saving now
- Activate your special offer
- Get your limited time promotion now
Create a sense of urgency with the offer so people don’t close your email, intending to come back to it later.
Used as part of your overall marketing strategy, email can be a highly effective means of engaging your franchise’ customers.
Susan Guillory is the President of Egg Marketing & Communications, a marketing firm specializing in content writing and social media management. She’s written three business books, including How to Get More Customers With Press Releases, and frequently blogs about small business and marketing on sites including Forbes, AllBusiness, The Marketing Eggspert Blog, and Tweak Your Biz. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing.