Ace your email newsletters and survive the delete button

Email is not the forgotten dinosaur of digital; it’s a quietly confident marketing channel that businesses shouldn’t ignore.

Sending out regular emails packed with offers, news of your latest products or services, and titbits from your company blog will keep your business in the forefront of your customers’ minds, build brand loyalty and, ultimately, drive sales.

The 2014 Email Marketing Industry Census ranked email as the best channel for return on investment (ROI), with 68% of companies rating it “good” or “excellent”. Meanwhile, Econsultancy’s Cross Channel Marketing Report (2015) found 48% of marketers rate email as the second most important marketing channel after their website.

When done correctly – timed strategically, optimised for mobile and with personalised content – email marketing can lead the way in your digital strategy.

Getting started

If you’re starting from scratch, sign up for an account with an email marketing tool – some of the best known are Mailchimp, CampaignMonitor, Litmus and DotMailer. Among these you can find a host of ready-made templates and helpful tutorials. Some programmes are free up to a certain number of subscribers – for Mailchimp it’s 2,000.

Content

Think about the content of your emails; this could be your latest blog posts, a recent product launch, exclusive offers or a mention in the press.

The aim is to entice your customer to click through to your website to read more or to make a purchase, so keep the email content concise with strong calls to action.

Build your audience

To build your database, add a simple signup form to your website and share regularly with a link on your social media channels (you can find a “view in browser” link in most email newsletter templates).

You may already have a large database of customers, but you can’t send unsolicited emails to them unless they’ve opted in previously. Sending out a one-off “Do you want to hear from us” email will allow them to unsubscribe if they want to.

And remember, under data protection laws you must obtain customers’ permission before sharing their personal data (including their email addresses) with third parties.

Making email work harder

Once you’ve got started, here’s how to make sure your email newsletters survive the delete button.

1 Optimise for mobile

It’s important to make sure your email looks great across all devices, especially mobile, which is now the most popular way to browse the internet. Most email newsletter programmes will have responsive templates that change the design dimensions automatically according to the device they’re viewed on.

If a customer has to zoom and scroll their way around your email they’ll lose interest, so carry out tests across all devices (desktop, tablet and mobile) to ensure it displays correctly.

2 Write for scanners

You have just eight seconds to capture the attention of your reader, according to a report from Microsoft. That’s less than the attention span of a goldfish.

Make your content quick and concise. Just as with websites, people don’t read emails the same way they do newspapers and magazine articles; instead they scan the page to pick up the information they need quickly.

Keep your audience engaged with strong calls to action, such as this example from Love Supreme Jazz Festival.

3 Get personal and be relevant

Personalisation goes a long way. Address your customers by name, or set up audience segments such as location, recent purchases, or birthdays. This will allow you to send emails that are more relevant to individual customers and that are, therefore, more likely to catch their attention.

You can gather this information through your sign-up forms where you can encourage subscribers to provide their birthdays, product preferences and interests.

Recent experiments with targeted emails that we’ve run for our clients at Bozboz have seen engagement grow by 25% in just a few months.

4 Smart social integration

Email marketing should form an integral, but not standalone, part of your overall digital strategy. Plug your email newsletters on social media and include links to your blog posts or social media accounts in your emails. You can take your social media targeting one step further by setting up Twitter and Facebook ads that drive consumers towards your email newsletter signup form.

5 Plan, but be flexible

Strategic planning of your email campaigns is crucial to keeping your audience engaged. Now is the optimum time for businesses to start planning Christmas marketing.

Launching a new product in the autumn and reminding your customer base about it in the lead up to Christmas will keep you firmly on their potential gift list, but be careful to get the timing and frequency right so as not to bombard your audience.

Creating an editorial calendar with relevant dates, events and seasonal trends that can inform your email content will allow you to plan effectively.

Balance this by keeping an eye on the news for anything you can piggyback off to create enticing one-time offers. Monster Energy Drink’s response to #TheDress that took social media by storm is testament to the power of newsjacking.

Sign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.