97% of small businesses use email marketing to connect with customers

36% of consumers say that email marketing has become more relevant in the last 12 months

64% of Internet users prefer email as the best source to get in touch with promotional information.

Email marketing is essential for most businesses, but just because you send an email doesn’t mean your customers are going to open it. Therein lies one of the biggest challenges with email marketing; how do you get your customers to read your emails?

We have assembled 6 helpful tips that will help you improve your open rate to ensure you are getting the most out of your efforts.

Clean your list- For many reasons some people change their email every few months. To ensure your getting the most out of your email efforts make sure you are updating your customers’ email all along the way. Whether it’s an email, phone call or face to face, you should take any chance you have to confirm the email you have on file is up to date.

Don’t be boring. Be relevant- Deliver content people want to read. The last thing your readers want is another email selling them something they don’t need or telling them about something they have no interest in. When developing content, think about why your customers volunteer to give you their email address. Develop content that feeds their interest.

All customers are not created equal- Segment your lists. First off, make sure a customer wants to receive your email. Do not assume; simply ask to make sure they want to hear from you. Customers are going to have different needs & interest. You should develop targeted messages that speak to specific customer types. Understanding your customer types will help you develop content that is engaging and will assist in building lasting relationships with your customers.

Subject lines are key. One of the hardest parts about email marketing is simply getting your customers attention. The average corporate user sends/receives around 112 emails per day. To ensure your email is one of the emails they open, spend time thinking about your subject lines. A subject line should create curiosity, be descriptive and factual. To avoid the spam filter, avoid using the following:

• Words like help, percent off, reminder, FREE- will not help you
• Localization: providing a city name can increase open rates
• Keep your subject line short no more than 50 characters
• ALL CAPITAL LETTERS- spam filters hate all caps. Plus, all caps = YELLING! Do not yell at your customers
• You can create excitement without the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

State who you are. The “From” line is often the first thing customers look at when your message arrives in their Inbox. You really have two basic options here; 1.) Make it personal and make the “From” line an individual. This works well if you have made a personal connection with your customers. 2.) Make the “From” your business name. You may not have ever connected with your customers on the one-to-one level and they may only know your business name (and that’s ok). So, in this situation, make the “From” line your business name.

Try playing with the send time. Studies show sending email in the beginning of the week between the hours of 6am and 10am produce the best open rate, but this may or may not work for you. To best understand when most of your customers will open your emails, you must test the time you send them. Over time you, will learn if the majority of your customers read their email in the morning, noon, after work or on the weekend? Only testing and time will answer this question.

What does this mean for your business?  You now have even more ways to reach your customers, promote your business to potential customers and engage both groups in a dialogue to gather useful information.

In a word—okay, two words—multi-channel marketing allows you to reach your target audience more often than ever before, and at a lower average price; especially when you mix in newer contact channels like the Internet, social media and mobile devices.

4 Solid Reasons to Go Multi-channel

Need more convincing?  How about this:

1. Because consumers crave flexibility in purchasing both online and off, they increasingly research and purchase products across multiple channels.  Having your message and your products available in more places increases the chance that you’ll find customers and that customers will find you.
2. Multi-channel marketing drives higher consumer response and engagement, especially when you’re communicating in an interactive format.  Your Web site, social media and e-mail outreach allow your target audience to respond to you and/or engage each other in a conversation.  The more often consumers think about your products and discuss them online, the more likely they are to talk about your products offline.  So what?  Research indicates that word of mouth plays a role in nearly half of all new product purchases^[4].
3. Repetition, repetition, repetition.  The more often your message is in front of a consumer, the more likely they are to absorb it.  Multiple channels allow you to contact your target consumers multiple times as part of a campaign, over a set period of time, to increase the likelihood that the consumer will think about your company or product and make a purchase decision.
4. Last, but certainly not least, everyone’s doing it.  If your competitors—large and small—aren’t using multiple channels to market to the same valuable customer base, they soon will be.  Multi-channel marketing is a business reality.  To put it simply: if your business isn’t represented in a certain channel, that’s a missed opportunity, and the consumer will end up purchasing products or services from someone else.

Visit us to learn more, and start using multichannel marketing to grow your business today.

We are the first solution that has truly broken down the silos within marketing. TWOBOLT is an online solution for managing all of your marketing in one place. We combine tools for designing, launching, monitoring and analyzing your marketing across all channels.

We are marketers, technologist, and creative thinkers who have lived and walked in your shoes. We absolutely understand marketing is hard. We have made it our mission to make marketing easier… plain and simple.

Through this blog, our team will share our knowledge, expertise, and helpful tips around multichannel marketing. Our end goal is to get our readers to think differently about marketing and start marketing smarter. No more guessing. In return we hope to drive vibrant conversations around our post and hope you will feel compelled to share your thoughts with us, and the rest of our readers.