Category: Tech tips

Here are five really simple tips which you can use immediately to improve your email marketing.

With opens on mobile devices now exceeding 50%, it’s vital to design with mobile in mind, while not forgetting desktop users.

Recent research shows that if an email doesn’t look good on mobile, many users will delete, or at worst unsubscribe.

All these tips will make your emails more mobile-friendly and help you produce succinct, compelling copy.

1. Use buttons for your calls to action

Buttons will always generate more clicks than text links, especially for mobile users.

Consider which of these is more likely to get clicked.

The 10th annual Comic Arts Festivals is taking place in Brighton next month, and you can register here to get your tickets online.

The 10th annual Comic Arts Festivals is taking place in Brighton next month.

If you’re using a platform such as MailChimp, buttons are straightforward to add.

2. Keep your calls to action short and avoid friction words

This first example is far too long, and everyone will know it’s a link, so you don’t have to instruct them to click.

The second example is much shorter and reiterates the benefit.

Friction words are those that imply your reader has to do something they don’t necessarily want to do.

Common friction words include:

Download
Buy
Order
Submit

This example is for a free copywriting guide.

The second example reiterates the benefit. It doesn’t even need to state the need to download it – readers will know this.

3. Always include a pre-header

A pre-header is the summary text that follows the subject line when viewing an email from the inbox.

Many mobile, desktop and web email clients display email pre-headers to provide a preview of what the message contains before you open it.

Pre-headers deliver a seven per cent higher open rate, on average.

Pre-headers also come in handy if the subject line has been truncated as in the first example below.

In this example, which is landscape view on an iPhone, both the subject line and pre-header are visible, thus complementing each other perfectly.

In the examples above, without a pre-header, subscribers would only see “No images? Click here”.

4. Keep it succinct. Use short sentences and paragraphs

Subscribers are more likely to read and act on short and punchy emails.

After you’ve written your copy, re-read it, and remove any superfluous words.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers for their business over the past year.

becomes

Thank you for your business in 2019; we appreciate it.

5. It’s not about you. It’s about them

I regularly receive emails from businesses headed “Here’s what we’ve been up to”.

Yawn.

Often, these include articles such as “Here are some websites we’ve built recently” or “We’d like to welcome John Smith to our accounts team. His hobbies are rambling and trainspotting”.

So what? How does this “news” benefit the reader?

Taking the second example, by all means, announce John, but explain the benefits for the customer. So it could become:

New appointment brings faster turn-round for your PAYE enquiries

We’re delighted to welcome John Smith to our accounts team. John has ten years’ payroll experience, and he will be your dedicated point of contact for PAYE enquiries. As a result our turn-round time for queries will reduce from 48 to 24 hours.

• About the author

Julian Wellings has 12 years’ email marketing experience and works with clients across the UK.

emails

Before starting Expertise on Tap in 2007, I worked in companies where email had ceased to be effective. Employees were suffering from extreme email overload, affecting their productivity.

If you can reduce email overload in business, then it becomes a more effective communication tool, as it was initially intended to be.

Here are my tips to help business owners use email more effectively.

1. Understand your clients’ and suppliers’ preferred communication method

I have some clients who are frequently in meetings; when you phone them, it often goes to voice mail. They prefer to receive emails rather than phone calls.

Conversely, I have clients who prefer phone calls (as do I), so I use email only if I need to send them a link or a file.

2. Work out when your clients and contacts usually check their emails.

That could be anything from 6am to midnight in the SME world! SME owners tend not to work 9-5. If you send your emails when your client is most likely to be online, it will land in their inbox as a new email, and they’re more likely to deal with it. If you use Outlook, one way to do this is to write your email and then set it to send at a later time.

3. If you’ve decided email is the best option, here are some further tips.

Use the cc function sparingly. Do the people copied really need to see the email?
Avoid Reply to All unless everyone really needs to see your reply.
State in the subject line the classification of the email. That helps people prioritise. E.g. “for action”, “for review”, or “for information”.
If the email is for action by more than one person, explain who needs to do what.
Don’t expect that because you’ve sent an email, you have a right to an instant reply!
Use a descriptive subject line to help the recipient prioritise the email. Don’t just say “Meeting”. Instead, put “Our meeting 16th August 2pm – just checking you can come”
Be concise and to the point. No one wants to read an essay.
Lay out the decision you want from that email and the ideal date you want it completed by.
Use numbered bullet points rather than lengthy paragraphs. That also makes it easier for the recipient to respond to, e.g. “Regarding point #3”.

5 easy ways to instantly improve your email marketing