5 Ways to Cut Through Email Marketing Clutter

Published: May 29, 2015, 2:39 p.m.

It is getting harder every day to cut through the clutter that exists in our email inboxes. Most business users get hundreds of emails every day. Many email programs allow auto filtering of newsletter into different folders \u2013 let alone the spam filters cutting out many legitimate emails due to improper set up. However, there are a few effective ways to reach potential prospects via email marketing. It\u2019s still the most efficient ways to get in touch with new prospects and existing customers.\n\n \tBuild opt-in subscriber list - Yes, this is hard to do, but can be done. The easiest way to do is to build a social presence via various groups, start participating in group conversations, redirect (where allowed) traffic to a blog post, and request users to sign up for email newsletter on relevant topics. This is the only way to engage with new prospects.\n \tTest for spam scores and rewrite - Did you know that more than two thirds of the emails that are sent via various email marketing software are never tested for their spam scores? Simple words like \u201cfree\u201d, \u201cpromotion\u201d, etc., trigger spam filters very quickly. As per Return Path only 81% of the emails that are sent reach an inbox. It is quite easy to check for spam scores and rewrite an email.\n \tSend from an email account of a real person -\xa0A lot of times we receive Emails from generic account, e.g., sales@abccompany.com or marketing@abccompany.com. Statistics show that emails from a real person, e.g., joe.smith@abccompany.com would be twice more\xa0likely to be opened than generic accounts. It\u2019s very easy to set this up in many email marketing automation platform; however, organizations still skip this very simple step.\n \tFocused subject lines -\xa0Why do newspaper companies spend so much time in coming up with the headlines? Simple \u2013 headlines sell news. Same exact way, subject lines drive open rates of emails. Ideally a subject line should be ten words or less. Based on the focus of the email copy, questions based email, e.g., \u201cdid you know\u201d, etc., may perform better than statement based subject lines, e.g., do this and get that, etc.\n \tWriting purpose built email copy -\xa0There are primarily two types of email campaigns \u2013 sales centric (with clear offer to buy) and marketing centric (primarily with the purpose of building brands and relationships). They need to be written very differently and sent with different objectives. Sales centric emails can be simple text based emails without any heavy branding or designs. On the other hand, relationship centric emails could be informational, e.g., newsletter format.\n\nAt ZINFI we not only provide a state-of-the-art channel marketing platform, but also a global marketing concierge service that can help you and your partners to run email marketing effectively. Our concierge services will work with your partners and help them to pick subject lines, custom design the body copy of the email with your content and their branding to make sure when it reaches an end prospect it realizes its full potential of converting that reach into a true prospect.\n\n\nol {margin-bottom:10px;}