3 Ways to Get Students to Open Your Email Newsletter
I just started my editing internship with Fiore Communications, so I’m still learning the ropes of email marketing, but I do know what I like and how I use email. So if you would allow, here are the thoughts of one college senior that may help with your marketing strategies.
Email marketing has an ROI of 4,300% (Copyblogger), so why aren’t you getting the kind of engagement you’d like from your email newsletters? Check out these three suggestions to get readers to interact with your email content.
Suggestion No. 1: Make your newsletter relevant and appropriate
People subscribe to a business’ newsletter because they have some degree of interest in its products or ideas, or in getting incentives such as advice, coupons, discounts, etc. There should never be a time when I’m not gaining some piece of useful information from your newsletter. Readers subscribe to Banana Republic’s newsletter because they want to receive emails that contain the latest trends in clothing, shoes and accessories.
A great example of an email newsletter that I receive that reflects relevancy and appropriateness is NoiseTrade. NoiseTrade is a website that releases free music and allows artists to build up their fan bases. I get an email from them every Thursday that contains the latest new music that is available on their site. It serves its purpose of informing me of relevant music and that’s all I expect them to do. They’ve kept their content in the appropriate setting for their business. The lesson here is to do what your company is designed to do.
Suggestion No. 2: Don’t Overdo It
There’s nothing I dislike more than getting emails from a business every other day. Personally, I prefer to get no more than one email a week from a business. A company should place its efforts in creating and delivering a newsletter of value that appeals to the reader’s interest, rather than trying to pump something out two or three times a week.
I used to subscribe to a JackThreads email newsletter, which is a company that sells men’s clothing and accessories. Their newsletters are very effective in advertising the latest trends in fashion and they are appropriate to the company’s intent. But I eventually unsubscribed from their newsletter because I received one every single day. Even though the content was relevant and appropriate, the frequency was way too high. If possible, try to let readers know exactly how many times to expect you in their inbox each week. Consider giving them the option to pick the frequency and then honor that choice.
While you shouldn’t hijack readers’ inboxes, you shouldn’t email them so infrequently that they forget about your brand. Find a happy medium that maintains your company name but doesn’t drown the reader in content.
Suggestion No. 3: Be Mobile-Friendly
Most people are able to access their email via a mobile device. In fact, many people prefer to view their emails on their smartphones due their portability and ease of access.
Over 50
percent of emails are now opened on mobile devices (Litmus), so its important that mobile-friendly emails be a part of your strategy. Businesses should create email newsletters that open correctly on a mobile device and
are even specifically tailored to be read on these devices. How do you expect a consumer to engage with your content if they can’t read the email properly? To make your emails mobile-friendly, make sure that the click-through graphics go to the right websites. Also, be sure to add widgets that link to your company’s website and other social media sites. In today’s digital age, having a mobile-friendly newsletter is imperative to keeping your subscribers.
Email newsletters should inform the reader about your business, engage the reader with its content and encourage the reader to come back for more. I hope these tips will help keep your newsletters from getting deleted and keep your readers waiting anxiously for the next email.
