Monday Catch-up: Find Your Email Voice, Improve Your Newsletter and Engage with Millennials
Welcome to Monday, marketers! Here’s another roundup of recent email marketing news to get your week off to an informative start.
Finding your inner email voice
On Business 2 Community Mylène Blin encourages email marketers to find and use their “inner email voice” to engage with customers. “Maybe you never thought of your emails as something that could have a voice – let alone that this voice is something that ought to be given some thought,” she writes. “But the way you speak to your customers through your emails matters a lot. She says that developing a unique, consistent and identifiable voice that your recipients associate with your brand can work wonders on open rates and help build valuable, lasting relationships with customers. “Think about it like this: when your messages reach the inbox, your user gets that familiar feeling of hearing from someone they already know,” she adds.
Value found in using complex subject-line language
Although it sounds counterintuitive, the results of a recent Touchstone study found that emails with subject lines using complex language performed better than those using simple language. The results are reported on the eConsultancy blog by Nikki Gilliland. The study analyzed 675,000 subject lines and the results of 41 billion emails sent to “virtual recipients.” Gilliland writes that while many emails are sent with subject lines with an understandability level aimed at people aged 9-14, the best-performing subject lines in the Touchstone study were written using the vocabulary of a 16-to-18-year-old. “Not only does this study suggest that complex language leads to greater email engagement, but it also once again proves the value of testing and optimization,” she notes.
Improving your newsletter’s effectiveness
According to recent reports cited by Jeanne Jennings on Only Influencers, more than 80% of marketers use email newsletters in their content marketing. However, most of those marketers are not satisfied with the results of their efforts. To help improve those results, Jennings has several suggestions for publishing better email newsletters – and her first tip is to be absolutely sure you understand exactly why your organization is putting one out. “The ‘why’ behind your email newsletter should drive the content that you use in it,” she writes. “If this content is a good match for the ‘why’ you’ll have a good chance of being successful; if not, your odds of meeting your goals decrease. A lot.” Her other suggestions include employing “content hacks” such as summarizing webinars and conducting surveys, rather than always relying on original content; and tracking results.
Providing value seen as key to engaging millennials
“Commitment to a brand may be scary for some millennials, but they want to know they can trust you as a sender,” writes Scott Heimes on Marketing Land. “To build a long-term relationship with your millennial recipients, always provide value, and honor their preferences.” Heimes’ other tips for engaging this critical cohort of more than 90 million young people include experimenting with subject lines, keeping content short (but not too short) and asking for their opinion – and then acting on what you learn.