5 Tips for Successful Email Marketing

Email is one of the highest delivering platforms available for our industry.  It produces, on average, 38 dollars for every dollar spent according to Campaign Monitor.  Ok, great! Grab a bunch of email addresses and start sending them messages, right?  Not so fast. Here are a few tips for successful campaigns.

1. Don’t buy your email lists.
2. Make a professional looking email.
3. Email with an intelligent frequency.
4. Use a catchy subject.
5. Entertain, Promote, Inform.

Don’t Buy Your Email Lists.

Man, it’s so tempting to buy an email list from some guy that promises the list from a health and fitness expo or from a marketing company that claims they are targeted fitness enthusiasts.  Although, this may be true, if you have not received permission to email these people you could be subject to penalty.  In addition, the higher the percentage of emails sent to SPAM or reported increases the likelihood of providers banning any emails being sent from your address……thus killing any hope for email marketing in the future.

Make a Professional Looking Email.  

Seems like a no brainer right?  Of course, yet some brands are still putting terrible material out in the market.  This will instantly devalue your brand.  Look at the big ecommerce sites like Bodybuilding.com, Muscle & Strength and Tiger Fitness.  These guys spend hours each day studying email trends.  Make sure your B2B and B2C emails look similar to theirs. Again, a terrible looking email with just text, poor images and even misspellings will end up in someone’s SPAM folder, increasing the odds of your emails getting blocked throughout your entire list.

Email with an Intelligent Frequency.

If you send one email and don’t see results, don’t give up.  If you send 6 emails and don’t see results, come see me and I can tell you what’s wrong, LOL.  My point is, you need to stay consistent.  HOWEVER, over emailing will get you more unsubscribes than orders.  Start with 1-2 email blasts per month, pick the same business day and send it out before 10am.

Use a Catchy Subject.

This is obvious.  Give them a reason to open your email, yet don’t make it click bait.  Make sure your subject is motivating but also delivers exactly what is promised.  A subject like “Free Protein Give Away” is definitely catchy, until they open it and see “Free Protein with $800 purchase”.  Recipients will unsubscribe with stunts like this.  Start reading subject lines from top stores and get some good ideas.

Entertain, Promote, Inform.

This is the 3 step formula I use at Pinnacle to get opens, more subscribers and less opt outs.  Make your email entertaining and worth opening.  Fresh content, especially videos and recipes work very well.  As our goal is ultimately sales, a promotion is necessary but shouldn’t be overbearing.  Make sure the deal is worthwhile.  Lastly, throw some info in there.  Product ingredient information, workout tips, other fitness or sport nutrition secrets will get them coming back for more.

Emails can get tricky, more importantly they are time consuming and you need to stay consistent.  I’d love to have my team take this off your plate to grow your business and execute with success.

And remember, as the goal for any email blast is to sell product, more importantly, getting someone to at the very least, click onto your website and retarget them for when they are in a position to buy is also considered a successful email.