How to create marketing emails that will be opened: tips from an email marketing agency in Dorset

Newsletters and email campaigns are a popular way of marketing any business, and it can ensure that your audience remains aware of your brand, products and services. But despite newsletters being so popular to send out, they can be some of the hardest content to create due to having to keep them attention grabbing, engaging and interesting whilst still being slightly ‘salesy’. So here are a few tips from an email marketing agency in Dorset.

Check out other peoples email campaigns

Before you start working on your own email campaign, it is a good idea to go and get inspiration from other businesses within your industry. This will give you an opportunity to see what they are writing about, how they are laying out their content, what engaging calls to action are being used and what imagery they are using.

Ensure that it matches your company’s goals and brand

An email campaign is great… to achieve certain things. So, if your company is aiming to hit goals that are not going to be achieved by an email, it isn’t worth spending time lovingly creating one.

As an email marketing agency, we strongly advise you to evaluate if you think a newsletter will help you hit the targets set by your company. If your company goals and industry interests don’t line up with the objectives that a newsletter can hit, then it might not be worth wasting time on one. Your time would be better spent on researching and creating other lead nurturing, brand awareness tasks such as blogs, or social media.

Figure out the basis of your email

Whenever you start an email campaign, you should always set a theme, or a basis that can run throughout the email. A big problem with newsletters is that they can be random and unfocused, they don’t flow well which makes the reading experience feel all over the place.

There are a few different ways that you can do this; from dedicating a newsletter to one aspect of your company, to sharing content from across the company with a theme running through it, or creating a journey for the readers to go on. By keeping it focused you can keep engagement high.

If you are struggling to find a focus for your newsletter, we would be happy to chat with you to discuss a strategy for your email marketing. Just call us on 01202 888200.

Don’t spend the entire email promoting something

While your subscribers are clearly showing interest in your products/services in the simple act of subscribing, it is likely that they subscribed for more than just products being pushed on them. If you just bombard your subscribers with emails asking them to buy, buy and buy, they will start dreading your emails, and stop opening them, eventually leading to an unsubscribe. If you notice a high level of people dropping off your subscriber list, re-evaluate what you’re promoting.

Unless you genuinely have exciting news about a product or service, get rid of the self promotion and focus on sending content that is helpful and educational.

With our experience as an email marketing agency we have worked out the perfect balance for pushing products and sharing other interesting content. For help with this, get in touch with us today.

Let your subscribers know what to expect

Communicate to your subscribers what they can expect from your emails when they sign up to it.

Have a short paragraph on a landing page or pop-up which shares the types of content they can look forward to receiving from you. And tell them how often they should expect to hear from you and when. Don’t leave subscribers guessing about your emails.

We can help you build a landing page or pop-up with the best description of your newsletter to create a great taster of your content. Email info@cwmarketing.co.uk to find out more.

Be creative with your subject lines

Just because someone has subscribed, doesn’t mean they will open every email they get from you. The subject line should give an incentive for your audience to open the email right now.

Subject lines should be fun, and new for each email. Trying to create familiarity by using the same subject line and preview text doesn’t work because it gets boring. It stops motivating readers to open the email because they don’t know what they are missing. Tease content in your subject lines and draw your readers in to opening the email.

Don’t make it over complicated

The trick to creating a sleek email is to keep copy concise and embrace white space in your design.

Keeping copy concise will keep your readers engaged, they don’t want to spend all day reading your newsletter, and you don’t want that either; you want them engaging in other content from you. A small amount of copy will mean they get a taste of your other content, so that they want to click on and read more.

White space will also help to make the email feel less cluttered and slightly more spacious. It will also make it easier for your audience to click the right links.

Alt text is essential

We know that images and other visual content is incredibly important in marketing, and that is still true when it comes to email marketing. But what happens when images don’t load in a newsletter?

A lot of people won’t have images enabled on their email settings, meaning that your work will show without all those eye-catching images. This is why alt text is so critical, because it is the alternative text that will appear when images aren’t loaded. Alt text is especially important if your image is a CTA, as they will encourage people to still complete the action you are wanting them to do.

Don’t hide the unsubscribe button

This sounds silly. Why would you want to encourage your audience to unsubscribe? But this is how you keep your email campaigns going to an active and engaged audience.

Don’t hide the button under an image without alt text, or use fancy wording such as “change your communication options”. Make it clear and obvious. This will also help keep your newsletters out of spam boxes, too.

Review your emails success

Check the email’s open rates and click rates after a couple of days. This information will show you what content audiences are liking, and what they don’t like. You can then make improvements to your next email, which can then drive up your engagement rate. You can also compare your results with industry average results, so you can see how well your emails are doing.

Think you could use some help with your email marketing?

Creating and writing a newsletter isn’t as simple as it may seem, but it can be very beneficial. There is a lot to think about and it can be overwhelming when you start out. 

CW Marketing are an email marketing agency in Dorset with years of experience in creating and sending newsletters for our clients. If you are interested in setting up a newsletter for your company but are unsure about how to do it, get in touch with us today. Call us on 01202 888200 or email info@cwmarketing.co.uk.