Email Marketing – your new best friend | My Soho Times

For any business, the first emails you send are crucial in building a relationship with your audience. So it’s important to make a good first impression. We’ve called upon the expertise of Retail Copywriter and Strategist, Aimée Lopez, for essential tips on email marketing. Your target audience is just a click away!

Well-thought-out emails can help to build trust and engage interest. The magic happens when you show your audience that you can provide them with additional value as well.

Ann Handley, the best-selling author of Everybody Writes states that,

“Being in someone’s inbox is a privilege.” 

Email marketing is a tool you can take ownership of that is not ruled by social media giants. There are 4 billion daily email users and 99% of email users check their inboxes every day. (HubSpot) Another stat to consider is that the current return on investment lies at £33 for every pound spent (Litmus). Convinced yet?

A major advantage you have is that your business is based in the beating heart of London. It’ll be an easy sell to get people onto your email list to keep updated on the hip happenings. 

Don’t be shy. Freely ask your audience if they would like to sign up for your email list. 

• First, think about what your goal is with your emails. Is it to engage your audience, gain feedback, or increase your conversions?
• Research – Really Good Emails is a great resource to find email examples.
• Map out your email sequence including frequency: once a week, once a fortnight, once a month. 
• Plan – create a content calendar of subjects for your emails at least a month in advance to keep you organised and everything running smoothly.
• Find the right email platform for your business: Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Convertkit, ActiveCampaign are some of the more popular ones.
• Create your emails.
• Personalise your emails for your audience and your brand.
• Send a final copy of the email you plan to send to yourself and a trusted peer to proofread and make sure everything looks right before sending it to your list. 
• Programme your emails in your chosen email platform to be automatically sent.
• Unleash your emails out to the world.
• Test for the best time of day to send, word count, subject line, and visuals. It’s important to optimise the flow by testing to see what works best for the majority of your audience and you.
• Segment your audience with tags within your email list to make sure the correct content is reaching the right people.

Of course, this is dependent upon your business objectives, but you should have the following emails in your arsenal:

• Welcome sequence – to introduce yourself and/or brand and let your audience know what to expect from your emails.
• Abandoned cart email – if you own or operate an e-commerce store, you gotta have a simple abandoned cart email ready to roll as an average of 70% of your visitors will abandon their shopping carts. 
• Thank you email – to thank your audience for visiting or buying from you.
• Newsletter email – promotional emails that keep people updated on sales and trends.
• Feedback email – to gauge your audience’s opinion of your goods or services. This can be pivotal to your business’s growth. 

Hook ‘Em with Email Subject Lines

Email subject lines are the key to your open rates success. It’s pretty simple. I like to include the business’s name and then a hook statement to create interest. In my opinion, an email coming from a business should be in title caps. Let’s keep things professional. 

Trends constantly change but at the time of writing, one emoji within your email subject line is a way to make your emails stand out within someone’s cluttered inbox. 

• Be straightforward and concise.
• Write to one person using the pronoun you. 
• Personalise every email with your list member’s name! No, it’s not invasive. It’s courteous. 
• Include where they can contact a representative if there is a problem or if they have a question. 
• Recommend items that complement and/or add value to an existing offer.
• Add incentives upon signing up or whenever possible, but no need to be heavy-handed about it.

Privacy is Important – GDPR

Lastly, it is very important to follow the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to prevent the hard work you’ve put into creating your emails from going down the drain. 

GDPR requires that you get direct consent from a person to receive your marketing emails. Do not by any means buy an email list and send emails to that list. Just don’t! 

The Complimentary Close

Emails offer your business and customers a multitude of advantages. Statistically, repeat subscribers will most likely make the bulk of your revenue. A well-executed email will make a positive impact on retention and your profit margin.

Think about what information you’d like to receive after subscribing to a business’s email list and use that to your full advantage. 

Written by Aimée Lopez | @copyunleashed

This article was originally published in the Autumn issue of My Soho Times.

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