By Zamri Nanyan
Successful email campaign can be defined as the recipients of your email are waiting to get your emails on a frequent basis and when they do get your emails, they will read and take action on what you command in your emails.
For example, you may have a weekly newsletter about cat grooming and you are sending out one email every Monday at 10:00AM. You have 10,000 subscribers and upon checking out, about half of your subscribers are actually hard-core fans of cats. They will be waiting for your emails every Monday and when they do receive your emails, they will read every word you’ve written.
This is an example of a successful email campaign. Now what are some of the best practices of an email campaign that will trigger your readers to open your emails, read and act on any instructions you’re telling them?
Let’s look at some of the best practices of an email campaign below.
1. Address your reader by name
You and me feel warm when someone addresses us by names. If your name is John, you will feel closer to someone who is speaking to you and mentioning “John” several times. It is the same in email campaign too. Since autoresponder can customize your email to include the name of your subscriber in every message you send, why not take this opportunity to address your reader by their name. They will feel like as if you are talking to them directly, although you know that it’s all programmed in your autoresponder.
2. A right blend of contents and promotions
If you subscribe to an email newsletter that teaches you about how to breed Persian Cats for free, you would expect that the sender will be sending some free information about the topic you’ve asked for. It doesn’t make sense to subscribe to this newsletter only to find out that you will be bombarded with all types of promotions (and some are not even related to Persian Cats). The best email campaign is having a right blend of content and promotion. With content, you are building trust with your subscribers and readers so that they are more open with your promotions. Your readers will also understand that you should send promotions in order to keep the newsletter free.
3. Send emails on a regular basis
Like the example of a weekly newsletter above, you should stick with what you’ve promised. If you are running a weekly newsletter, make sure you send out at least one email every week. Your subscribers will be waiting for your emails regardless if it’s content email or promotion email. You will look more professional if you stick with your schedule and sending your email on a regular basis. What would happen if you are running a weekly newsletter and suddenly you only send one email in a month? Your readers may already forget about you or worse, they will lodge spam complains thinking that their emails have been harvested illegally. You want to send emails to your readers on a regular basis so that they remember your name and business.
4. Call for action
This section is very important if you are promoting anything to your subscribers. Probably you have affiliate products related to your niche that your subscribers might be interested to take your offer. So, you have to call your subscribers to click on your affiliate link and make a purchase. Do not be afraid to ask for that sale because your subscribers know (assuming you tell them earlier right before they joined your mailing list) that you will definitely need funds to run your newsletter. If the affiliate products you are selling have good sales letter, probably you won’t have to sell so hard. A little favor to click on the affiliate link will probably do it but I would definitely ask for the sale to increase the conversion. Try it out yourself to see which technique suits you.
5. Subscription maintenance
This could be the last best practice of an email campaign. Normally, if you are using CAN-SPAM Compliance autoresponder, you wouldn’t have to worry about it so much because the subscription maintenance link is always visible at the end of your email. This link will serve the option for your subscribers to change their email address or even unsubscribe from your list. Give your subscribers an option to unsubscribe and don’t worry too much if you are losing subscribers every once in a while. Those are the people who don’t want to receive information from you anymore and it only costs you more if you keep them. So, focus on delivering quality emails to your subscribers who are really interested in your offer.
Definitely there are many other best practices of email campaign. Five criteria above are good enough for a start. Just think that your subscribers are real people and you want to treat them well. Then, you’ll figure out much more on how to interact with your subscribers from time to time.
Zamri Nanyan specializes in generating online recurring residual income. One program that he would suggest to start low and grow big is Traffic Wave, an autoresponder service that pays month after month. Get more details and sign up TrafficWave for free at http://www.TrafficWaveReview.com
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