Spice up your email campaigns!

Email open rates gone down? Not getting the engagement and click throughs you’d like from your emails? Are people unsubscribing? If you’re sending out the same emails week in, week out and they’re not hitting the mark for your recipients, there’s a natural decline in engagement. As with any relationship, to avoid this, you need to keep things fresh and mix things up a bit. In this post we’ll give you a few ideas to spice up your email campaigns!

We’ve covered, in previous posts about email marketing, about tweaking subjects lines for better open rates and cleansing your list to remove non-responding recipients, but this week, we decided to look at different email formats and content considerations for you to try. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with your email campaigns, so take some inspiration and see how you can improve your open rates and engagement.

Video killed the radio star

Sending your email recipients a video via email can be a great way to get them to engage with the content. Don’t just send them a video link, though. Let them know exactly what they will gain from watching the video and make sure it’s relevant to your audience. Video provides an alternative way to deliver your content and can be a great way to send a personal message to your recipients. For example, an announcement from your CEO would be best delivered in video format as it’s more personal. By putting yourself or your team in front of the camera, you give your organisation a human element that’s often lacking in faceless email communications.

Why so serious?

Send your recipients something to make them smile. Share a funny story or post from social media that you think will brighten up their day. It doesn’t all have to be about work, work, work, but making it relevant to your audience will likely get a better response.

Getting to know you

How much do you actually know about your audience? Why not ask your recipients to fill in a simple survey or answer a couple of questions via email (resist the urge to send lengthy surveys as people don’t have time for that). The answers you receive should help you better communicate with your audience, so make sure you’re asking questions that will give you valuable information. For example, if you have lots of business owners on your database, and you’re sending emails that are relevant to sole traders and micro businesses, you could ask your audience how big their company is and whether they employ people. This could give you valuable insights into whether your content is relevant to them or whether you need to segment your list to send more tailored content.

Shine a light

Time to turn the tables and put a spotlight on your team. People are interested in people. If they weren’t, social media platforms wouldn’t be a thing. So, perhaps you could feature a team member in your newsletter. Tell your audience more about them and their role in your business. This works well for your sales team, particularly if they call out on your customers and prospects as it’s introducing them and warming up that call so it doesn’t feel like a complete stranger calling.

Did you know?

There may be elements of your business that customers and prospects are not aware of. For example, you may have a nominated charity that you regularly fundraise for, or there may be a lot of history behind your company that your customers may be interested in or you could be on a mission to be carbon neutral or have recently won an award for customer service. All businesses tend to have something that differentiates them from their competitors and whilst you may think everyone knows about them, it’s not always the case (plus, it doesn’t hurt to remind people, either).

Resist the mundane

When we invest in something big for our business, like a new website, we want to shout about it. However, unless your new website offers a direct benefit to your customers, it’s likely to get a “so what?” kind of response. Focus on content that benefits your audience and less about you.

Email marketing can be tough if you’ve been doing the same thing for months or years, but the old saying, ‘a change is as good as a rest’ definitely applies, so escape the rut and spice up your email campaigns today!