After starting and building a very large email list for my Daily Deal Company it became VERY apparent that our email list and email open rate was gold. We realized we had to do whatever it took not to piss of your subscribers. In the entire time we had the company we were the ones who pressed send every single morning for 4+ years. We spent a lot of time split testing deals, offers, and other factors. This contributed to the reason of our success and why we were able to sell the company as we did. This was both a blessing and a curse because it literally occupied every moment of my awaking time how to get more out of my 50,000+ subscribers.
The shocking figure from this is we had a 28% email open rate over the time of our business. As a result, this contributed to instant sales every day. It is one thing to have Facebook Fans (where less than 10% of your fans see each post without paying) but getting that in your inbox every morning makes you money fast. So I am here to tell you 4 most important things you need to know about email marketing.
1 YOUR SUBJECT LINE IS EVERYTHING.
Make it worth it. Even with the 28% open rate, I wish we could have tracked the amount of people that actually looked at it on their phone even though they may not have opened it. Make it short, sweet, descriptive, and preplan the amount of available characters you have without going over.
One day… I sent an email to my list for a computer repair deal. Half the list got (50% off a flat rate computer repair only $35…) and the other have had… (Computer running slow? Fix any problem only $35). Well as you could only image… the (Computer running slow?) had accounted for 4 TIMES the sales… and an open rate of more than double.
2 SINGLE OPT IN VS DOUBLE
One of the most terrifying days of my life… was the day I was blocked by Shaw Cable & Gmail in 2010 for not having a double opt in system. I NEVER spammed, but as I set the company up and drove a lot of traffic I one day our emails open just dropped by 90+ % and we could not even include our URL in an email. Well as you could only imagine… it was a stressful week. Luckily we had some friends who worked at at shaw and asked them to speak to their manager that got us up to the highest level of the company and managed to remove us. We instantly changed to double opt in… and never had a problem again.
3 WHAT EMAIL MARKETING PLATFORM WILL YOU USE.
Originally I had started with Constant Contact and had tried switching several times because they did not have an automated series of emails. Because of this I had signed up for I contact premium plan, but when they did the conversion (all with over a year of only double opt in subscriptions) had sent it was not sent to the inbox for all Gmail accounts. This did not work and tested with Get Response (a new list) who had email delivery issues (even with testing our own emails) and similar issues with Infusionsoft. What email marketing platform do I use and rely on today? I use AWeber.
So… like a good marriage, make sure that this is planning to be together always… or may take half of your list if you ever try to switch ?
4 HOW OFTEN YOU EMAIL YOUR CUSTOMERS AND WHEN
Personally I liked to send emails out around 10am…. People are usually at work, university, got the kids out of the house and will make sure that they get that notification after they had already sifted through all of their other subscription emails and anything else that came in before. Open rates were always way slower on weekends (except Sunday evening) so play around with some of the features. Always make sure to account for differences in time zones and ONLY SEND GOOD EMAILS.
Your customers do not want to hear special updates what you did in the community, or constant surveys, this just pisses people off. You will get unsubscribes every time… its not personal but sometimes they have their product, change emails, or just don’t want constant bombardments of emails. Remember even if they did unsubscribe you still have marketing, social media, and perhaps even a good old fashioned letter sent to their house.
If you are looking for any further advice, please feel free to contact me and together we can work out the perfect system from the start that will ensure you get the most of your marketing and customers.
Other Articles you may like:
- Is your website loading slow?4 Easy ways to Improve Page Speed
- SEO in comparison to Dating Google’s Daughter plus 8 things you need to know
- “If it can be done on a Laptop, it can be delegated” 10 things you need to know about Freelancing