Here at Tilted Chair Creative, a full service advertising agency based in Austin, we like to engage our customers as much as possible. We’ve already discussed how social media can affect your brand in a great way, but now we’re going to touch on something that can be another incredible tool to use. Two words: Email marketing. Sending newsletters monthly, bi-monthly, or even bi-annually, can produce some great results in the long run. All you need to do is follow our fool-proof tips to running a successful email marketing campaign.
The first thing you need to consider is who your audience is. Once you’ve established just who will be receiving your emails, you must keep them in mind when drafting the content. Targeting people with content that is relevant to their needs and interests will give you a much higher chance of them staying subscribed to your emails. Good copywriting paired with stunning graphic design is important in its own right, but if targeted inappropriately it will fall flat, we guarantee it. Be knowledgeable about the people on your newsletter list and write accordingly.
Speaking of writing accordingly, keep your content engaging! We’ve already discussed how relevancy to the audience is vital to the performance of a campaign, but if there isn’t anything interesting about what you put out each time, the subscribers will kick you to the curb. Keep them interested with “Subscriber Only” information or incentives. Throw those specials in there once in a while along with the information you need to get across. One of Tilted Chair’s clients, Moviehouse & Eatery, has had great success with subscriber retention since the beginning of our campaign. A bi-monthly newsletter is sent out that contains, for example, announcements about upcoming movies or information about the holiday toy drive. How do we keep them engaged beyond that? We’ll throw in the occasional “Free Popcorn” coupon that only subscribers receive, we’ll design a new banner graphic that highlights one of the delicious menu items, or we’ll announce presale ticket dates for big blockbusters. We use email newsletters as a call to action. We link every picture, “click here”, and “learn more” button to the website which makes it exponentially easier for the customer to reach the product. The links are right at their fingertips. Boom.
See? It’s as easy as that. Know your audience. Create relevant content. Throw in elements to keep them engaged. Put yourself in their shoes and ask “Why do I want to stay subscribed to these emails?” and the answer should be “Because their emails are badass! And sometimes I get free stuff!” Or ya know, something along those lines. We know constantly giving away free stuff doesn’t exactly work for everybody, so in that case get a little creative! If giving away free stuff works for you, then by all means, free stuff for everyone! …and the whole Tilted Chair office will be signing up for your newsletters ASAP.
Metrics and analytics are an important part of any digital campaign and help provide valuable information about your audience. When are they more likely to open emails? What are they most likely going to click on? With a little experimentation, email content from the subject line to the number of links can be tailored to get the best results from your audience. As long as you’re paying attention to the numbers, your newsletters can become more and more effective as you collect more data about the people reading them.
How you generate your subscriber list can vary depending on your marketing goals, and in this case bigger isn’t always better. Many companies offer lists of emails that you can purchase, making it super easy to create an enormous email database instantly. However, an opt-in list painstakingly made up of people who have interacted with your brand personally will always out-perform a list you’ve purchased. For instance, according to MailChimp, the average open rate for an email newsletter in the entertainment industry in 2014 was just over 20%. One of the last newsletters we sent out to Moviehouse’s audience in 2014 saw an open rate just over 45%. A lot goes into these numbers, but it all starts with who you’re speaking to and whether or not they want to hear what you have to say.
The final thing to remember is to keep your templates visually appealing. We like to use a nice little tool called MailChimp that allows us to insert our custom-coded templates, organize them, and reuse them so our emails always look great. Insert pictures, graphics, or banners into a pre-made MailChimp theme (or call us up and we’ll build you a better one *wink*), but make sure everything is cohesive to your brand. It’s the same with the written content you insert, keep it consistent with your brand’s voice. Most importantly, keep it short and sweet. Convey your message in as few words as possible, that way the consumer won’t lose interest before the first word is even processed. Well thought-out and clean-cut material is what you want to use. Another big thing in the email marketing world is having a responsive template. Whether you check your email on a desktop or an iPad mini, your newsletter needs to look great on any size screen. Sending newsletters on a non-responsive template can make your message get lost in translation FAST. It’ll be more of a “How did my spam folder let this through?” rather than an “Oh, it’s Tilted Chair’s 6 year anniversary? AND I GET FREE SERVICES FOR A YEAR?! YASSSS!” (Just an example, folks, juuuust an example.)
If you have any interest in getting some more in-depth email marketing knowledge, we’ve got a few professionals you can chat with over here at Tilted Chair Creative. If you’re interested in reaching out to our full service advertising agency to take meet all of your email marketing needs, we’d love to take on your subscribers. You won’t regret it!
