Making Waves with Email Marketing

5 ways to pay better attention to email marketing fundamentals

Many look at “making waves” as a bad thing. It’s used to describe the creation of a disturbance or controversy. Today however, the only disturbance we are discussing is the way to make favorable changes to your email marketing program.

Since the majority of email relationships begin at your website, there is a need to not only have your landing pages designed with the intent of converting, it’s also important to have pages designed to facilitate the email relationship.

In this article I will discuss five areas of email marketing that represent a better user experience. These elements of email marketing are often website based, and will help email marketers develop better relationships with their audience members.

Email marketing fundamental #1: Optimizing the registration process – Have you ever been on website that requires a lot of information before you can be fully registered? I see this quite often, and will typically leave the website under the guise that the content isn’t worth the time, effort, or information needed. Maybe I’m wrong in this assumption, but regardless, the companies don’t get me to register. And in many cases, I could be considered as a member of their target audience.

One specific element about email newsletter registration pages is companies that require a physical mailing address. When I’m looking for a free email newsletter, I don’t want anything sent to my home, or office for that matter.

For digital publishers and email marketers, asking for a name and active email address should be sufficient. Additional data – like mailing addresses – should be completely optional.

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Email marketing fundamental #2: Minimize noise – When audience members reach the page to input their personal information, make sure there aren’t any distractions on the page. You do not want them to bounce to another page before they are registered as an email newsletter recipient. As you can see below, our registration page is free of clutter.

Email marketing fundamental #3: Facilitate the relationship – Users signing up to be email recipients are usually doing so to receive a free information product like a report or podcast. After they enter their information, this digital download should be available to them immediately so their interest in your content doesn’t wane. Providing timely, beneficial information may be the different in successfully facilitating a relationship and losing a potential audience members.

Email marketing fundamental #4: Welcome your audience properly – As a new user registers and receives the free content sought, you should also include introductory statements so your members realize what type of content they will receive from you and what your emailing frequency is. You should also ask them to whitelist your email address so they will receive the email newsletters in their inbox.

Email marketing fundamental #5: Subscription management – Providing subscription options gives a little more power to the email recipient. If they do not want to hear from you daily, they can choose a weekly email. And if they only want to receive email promotions, they’d have that option as well. Allowing subscribers to easily manage their preferences makes it more possible to keep them on your email marketing list longer.

If you aren’t following these five fundamentals to begin email marketing relationships then it’s time to start making waves. Begin your email relationships with insight and continue to nurture the relationships through with lifecycle email campaigns.

Do you want to share any additional email marketing fundamentals? Please use the comments section below.