The internet is swarming with tips, tricks, and suggestions about how to design beautiful emails. And while a lot of marketers seem to understand the basics — personalize the copy, make the call-to-action pop, segment your list, etc. — many still overlook an important component of effective email marketing: emails also need to have visual appeal.
As marketers, the gospel of “value” is drilled into our heads before we write our first blog post. Providing value to site visitors, prospects, and customers is the cornerstone of inbound marketing, but it’s easy to forget about transactional emails.
Email marketing has come a long way in just the past few years. But with all the fancy new functionality brands are utilizing, you know what’s kind of funny? A well-written, plain-text email can perform just as well (if not better) than a highly designed email with tons of bells and whistles.
In fact, no matter how fancy your marketing emails look, if they’re devoid of well-written content, your subscribers will stop opening — and start deleting — your messages.
It’s the beginning of the quarter. You just set your team’s new lead goals, and you’re starting to think about what steps you’re going to have to take to achieve them.
While whipping up some compelling content and placing lead generation forms in all the right places sounds like a feasible strategy, rest assure that there’s more to be considered.
This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
“Just checking in” emails are the worst. If you’re sending an email, it’s obvious that you’re checking in. You don’t need to say it again.
When you’re an email marketer, your to-do list often looks like this: Generate opt-in leads, segment your lists, set up lead nurturing workflows, draft clear and concise email copy, check your emails for deliverability, optimize for plain text and HTML, and so on.
Geez … isn’t there any fun in email marketing anymore?
Last fall, my teammate, Pamela Vaughan, and I made a terrifying and exciting decision. We were on a big mission to reduce our graymail, and we decided to do something drastic.
We created a workflow that initially unsubscribed 250,000 people from our emails — which was roughly half of our list — and would continue to unsubscribe unengaged people over time. Plus, we completely eliminated the option to receive instant notification emails from us.
You don’t need to be an email marketing expert to know that you don’t want people to unsubscribe from your emails.
However, an unsubscribe isn’t the end of the world. In fact, it can actually serve as a helpful signal. For example, if you notice that your unsubscribe rate is starting to climb, it might mean that you’re overloading your audience or failing to target them with sufficiently relevant content.
As more and more people use their mobile phones to surf the internet, marketers have had to rethink how and where we create, share, and optimize content on the web — including email.
In the past year or two, we’ve seen a number of notable changes in the way people check and read their email.
On any given day, the average businessperson receives 91 emails, according to a report by The Radicati Group. This number is expected to rise to 95 emails per person per day by next year, and reach almost 100 by 2018.
That’s a lot of email.
There’s a lot to say when it comes to how to do email marketing well. We could talk for days about the most critical components of an optimized email, common email marketing mistakes you might be making, and examples of brilliant email marketing that will inspire you. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how optimized your emails are if you can’t see the results of your efforts — not to mention measure whether email is helping you hit your goals.
Last year, we saw significant changes in marketing technology. Mobile and social search shifted marketer’s SEO efforts, and messaging apps started to introduce new ways for brands to connect with their audience. But one channel continued to hold the reputation of ‘ol reliable among marketing teams: email.
When you work in marketing, establishing partnerships and building meaningful relationships with influencers comes with the territory.
At CreativeLive, I’m constantly seeking out new business leaders to introduce to our audience. For me, this translates into a high volume of cold emails to people who are extremely busy.
This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
What’s the first step to being more productive?
Depending on what you do, many different answers might come to mind. For some it might be managing time better, setting a schedule, or creating a to-do list every day. But this isn’t exactly the answer I’m looking for.
