Building an email list is a great way to grow your business or blog. After all, when you have a direct way to communicate with your audience, you can nurture your leads, build trust, pitch paid products and services, and make more money. (Is there anyone out there who doesn’t want that?)
Of course, having a healthy list of engaged subscribers is just half the battle when it comes to leveraging email to grow your brand. You also need to know how to create effective email campaigns. Here are 8 tips for creating successful email campaigns that hook and convert your subscribers.
Don’t know what to send to your subscribers?
Download my free tip sheet on 19 types of email campaigns you can send to your email list.
1. Create engaging subject lines
This is arguably one of the most important tips to consider when you’re creating email campaigns. Why? Because if the subject line of an email doesn’t hook your subscribers, they may not even bother to open it.
You can make a subject line engaging by keeping it short, including a number, highlighting the value of your email, and personalizing it. And as always, don’t forget to A/B test.
Need more help writing email subject lines that boost your open rate? Check out my blog post on the 7 most effective email subject lines.
Related: 12 email subject line tips to boost your open rate + free spam trigger word list
2. Make them valuable
To create effective email campaigns, your emails need to offer value, whether that’s information, entertainment, a product, or a service. After all, your subscribers don’t look forward to receiving your emails just to hear from you. They’ve decided to stick around on your list because they think you can help them in some way. Appeal to this motive by ensuring that every email you send offers true value.
3. Segment your email lists by subscriber persona
On social media, any content you share may be shown to any of your followers. With email campaigns, however, you can divide your email list into groups and send different campaigns to different groups. Dividing your email list like this is called segmentation (because you split your list into distinct segments).
Segmentation allows you to send an email campaign only to the segments of your list that it’s highly relevant to. For example, if you were creating an email campaign to promote your vegan cookbook, you could choose to send your campaign only to subscribers who downloaded your vegan recipe cards.
Email subscribers are more likely to click through emails that relate to their specific interests. So if you segment your list and create targeted campaigns, you’ll be more likely to create effective email campaigns that boost your clicks and conversions.
4. Keep ‘em short
Your brand is your heart and soul. So when you create email campaigns for your biz or blog, you might be tempted to include every single detail you want to share with your subscribers. But remember that for your subscribers, you’re just one of many brands that land in their inbox.
How do you get your message across in your email campaigns without annoying your subscribers? Keep your emails short and to the point. There’s no need to be wordy to create effective email campaigns.
Don’t know what to send to your subscribers?
Download my free tip sheet on 19 types of email campaigns you can send to your email list.
5. Make them easy to read
In addition to keeping your email campaigns short, it’s important to make sure that they’re easy to read. Otherwise, your subscribers may fail to pick up on key information or miss your call to action.
To craft effective email campaigns, ensure that your emails are easy to digest. Keep your paragraphs short, choose legible fonts within the 14-16 px range, and make sure your calls to action stand out.
Related: How to write scannable blog posts people actually read + free checklist
6. Show your personality
There’s a reason why your subscribers are still on your list: they like what you do and how you do it. But the chances are that in addition to the fact that you offer tons of value, your subscribers also love you because of your voice, tone, and sense of humour. After all, unless you’re in a super specific niche, there are probably lots of other brands out there that do what you do. What makes you stand out? Your personality!
That’s why it’s strategic to leverage your personality when you create effective email campaigns. When you craft emails, try to write in the same way that you would talk to your subscribers. As long as it’s consistent with your brand and appropriate for the type of email you’re writing, don’t be afraid to use casual language, idioms, humour, and maybe even slang.
Related: How to really give your blog posts personality + free blog post template and example
7. Use other brands for inspiration
Don’t know where to start with writing engaging emails your subscribers will love to read? Look to other brands for inspiration. Sign up for the email lists of other businesses or blogs in your niche. You can even use your personal email address or create a new email account specifically for this purpose if you don’t want to receive these emails in your biz or blog email account.
As you receive emails from these brands, pay attention to the language, structure, and formatting they use. You can also take note of specific techniques (for example, storytelling) that you can identify in these effective email campaigns. The chances are that if successful brands are using particular techniques or writing their emails in a certain way, these approaches are working for them and for an audience that’s similar to yours. Using similar approaches may not give you the same results, but it can provide a great starting point to experiment with.
8. Understand spam filters
A weak subject line can destroy an email’s open rate. But if your email campaigns get tagged as spam, your subscribers may never even see them in their inboxes.
Spam filters use a long list of criteria to decide whether your email should be placed in a recipient’s inbox or in the spam folder. Some of these criteria include the reputation of the sending server, the content of the email, and the receiving server.
Spam filters are constantly changing and adapting as they learn more about what spam looks like. This happens every time someone clicks “this is junk” or “mark as spam” in their email account.
What can you do to keep your emails from going straight to your subscribers’ spam folders? Use these tips when creating effective email campaigns:
- Maintain an excellent sending reputation: Some spam filters will flag an email as spam if anyone with the same IP address has ever sent spam.
- Use email templates that have been coded correctly: Sloppy code, extra tags, and formatting code pulled in from a rich-text editor can all trigger spam filters.
- Make sure your subscribers have consented to be on your list: This is the easiest way to ensure no one unsubscribes or reports your emails.
It’s worth it to create effective email campaigns
It’s great to have lots of subscribers on your email list. But to really benefit from a large list, you need to know how to create effective email campaigns. Use the tips I’ve outlined above to craft emails that your subscribers open, read, and click through on. They’ll help you build campaigns that engage your subscribers, generate more customers and sales, and make your brand grow.
Don’t know what to send to your subscribers?
Download my free tip sheet on 19 types of email campaigns you can send to your email list.
