Engaging Subscribers, 3 Strategies that Improve Your Email Marketing Success

Email marketing is more than blasting email and hoping for a reaction. Even getting a great autoresponders service and building a few great emails is not enough. To get real, meaningful email conversion you need to engage your subscribers--this is what makes real direct email marketing.

Small business email marketing is where a lot of great email marketers get started. Small business owners know the power of engaging the customer personally. That is precisely the strategy you want in your direct email marketing. Optimizing email conversion has to be the main objective.

Here are some email marketing tips with get you on that path to success:

1. A Friendly Face

When that email lands in your customers inbox they are unlikely to remember you. So, unless you are a celebrity you had better put a friendly face on it. You be the judge of this common mistake. Are you likely to open any of these sender's emails?

• info@bademail.com
• do-not-reply@bademail.com
• admin@bademail.com

I didn't think so. You just expedited your email campaign to the trash bin or spam bucket. How about these equally suspicious characters?

• John@bademail.com
• Joe@bademail.com
• Jane@bademail.com
• Sally@bademail.com

Are you seeing the pattern? A good autoresponder service will guide you around these common gotchas. The bottom line is make your email marketing messages as much like your every day emails, as possible. Use a real name from your company. It doesn't have to be your email address, but it should have a real name. Getting good email conversion typically is helped by adding a last name to the address as well. Also don't forget this common mistake--make the email address match any email signature in the body of the email.

2. Subject, Make it About Me

Subject lines are the keystones of email marketing strategies. There are lots of email marketing tips to improve your email conversion, but here are some of the basics:

• Use their name
• Remind them of email list or opt-in source
• Be descriptive and direct about the content
• Don't use high spam words like money, cash, mortgage
• Make it brief

Sometime you can't make all of this work together, but good testing will help you get the right combination and approach for your email list.

3. Opener, Don't Waste Time

If the email is open your corporate or small business email marketing plan is working. Be careful though. This is when many email marketers get sloppy.

Give you customer immediate clarity. Give me benefit and value. Give me a reason not to trash it with the other 200 emails in my inbox.

Start with an immediate benefit statement then tell them briefly what is to come. We used to call these Johnson boxes in the classic sales letter days. Often a small offer or freebie can entice a consumer to the next step.

Making your direct email marketing work is all about coaxing your prospect to the next step of action. These email marketing tips are a great way to build that framework for consistent email conversion.