5 New Ways Small Businesses Can Spice Up Email Newsletters
Image courtesy of jscreationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your target audience. The only problem is that the majority of businesses online are now using email to contact and sell to the same people you are contacting. These can be direct competitors or businesses offering substitute goods. This can be bad news for your email marketing campaigns as it limits the effectiveness of your message; unless, you find a way to stand apart from these competitors and spice up your email newsletter.
There are several ways you can do this. Here are five options for you to consider.
1. Using A Preview Image For A Video
Videos are very intensive to send via email. To avoid this, most businesses use a simple link to a video on YouTube or another video sharing website. This can often lead to a poor video viewing numbers. Yet, videos can be highly effectively in the sales process. Therefore, use an image from the video that looks impressive to entice your audience to click on it and find out more.
You should also consider hosting the video on your website. This way you can set up better monitoring to see how effective the video was at increasing page views.
2. Keep Your Text Short And Snappy
If you really want your audience to read your emails and then click through to your website, don’t place all your content within the email. This only encourages the audience to read the email copy and then either click off your email or delete it. You want them to visit your site and therefore, the best option is to get them there to read the content.
Use teaser paragraphs or descriptions of the content on your email copy and then link them to the full article on your blog or on a landing page.
3. Humour
Comedy is not used frequently enough within the online marketing realm; yet it is one of the best tactics for engaging your audience. Emails containing humour are often shared more via email and social media than those without. This can grow your brand’s online footprint and email marketing list.
Ensure all jokes are clean, short and funny. They cannot be sexual, sexist, racist or in any other way offensive – otherwise you may grab headlines, but not for the right reasons.
4. Competitions
People love to win and entering a competition is one way to achieve that. By offering them that chance through your email marketing campaigns is a way your brand can satisfy their need to compete. The prize doesn’t need to be expensive as long as it something that will have value to the customer.
Ensure that your competition isn’t just related to one email. Promote it over several emails and encourage people to share the emails with their friends and family to gain more tickets or chances to win the prize.
5. Quotes To Inspire And Motivate
Whether you are engaging customers who are already buying or attempting to attract new customers, using quotes from famous people is likely to grab their attention. Quote sites are very popular and are often categorised by industry and type of quote, so finding a good quote for your business is not going to be difficult.
Don’t go overboard, but if you include one good quote from an inspirational person you will be sure to grab some attention. Experiment with where to place the quote as different audience may prefer different placement.
Conclusion
The email marketing landscape is becoming a very busy place. Many of your competitors are likely to delivering their content to your target audiences at the same time as you. Therefore, you need to create content that is highly effective and a little different. One of the best ways: use techniques that will add a little spice to the content and allow your emails to look different to your competitors’.
Take Action:
- Add a new element into your email marketing design.
What do you use to spice up your content? How effective has it been?
Let us know in the comments below.
Tagged in: email content, email design, email marketing, Email Newsletters, Email Strategy