Get the most out of your email campaigns

We’ve gone a long way since Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks were turned into a mismatch made in heaven by the infamous words “you’ve got mail”. The internet has taken us from the ol’dial-up modem screech to tweets, likes and grams making a cacophony of sounds come out of our smartphones.

However, as long a way as we have come since the early days of the internet, in today’s day and age, e-mail still holds a prominent place in our hearts and in our screens.

Each day, we are inundated with e-mails, some we were expecting, some not. Some we open right away, some go into oblivion with a swift swap to the left.

Say you have a list of 100 people in your e-mail marketing list.Out of those, roughly 20 are fake accounts or accounts that no longer exist so when you send an e-mail to 100 people, 20 will bounce back or fall into a void. Out of the 80 that are left, only 48 are active leads or in some way interested in what you offer and out of those who do get your e-mail and are in some way interested in your offerings, 12 will open your e-mail. So with this numbers not necessarily in your favor, how do you make your e-mail communication effective?

Use an e-mail campaign platform.

This is a huge time-saver and you know what they say, time is money. An e-mail campaign platform has templates ready to use, making it easy for you to design a nice-looking email that works on both desktop and mobile. Email platforms also go to great lengths to help you make sure your e-mails don’t get marked as spam, they let you personalize each e-mail and best of all, they let you track the results of each e-mail campaign.

Personalize.

As I mentioned above, e-mail campaign platforms let you personalize, but guess who needs to input the information into the database? That’s right, you, so make sure you got the spelling of the name right and the title. I can’t count the number of times in which I’ve gotten e-mails addressed to Mr Yael!

Go the extra mile in personalization.

Ok, so this may not be feasible when sending out thousands of e-mails as part of a campaign, so this tip is better applied in conversion and retention, not acquisition. Get to know your recipient. If you are sending out an e-mail asking for something in return (a deposit for example), the first golden rule is make sure you know exactly who you are e-mailing (so many times I’ve gotten a “personalized” email with the incorrect name.

It’s just sad that the person didn’t even take the time to double check before clicking send). Personalizing further to show you really know the person you are contacting can go a long way.

Mention something specific to them, for example, if all you know about them is where they live, mention something about their city; if you know they like hockey and their team won the game last night, start the e-mail with “hey, congrats, you must be really happy with last night’s scores!”.

This type of personalization lets your client knows you know them and you care about them.

Build a rapport.

Not every e-mail you send them has to be about getting something from them. You can send e-mails to touch base, to let them know about a certain news report or anything you think they’ll appreciate WITHOUT asking for a deposit or a trade.

Keep it to the point.

The people you are e-mailing are unlikely full-time traders. They have jobs and families and little time to spare, so keep your e-mails concise.
Always include a CTA and an Incentive. Guide your e-mail recipient to a desired action (again, it doesn’t always have to be a deposit or a trade, so lose the sales pitch) and let them know what’s in it for them.

Follow up.

If you don’t get a response within 3 days to a week (depending on what the e-mail was about), you should always follow up. You do not need to repeat the whole original e-mail.

While there is a chance the original e-mail went unnoticed, there is a chance they did read it and it’s either sitting in their “e-mails to respond to” stack or it was ignored.

Keep it even briefer than the first one and mention in a friendly way that you are simply following up in case they didn’t get your previous correspondence.