Email can be powerful, whether you’re using it for sales, marketing, customer communication, or a combination of purposes. However, your effectiveness will be limited by the number of people you can reliably reach. If your email blasts are only getting through to 10 people, and only 1 of them actually opens the message, all the time and money you invested in the strategy will be a waste.
So what steps can you take to reach more people with your email strategy?
Segment and Refine Your Email Goals
First, take the time to reevaluate and refine your email goals. Email can be used as a form of marketing, keeping customers apprised of new deals and upcoming products. It can be used for sales, reaching out to prospects, and inching them toward conversion. It can even be used as a way to get customer feedback consistently. But if you’re going to be successful in these areas, you need to refine your approach to each individually – and not just use “email” as a catch-all strategy.
Increase the Size of Your Mailing Lists
The most straightforward way to reach more people with email is to increase the size of your mailing lists. You can do that in several ways:
- Start and maintain an engaging blog. Millions of businesses use an engaging, informative company blog to attract new customers, showcase their authority, and provide value to customers simultaneously. Blogs also work as a fantastic mechanism for inviting new email subscribers; simply include a call-to-action (CTA) in each of your posts, encouraging people to sign up for email distribution to get even more great content.
- Encourage signups on social media. If you market your business or interact with customers on social media, use your channels to periodically push for new signups. Make it even more attractive by explaining the value of being a subscriber.
- Offer discounts and freebies for signups. A little bribery never hurts. Consider offering discounts or freebies for new email signups; for example, you can give people a discount code for 30 percent off their next order when they sign up for your email list.
- Stage a contest. You could also stage a contest or a drawing (complete with an attractive prize for a lucky winner). To enter, you can make it a requirement for participants to provide their email addresses and consent to receive emails from your brand in the future.
- Collaborate with other brands. If you’re finding it difficult to attract new email subscribers on your own, you can consider collaborating with other brands – or even individual influencers – to produce better content and reach more people.
- Attend events. Consider attending in-person events to get email signups as well. A strategic tradeshow, local event, or networking opportunity could be valuable for you.
- Discover email addresses of your target audience. You can also use tech tools to discover the names and email addresses of prospects who fit your target audience; just make sure you remain in full compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act if you choose to email people who haven’t opted into a subscription.
Improve Email Deliverability
You can also work to improve the deliverability of your emails:
- Only send to verified subscribers. Take the time to ensure that you’re only sending emails to verified subscribers – and clean your list regularly.
- Authenticate your email domain. It’s important to enable Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) so you don’t become a victim of email spoofing. It also serves as proof to ISPs that you are who you claim to be – and that you’re authorized to send emails to your subscribers.
- Polish your subject lines. Spammy subject lines (like ones that include the word “free” or lots of exclamation points) tend to get flagged and removed, so your recipients never even see them. Keep your subject lines concise, polished, and as non-spammy as possible.
- Watch out for spam traps. Some institutions create deliberate “spam traps” to lure and identify spammers. If you’re collecting new subscribers legitimately, you won’t have to worry about them.
- Provide value to subscribers. Finally, make sure you’re providing value to your subscribers to minimize your unsubscribe rates.
Always Keep Improving
The most important strategy in this article is to always keep improving. No matter how new you are or how far you go, there will always be room for improvement in your email strategy. There will always be new technologies to experiment with, new copy to AB test, and new opportunities to recruit more people to your email subscriber list. As long as you’re focused on forward progress and you’re willing to try new things, you’ll have the power to keep iteratively improving your email strategy – however it manifests.
