Increase Response Rates with 4 Easy Best Practices

Our Marketing Director Erin was giving a presentation last week and thought her slide about Back to the Basics would serve a nice purpose for our readers. I did too. We get this question here all the time, how can I increase my response rates? Well there's a ton of moving parts to email marketing, but there are always the "marketing basics" that sometimes we all need to be reminded of. Here are a few:

Repetition is a Good Thing - Give your reader more than one opportunity to respond within the same email. Don't include only one link at the bottom of your email. Your reader may never scroll that far. When you send yourself a test email, make sure you can see links in your preview pane, which is the window in an email client that lets the reader "preview" an email before they open it. If you're a publisher and you charge for advertising in your emails, you'll have a happier advertiser the more the links are placed towards the top.

Focus on What's HOT - The focus of your email should be on the offer or the content you think will be really exciting for your reader. Think to yourself, "What in my content is most compelling to most of the people on my list?" If you've got two distinct audiences that might respond differently to different subject lines segment your list and send them targeted campaigns. Oh and don't confuse the reader with too many messages, unless you've set them up in a newsletter where each topic can be viewed and read concisely on its own.

Call-to-Action - When you plan your campaign or email, ask yourself "what do I want my reader to do? Buy now? Sign up now? Register for an event?" Make that message clear on the layout of the email. Also make sure each call-to-action and each image you use is linked to where you want them to go.

Expirations Work - Create a sense of urgency around your promotion if you have one. If you want your recipients to attend an event ask them to sign up by a specific date to guarantee their spot or get a discount. For a sale, create a discount good only for a certain period of time, then stick to it. You don't want to be known as the softie for letting people continue to get the discount the next time you have a sale. They'll get used to it.

Hope this helps! Any other basics? Bring 'em on.

Comments

[Janine Popick]

For Dale - I think you wanted Papilia, when you click on the link in the email it should direct you right to that site.

http://www.papilia.com/sopo/

[Judy]

Very useful comments! I have to say I have been really impressed with Vertical Response.

[dale]

where are the tools for non-profits that the email mentioned when pointing to this blog?