Need some email marketing tips! I get a lot of promotional emails from stores such as Old Navy, Gap, to name a few. I subscribed to them, so that’s okay. However, I thought I would point out a few tips on how to effectively email your customers, based on what the big companies do that are attention getting (plus a couple of things you shouldn’t do).

6 Email Marketing Tips

1. Free Shipping always gets attention. With gas prices what they are today, it only makes sense to buy something online if you can save money and time driving to the store.

Email-marketing-tips

  1. Little icons get attention. ★’s and even ♥’s do draw the eye to the subject line. For example, ★ 40% OFF TODAY ONLY! ★. But don’t over do it. Too much and it’s annoying. You just want to grab them, you don’t want to blind them.

3. A limited time to act. When the offer says “25% off until 11/09/13” and that is only 2 days away, it gets attention. The customer knows they should probably look at it now if truly interested, otherwise they are going to miss out.Email-marketing-ideas

  1. A significant discount of either 75%, 50%, 40% even 25% will make people act. A 10% or 15% discount doesn’t seem worth the effort.

  2. Don’t add customer’s name in email subject line. A lot of marketing people think this is more personal, but I feel the opposite. I know that when a large company sends out an email and my name is in the header, that they did not personally write each email, but rather just used technology to add my name. This feels more like spam to me than anything. So unless this is an individual email that you physically wrote, do not put the customer’s name in the subject  line.

  3. Don’t email too often. There are some companies that send me 2 to 3 promotional emails a day. That’s too intrusive and what will happen is customers will get annoyed and take their name off the email list or just block it as spam. A small business should only email customers either when they have something really special to offer or right before the big holiday shopping season (early November), and no more than twice a month.

FINAL WORD: Email marketing is a very effective way to get sales, so think about what you like and dislike when promotional emails are sent to you, and don’t make the same mistakes with your own customers. Related: How to Get Customers to Join and Stay on Your Email List. 

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