The good news is, email isn’t going away any time soon. The bad news is, email isn’t going away any time soon.
That’s bad news because that means your competitors are likely still big users of email marketing, just as you are. And that means more competition for attention in the inbox.
Not only are you up against your competitors in the inbox, but everyone else as well. You might be selling dress shoes and think the company selling pet supplies doesn’t threaten you. But if you’re both vying for attention in the inbox, you are competing. Recipients don’t open every email. They might choose the flea shampoo special over your sexy stilettos offer.
Email marketing has long been a crowded space. That’s nothing new. But with the major ISPs now using engagement as a ranking factor when determining which emails are spam, that crowd has turned nasty. That makes it even harder to improve email deliverability.
How do you compete and win now? You aren’t going to win by increasing the frequency of your emails. You’ll only annoy. You aren’t going to win by getting louder with screaming deals in your subject line. You’ll only train subscribers to think of you as lower priced, lower quality. You aren’t going to win by revising your email design. You’ll only get a temporary bump. Each of these tactics might result in a temporary lift in engagement and response rate. But none of those approaches is sustainable.
There is one change you can make that’s ongoing, sustainable and effective. Invest in great content.
Strive to make your email marketing content not just really good, but great. As a recipient, what makes you want to open and read an email? Think content that’s personal, useful, relevant, funny, fun, interactive, informative, helpful, customer-centric, entertaining, compelling. Think about websites that catch your eye, cartoons that make you chuckle, blogs that make you think, newsletters that make you share. Why does that content engage you? How can you emulate that in your email marketing content?
Engaging content=engaged subscribers=happy ISPs=your improved email deliverability.
What is one thing you can do right now, today, to make your email marketing content more engaging?