Email remains one of the best ways to market your business. It’s the ultimate way to build a relationship with your subscribers over time and to build trust in your brand.
But so many companies still get it wrong. They fail at the most important task, which is to engage with their subscribers.
Here are five techniques to improve your email marketing by increasing engagement.
- Speak to Your Subscribers One-on-One
Write to your subscribers like you are writing to one person. That means addressing the reader as ‘You’. Use a personal tone that is suitable for the type of business you operate, and avoid using jargon.
By speaking to each reader one-on-one, you will make each email more engaging for your subscribers, making them more likely to open the emails in the first place.
- Encourage Replies
The worst thing you can do is send emails from an address that no one can reply to. This is essentially making it clear that you don’t care about hearing from your subscribers.
So send every email from a real email address with a real person’s name. It could be your own name, or it could be the name of someone in the company.
And then make a point of encouraging your subscribers to reply to your emails. You can do this through posing a question at the end or asking them their opinion on something. Reassure them that you read every reply and respond to them, and then stick to that promise.
- Ask for Action
Rather than asking for a reply to the email, you could ask subscribers to visit your Facebook page to ‘Like’ your recent post and get involved in the conversation, or to leave a comment on your latest blog post.
Get them involved by encouraging action and you will find that it’s an easy way to increase their level of engagement.
- Create Exclusive Content
Create some exclusive content for your subscribers, and make sure they know it is exclusive. This will make them feel special and that it was even more worthwhile signing up for your list.
You don’t have to make every piece of content exclusive, but a little will go a long way. You can also repurpose content to make it exclusive, e.g. an ebook formed of previous blog posts can become a new product for your email subscribers.
- Provide Early Access
Another way to make your subscribers feel special and increase engagement is to provide them with early access to something.
You could let them be the first to sign up for a webinar, to download a new ebook, to try out a new service feature, or anything else you can think of. They will be grateful for the opportunity, and it could make them more likely to open your future emails.
Get More from Your Emails
Don’t make the same mistake as other companies with your newsletter. Emails can be so effective – but you need to get the basics right, and the means maximising engagement.
You want your subscribers to look forward to receiving your emails. Once you get to this stage, your subscribers know that they will find value within each email, increasing the chance that they open them.
So start using these simple strategies to boost engagement with your subscribers and get more from your email marketing, then you can take full advantage of this powerful technique.
