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6 Email Blast Basics From Your Friends At Cohlab

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Whether you have a newsletter or a big sale to announce, an email blast is usually a marketer’s first choice to get the word out.

An email blast let’s you contact a ton of people at the right time, but there are many ways this can go wrong for a company or individual marketer, even if you’re using a system like MailChimp. For advanced tips, definitely let us help you out, but for now let’s take a look at 6 quick email blast tips to help you get off on the right foot.

Email Blast Basics

1. Bigger is not always Betterpexels-photo-30814

Let’s pretend that, through your sales force’s prospects and friendly contacts as well as a list of customers who have already purchased from you, you have about 2,000 email addresses.

Having a bunch of email addresses which aren’t properly vetted isn’t ideal. We would much rather see you email blast a new product release to 200 customers who have agreed to receive information from you than 2,000 who aren’t expecting product information.

Your click-through and engagement rate with the 200 will be much higher, and you will see better returns from being able to more directly target this group.

2. Commit. Commit. Commit.

An email blast is not a one-time affair. You’re not going to get a great return off of just sending one blast; people need reminders. The ‘why’ behind your blast will remain the same, but the specific wording and images should adjust to keep it fresh on your second and third blast.

This allows you to test as well, which we will talk about a bit later.

Consistency is also important, you can build momentum for your email blast by staying on a schedule to keep your brand at the top of mind for your customers.

3. Stay Above The Fold

Most people won’t read much of your email blast at all, or might only preview it, so you want your “call-to-action” to be above the fold. This means you want to put whatever you want them to do near the very top of the email blast, whether it’s a link to a product page, a survey, or a coupon.

You don’t want them to have to scroll to get to your call-to-action, or the vast majority will never see it.

4. Keep It Short

Brevity is your friend. Do you read lengthy emails? You might skim them if they truly interest you, but most you read the subject line and maybe the first paragraph before deciding to trash it or invest your time.

Keep your email blast short and sweet. If you have a lot of information to get across, write a blog post and link them from the email to the blog, using the link as your call-to-action.

5. Test. Test. Test.

Multiple email blasts work best, as you can test how different subject lines, body text, images and calls-to-action work on different individuals.

You should also test your email blast on yourself or your coworkers multiple times, and to different email providers (Google, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) to see if your email is presented in the right way; do images come through, is your subject line too long, does your call-to-action show up above the fold, etc.

6. Watch And Learn

If you want to learn from your emails, you’ll need to send them from a client like MailChimp, HubSpot, or setup a tracked link or contact form on your website. It’s important to know how your email blast performs, so you can improve in the future.

For more help with your email marketing, contact us today!