11 Strategies for Your Newsletters: A Guide to Email Marketing

The ROI of Email Marketing

I anticipate your question, but does it make sense to still make email marketing?

I won't deny you that email marketing can seem like an overused tool because of the proliferation of spam.

But let's look at the statistics and try to answer the question: is web marketing with email worth it? Or, put another way: what is the return on investment of this tool?

The following 3 stats will have you amazed:

• Convince and Convert has published a statistic, according to which... people who buy products via email spend on average 138% of those who do not receive them;
• according to Email Expert, For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $44.25;
• research by The Power of Direct Marketing, published in SmallBizTrends, states that ROI, or the return on investment of email marketing compared to other tools is $39.40:

4 tools for email marketing

Okay, doing email marketing It's convenient. But where do I start?

You need a professional email marketing tool. Let's look at 4 of the most popular ones.

SendInBlue

Of French origin, SendinBlue has rapidly spread all over the world thanks to a user-friendly dashboard, an excellent quality/price ratio and a punctual and precise technical assistance also in Italian.

Get Response

GetResponse is a feature-rich, fully scalable email marketing solution capable of managing small and large lists (over 1 million subscribers). Active for more than 10 years, it provides applications for the creation and management of email, newsletters and email marketing automation. Through the practices and relationships established with leading Internet and e-mail Service Providers anti-spam, GetResponse has maintained the highest possible standards of email delivery, ensuring that the messages sent offer the highest possible performance.

Aweber

Aweber is one of the most popular tools for sending newsletters. It provides the tools you need to send emails: from lists to campaign creation to email marketing automation.

Is it possible try it for free for 30 daysthen prices start at $19.

Mail Chimp

Thanks to the possibility of opening a free account for up to 2000 subscribers, Mail Chimp has become one of the most popular newsletter sending software.

Mail Chimp consists of 2 main sections:

• the campaigns (campaigns), that is, the newsletter campaigns you send out;
• the lists (lists), i.e. the email lists to which you will send your newsletter.

The starting point? The Lead Magnet

We've seen that a List in Mail Chimp is a group of emails to which you will send your newsletter.

Where do you get your emails?

You acquire them through a lead magnet.

What is the lead magnet? It can be defined as the tool, the bargaining chip, thanks to which you convince the visitor of your site to give you his email.

To create a lead magnet you need 2 things:

• a "magnet", which is what you give in exchange for subscribing to your list: depending on what your target audience is interested in, you can use an ebook, a video course, a free template, or something else that persuades the visitor to give you their email in exchange;
• a tool that allows you to make the process work: in my case I use a plugin for WordPressIt's called Bloom  and can help you increase your newsletter subscription rates.

The 3 life cycles of a newsletter

Let's recap: you've created a campaign and a list of subscribers with your email marketing provider.

When you send a newsletter, there are 3 actions for your recipient to accomplish:

1. the recipient must open your email;

1. the recipient must read it;

1. the recipient must click on any links you have included.

The more you can optimize these 3 processes, the better chance you have of making your email marketing initiatives more effective.

Let's start with the first one.

3 strategies to boost the opening of your emails

When your email arrivesyour recipient is faced with two options: He either opens it and reads it, or he doesn't.

Have you ever wondered what makes a recipient open and read an email or not to? Think about it, you yourself receive emails every day, maybe even dozens of them, and some you open right away and read, others you don't, some you don't read at all and you're going to trash them directly.

What are the motivations behind this selection and How we can optimize the chances that our recipient will open and read our email?

For example by improving the object! Let's see how.

Improve the object (and increase opening rates)

What is the first thing you read in an incoming e-mail? The subject line. Improving the subject line of your emails can help to increase opening ratesBut how can we do that? With 3 simple strategiesas banal as effective, let's see them together.

Strategy 1: Enter the name in the object

If someone on the street calls you by saying your name, what do you do, turn around, right? Well, the same goes for email: if an email arrives with your name in the subject line, your attention will be immediately captured. Let's take an example by comparing two different types of objects.

(1) Discover the 10 strategies for email marketing: the ultimate guide

(2) Emanuele, discover the 10 strategies for email marketing: the ultimate guide

These two objects are absolutely identical, except for one thing: the recipient's name at the beginning.

If you got an email with two items like this, which one would you most likely open? Yes, the very second one! The name in the subject line of the email acts as a real reminder: the recipient of the email feels "called upon" and is very likely to open the message.

But how can we Send newsletters by directly entering the recipient's name in the subject line?

It's as simple as that: all email marketing softwarefrom Mail Chimp to MailUp, from Aweber to Get Response, allow you to include a small variable in the object, as [FNAME], which allows you to enter the name of the recipient in the subject line of the emailautomatically taken from the list you send the newsletter to.

It's clear that your list must have, in addition to the email of the recipients, their name!

And here we have a dilemma: is it Is it better to collect name and email or just the email? Let's look at the pros and cons of these 2 approaches.

Name and email or just email? This is the dilemma

When you do list building, which is, simply put, you try to build an email databasefor example, by granting a guide, an ebook, or access to special content in return, you can choose to request just the email or the name and email.

Both approaches are widely used: in the former, When you only request the email, your chances of conversion are higher. That is: if a person has to choose to fill out a form to get access to your content, they are more likely to enter just their email, rather than their name and email.

The reason is easy enough to guess: as a general rule, when we need to get a user to perform an action, the fewer steps the user has to take the more likely they are to get to the end!

If asking only for the email raises the conversion rate, on the other hand since you don't have the name of your recipient, you can't use the strategy of including it in the subject line of the email and in the body of the message itself.

What to choose? The choice is yours: On the one hand, by asking only for the email, you have a better chance of conversion, on the other hand you have a better chance of opening the message.

But let's get back to our subject line, because your recipient, after being called out by their name, will read the subject line! Here are 7 ways to write attention-grabbing objects.

7 tips for writing attention-grabbing items

1. try writing an object that draws attention to the content by listing benefits, such as: Un small suggestion will make you 300% better your emails
2. try making some questions. Questions stimulate the brain to respond, which will search the content of your email. An example? Do you know the 7 rules for writing emails that convert?
3. stimulates curiosity by remaining vague, for example: 4 things I want to share with you 
4. use the how-to's, for example: how to improve your email marketing in 7 steps
5. anticipate the content of your email, maybe by highlighting it with brackets. For example, and you want to inform about a webinar, you could do it like this: {Webinar} 10 case studies of effective newsletters
6. Use numbers and buzzwords, such as better, definitive, for example: the 10 ultimate strategies for newsletters that convert
7. Use a call to actionliterally a call to action, as scover it, for example Find out how to improve your newsletters in 2 steps

Name the sender

Sometimes you get e-mails from Company Ltd and from Ditta Snc right?

About me Company Ltd and from Ditta Snc? Boh! Would you open an email that has them as the sender? Or would you open it more preferably if it came from a natural person, from a first and last name?

If the newsletters are sent by real people, why does their sender become a business name?

Mysteries! The fact is, my advice to you is edit your senderHow? In 2 possible ways:

1. enter your first and last name as the senderfor example Paolo Rossi;

2. enter your name and companyfor example Paolo di Azienda Srl.

Okay, let's recap: you've called your recipient out by simply putting their name in the subject line of the newsletter, then you've intrigued them, now it's a matter of getting them to take a step forward: getting them to read the content of the email and take the action we have in mind.

A simple method to get your email read and clicked on

Okay, you convinced me to click and open your email. Now you have to convince me read it and make me do what you set out to do.

Let's assume you want your recipients to click on a link that contains it and end up in a landing page. Okay, how do you encourage the chances of them clicking on your link?

Brace yourself: the answer is by not giving him a link.

Mind you, this doesn't mean don't give them the opportunity to click on a link, but to give them more than one! How?

For example by changing styles and link texts.

Let's take an example: here are two possible links:

Click here to learn more

What's the difference? One is in the form of a normal, textual link, the other in the form of a button, banner.

Which one would you click on?

If you answered on the first one, maybe it's because the second one looks like advertising to you. On the other hand, maybe the second one attracts your attention. So

So the answer is it depends! Depending on your reader's preference, they might click on one or the other, so why not put both?

The advice is: include more links in your email, in different forms (text link, banner...) and with different slogans. Your email marketing software will provide you, via statistics, with the most clicked winner.

There is no second chance for a responsive impression

In 2013, 51% of emails were opened on a mobile device, +21% compared to the previous yearThis statistic, published in Litmus, would be enough to make you understand the importance of sending your own newsletter with responsive design, i.e. suitable for a mobile phone or tablet such as iPhone, iPad (iOS represents a market share of 38%) or Android (up 57%, now representing a market share of 12%), to name where the majority of emails are opened.

If more than 1 in 2 emails are opened on mobile and your newsletter template is not mobile friendly, i.e. it doesn't display well, the 80% will trash your email according to a survey by BlueHornet.

If your email is misdirected once, not only will there be a second chance that it will be viewed on a desktop PC (if not understandable from mobile, only 13.5% of users go to read the email on another device): there is more, the danger is not only that your emails will not be viewed and trashed, but that you will lose parts of your newsletter subscribers.

This is confirmed by BlueHornet, according to which 30% of subscribers, or 3 out of 10 are ready to unsubscribe from your list if the email they receive is not mobile friendly.

So let's see how to create responsive emails in 4 steps.

4 steps to creating responsive and mobile friendly emails

We've seen the importance of adopting a mobile friendly template for your newsletters: 2013 statistics are merciless, let's summarize the main points:

1. More than 1 in 2 open your newsletter on a mobile device;
2. the 80% of people who can't read your email properly on their cell phone trashes it;
3. only 13.5% of users will go and read your newsletter on desktop if they couldn't read it on mobile;
4. 1 in 3 will unsubscribe to your newsletter if it's not readable on mobile;

At this point, we understand the importance of adopting responsive templates for your newsletters, let's go over how to do it in this guide to creating responsive and mobile friendly emails.

How to create a responsive and mobile frinedly email for your newsletter and email marketing

1) You create it

The first possibility to have a responsive email is to create it yourself. In this second case, the advice of Litmus.com, which in this beautiful infographic summarizes the main points of creating a responsive email design. At another address within the same site, you can then find a number of useful resources for creating responsive emails.

2) Rely on a graphic designer

In case you want to hire a graphic designer, you can place an ad on a web project site like Twago.

If creating at home or maybe with the help of a graphic designer a responsive template for your emails was not possible, there are two possibilities, let's see them.

3) Buy a template already done (and modify it)

Use a responsive template for your email ready and maybe modify it according to your needs: on Theme Forest, the well known marketplace of graphic, audio and video products, you can find a large amount of responsive newsletter templates.

4) Use the templates provided with the newsletter software

Use a template that comes with the main newsletter software, such as Aweber, which in this guide explains step by step how to create an email with responsive design from the platform. 

Conclusions

Choosing the software to send them from, taking care of KPIs (open rate, click rate) and attention to responsive are important aspects to evaluate in your email marketing initiatives. What strategies do you use? Let's talk about it in the comments.