The key is to make sure that you aren’t sending emails just to send emails. Every single time you email your list, you need to deliver something of real value. The higher the value of every email you write, the more loyal your subscribers will become, and your open rates will increase.
Humor has a way of making a strong, instant connection with people. It’s personal, entertaining, and sticks out in peoples’ minds.
But what if you aren’t a very funny person? It’s not always easy to be clever or humorous, and trying to fit your attempt into the narrow constraints of an email subject line? That can be super tricky.
Thankfully, you don’t have to be a comedian in order to pull off a humorous email. It’s more important to really know your recipients and what they’ll respond to. If you know their likes and dislikes, it will be so much easier to pull off a joke or make a tongue-in-cheek comment.
Here’s an example of a funny email that gets sent to subscribers who have been inactive for a while. Hey [first name], I tried to contact you regarding [value proposition] and haven’t heard back. Let me know if:
You’re all set and I should stop bothering you. You’re interested but just haven’t responded yet. I should follow up in three months. You’re being chased by a hippo and need me to call Animal Control. chased_by_hippo You can also insert funny animated GIFs into your emails, or a funny video. Again, you don’t need to be a comedian to add humor and personality into your emails, you just need to think outside the box.
Mobile email accounts for 67% of all email opens, depending on your target audience, product, and email type.
You simply can’t afford to ignore your mobile users, you have to appeal to them through mobile optimization best practices.
Make sure your email is responsive and includes easily loadable media. Also consider the fact that mobile screens are smaller, so long subject lines may get cut off on mobile devices.
Here are some more best email marketing tips for appealing to mobile users:
Keep the formatting simple (single-column), under 600px wide. Use a larger font. Small fonts are difficult to read on mobile. Don’t assume images are being displayed (Android turns images off by default). Make sure it looks good without them. Use smaller images to reduce load time. Use a large call-to-action button. Larger buttons are easier to tap with a thumb. Don’t place two links next to, or on top of one another. That way, the user won’t tap the wrong one by accident. All of these marketing tips can help any campaign get better open rates, but don’t get discouraged if you don’t see a turnaround right away.
Email marketing is an art and science, so give yourself some wiggle room to experiment and find what tactics work best for your business and your subscribers.
If you need more help with increasing your email open rates, check out our tricks for writing better emails.
Automating Your Email Marketing with Autoresponders
Congratulations on making it to the 5th and final section of this definitive guide! You’ve come a long way.
If you’ve been following along from the beginning, you have now learned how to grow your email list to epic proportions, you’ve segmented your list so that your emails are highly relevant to each individual subscriber, and you’ve learned how to send amazingly effective emails that have a high open-rate. Now you are ready to automate the process and turn your campaigns into money-making machines!
The autoresponder series is arguably an online marketer’s most powerful tool for making sales. It helps you to successfully engage your email list, build relationships, and turn prospects into buyers.
The best part is, once you’ve created it, your work is done, so you can focus on the important aspects of your business.
An autoresponder is a sequence of emails that are automatically sent to a segment of people on your email list and is triggered by a specific event, such as joining your list, a certain browsing behavior, cart abandonment, downloading a PDF, or buying a product.
Kitchen Remodeling MarketThe content of an email autoresponder series is created in advance and set up to send at the appropriate time with the help of your email marketing software.
Every online business needs an autoresponder series for two main reasons:
They nurture your leads by providing valuable information and insights, as well as teaching them how to make better decisions through an automated onboarding process.
They turn prospects into customers by helping you build “know, like, and trust” before you ask for the sale. Then you can make your pitch at the best possible moment, and you can do it without being overly “salesy” or pushy.
So, how do you create a highly effective autoresponder series? There are 4 basic steps:
There are many different goals you could have for your autoresponder, but here are the 4 most common. Choose one (or a combination) of the below goals for your autoresponder series before you create it.
Send new subscribers a “welcome” sequence. This is the message that you send to people right after they subscribe to your email list. It could contain a link to your lead magnet for an easy download, a thank you for subscribing, or maybe a call-to-action to check out your most popular blog posts. Every email list needs a welcome email series: don’t miss this chance to “woo” your new subscribers and turn them into loyal fans. Check out How to Create a Welcome Email Series that Sells On OptinMonster University to learn how to create a welcome email series from start to finish!
Use it as a lead magnet/free mini-course. You can also use an autoresponder as a lead magnet to attract new subscribers to your email list. This is commonly done in the form of a free “mini-course”, or a free “challenge”, which promises to deliver a series of emails containing lessons (or other valuable information) over the course of several days or weeks. There is high perceived value with a mini-course or a challenge like this, which makes it a very effective lead magnet. Looking for the best LMS plugin for WordPress to deliver your course with tearing your hair out?
Make sales on autopilot. Creating a sales funnel out of an email autoresponder sequence is a widely adopted strategy used by information marketers, but it can also be used by software companies, eCommerce businesses, and service providers. For example, it could consist of a series of educational videos, a sales video, and follow-ups to sell your information products. Or, you could create a sequence of free educational emails, and then invite leads to a live or recorded webinar where you make an offer. For an online store, your sales sequence could include promo offers for products your subscriber has just viewed on your website.
Promote up-sells/cross-sells. You can even set up an autoresponder sequence for someone after they purchase and get repeat customers. Depending on the products you sell, you could offer an upsell, or cross-sell related products. For example, if someone buys a digital camera, you can offer to add a lens, a tripod, and other accessories to their order before it ships. Or, if you sell products that people buy frequently (like food or disposable items, like diapers), you can automatically send them offers for new items when you know they’re about due for another order.
Step 2: Map Out Your Entire Email Sequence
In this step, you will draft an outline for your sequence. But first, you’ll need to figure out how long you want your sequence to be. How many days? How many emails?
There is no universal rule when it comes to exactly how many emails you need to have in your email sequence. Your sequence should be long enough to help you accomplish your goals, no more, no less. So its length should be determined by its purpose, your segments, subscriber’s preferences, etc.
Next, you’ll need to figure out how far apart each email will get sent.
It’s okay to send an email once every two days for educational emails, and three to four emails in a single day when you’re running a huge sale that’s about to end. It depends entirely on the goal for your sequence (which is why you chose that in Step 1).
You need to find a healthy balance between your “value” emails and your “offer” (sales) email.
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