SiteW offers you advanced emailing features to create campaigns and schedule automated emails. This guide will give you some tips on how to properly write your emails, improve your open rate, and increase your conversion rate!
There are 5 steps to writing an effective email. You will have to pay attention to every step. SiteW guides you, by offering all the features you need.
Choose your recipients
Collect contact details
Obviously, the first thing to do, if you want to use email campaigns to increase your conversion rate and your revenue is collect contact details. SiteW offers various means to do so: you will be able to insert a contact form, a Member block, or a Newsletter block into your website. Adding a blog, a comment thread, a forum or an online store will allow you to collect email addresses from your visitors.
Target your recipients
Targeting your recipients is essential to make your email campaigns a success. That’s why SiteW has developed a system allowing you to send group emails, in just one click. You will be able to select recipients according to performed actions (product purchase, newsletter subscription, post on your website...).
Also remember to create your own target groups, by creating member groups. For instance, you can target the most engaged recipients, because they are the most interested in your products/services. And because loyal customers like to be rewarded.
Build a relationship of trust
Building a relationship of trust with your recipients is indispensable. Your open rate and your community commitment will depend on this trust.
Emailing and transparency
- First, as you already know, it is mandatory to comply with GDPR in Europe. SiteW offers a specific feature for GDPR that will allow you to easily comply with this regulation.
- It is also essential to add a clear and visible opt-out link to your emails: there is nothing worse for your reputation, than a recipient who clicks on the “Report spam” button. SiteW automatically adds this link to your email creations.
- As far as the sender is concerned, try to send your emails as a real person, and not as a business, disclose your identity, and try to avoid generic terms such as info@mycompany.com or contact@mycompany.com, as well as noreply addresses. With SiteW, you can enter the sender name you want, while creating your emails. Also remember that you have the possibility to easily create your professional email addresses.
- Add your contact details to your emails: phone number or email address, your recipients must be able to easily contact you. You can possibly, by adding images, insert icons with links to your social network pages.
Reputation optimization
- Reputation optimization is a key factor to improve your open rate for your email campaigns: clearing your database, for example, is essential, because it is better to have less contacts, but of higher quality. The SiteW emailing features present a system of optimization of reputation, that filters out invalid email addresses, and automatically stops sending in case of too many failures
- Also be sure to suggest to your newest subscribers that they add you to their contact list.
Emailing: your email content
Attractiveness
Subject line and preheader: make your recipients want to read more
As far as attractiveness is concerned, your email subject line is essential:
- It must contain between 50 and 100 signs (if it is too long, it may be truncated. On the contrary, if it is too short, it may not be attractive enough).
- Your subject line must make your recipients want to read more, it should surprise or intrigue them.
- To draw attention, you can use emojis, but not too many, because they may not display properly, or be considered as spam.
- Also pay attention to your preheader (first sentence of your email): it must complete your subject line, while providing more details, in order to encourage clicks.
- Offer special discounts
- Remember to adapt your offers according to your recipients: this can be a very attractive promotion, or a gift, etc.
Be creative
Be bold and inventive. Use humour, or even a quirky tone, if it is possible in your business.
Pay attention to graphic consistency
Ideally, your emails should be automatically identified as from your brand, by your recipients. Add your logo, your colors, your graphic universe… You can use the duplicate function to reuse the created designs.
Flawless content
Mobile optimization
Today navigation on mobile devices has become more frequent than navigation on pc; so it seems obvious to send responsive emails. With SiteW, you can be sure to send emails perfectly optimized for mobile devices.
Create clear, neat and effective content
Here are some tips for creating clear, neat and effective content for your emails:
- Avoid too long messages, be concise and precise. Your email must ideally focus on one single objective, in order to be more efficient.
- Pay attention to legibility, notably if you use colors, but also as far as typography is concerned.
- Insert a call to action. You can repeat it twice.
- Add links to your images. These types of links are indeed easier to click on mobile devices. Moreover, internet users are used to clicking on images.
- Try to balance images and text. Plain-text emails will improve deliverability, but will be less pleasant to read. So you should alternate between a mix of images and text, and plain text.
- Use emotions! The main emotions you can focus on are fear (for insurance companies for instance), guilt (for nonprofits for example), trust (you can reassure your recipients regarding obstacles to purchase), value (for example, “Satisfied or refunded”), feeling of community, pleasure or competition (“make them jealous”).
- Make tests before sending and, above all, don’t forget to proofread. SiteW offers you the possibility to perform send tests, in just one click.
When should you send your automated emails and emailing campaigns?
Master your timing
- Choice of send time is crucial: for example, tuesday and wednesday, by mid-morning or mid-afternoon, are often considered as appropriate for sending your emails.
- It can be interesting to set a sending schedule in advance.
- Focus on your newest subscribers, that will be more receptive to your brand.
Create email campaigns for special occasions
There must be a reason for sending an email: an anniversary, a seasonal event, current news… Take advantage of every opportunity to develop your relationship with your customers, or your community!
Use your transactional emails in your marketing strategy
Your transactional emails are an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customers. Indeed, these emails are the most widely read, so take full advantage of them: add your visual identity, promote your new products, add links to your most popular content (blog articles, social media pages...).
Track your email campaigns
Finally, the last step to optimize your email campaigns consists in analyzing the statistics of your campaigns. SiteW, once again, offers you the best chance of success, by giving you access to your email statistics.
Analyze your email statistics
Basically, the different steps of the email funnel are: deliverability, open, click and conversion rates. SiteW gives you access to your email open rate, as well as to the number of clicked emails. You can draw important conclusions from these figures, in order to optimize your email campaigns: for example, if your open rate is low, you should target your audience better or write a better subject line.
A/B tests / split tests
A good way to improve your emailing strategy can be to make tests, and compare your open rates, according to sending time, the targeted audience or your email content.
You now know a bit more about how to create your email campaigns, in order to improve your open and conversion rates. Whether it be in terms of content, sending time, targeted audience, or campaign results, you have everything you need to create convincing and effective emails.