Email marketing can be a useful tool for brands to foster engagement with their audiences without having to rely on ever-changing social media algorithms. With a refined subscriber list, email marketers can control their audience and interact with customers on a more personal level. The tool can be used for promoting offers, increasing website traffic and understanding your audience.

For email marketing to be worthwhile for your promotional products business, here are six tips for developing and maintaining a subscriber list and promoting engagement to your page.

1. Start with a hook.

Like all good writing, marketing emails should hook the reader in with the first line. This may seem obvious, but your subject line is the most important part of a marketing email. Try addressing customers by name or advertising discounts in bold letters to draw the eye. For some, this will be the only part of the email that’s read, so take advantage of the attention and make it worthwhile.

2. Engagement matters.

Knowing your metrics will help you determine how to best create engagement on your website. Determining the goal of your email will help make this step easier. Depending on whether you want your recipients to open a link to an offer, or simply to open the email itself, measurements such as open rate and your click-through rate are good to check. The more you know how your recipients are interacting with the emails, the better you can market to them.

3. Timing also matters.

One of the best ways to get personal with your clients is to know when they are – and aren’t – interested in a promotional email. Plan ahead and time emails wisely. Don’t wait until Black Friday to send sale promotions to a clogged inbox; instead promote holiday sales early on. Emails are more likely to be clicked when they don’t sit in a pile of other promotional emails

4. Be experimental.

Another way to measure engagement is to experiment with multiple audiences. A/B testing is a marketing strategy used to determine the best route of success for advertising, web developing and, in this case, emails. Try sending two separate promotional emails to a split group of people, perhaps to test which subject line gets more engagement. When you decide on the route of most engagement, continue A/B testing with new options to determine the best possible style for your email.

5. Aim for quality over quantity.

Make unsubscribing easy to refine your list of interested subscribers and to keep track of your audience. This is a way to test what’s working and what isn’t, and a short active list of subscribers is more useful than a long inactive one. Another way to refine the quantity of your emails is by sending fewer of them. Don’t overpower your subscribers’ inboxes with emails that are more likely to be marked as spam if they come too often. Keep it short, simple and sweet to maintain active interest.

More than
40%
of all e-commerce cart abandonment emails are opened, and their click-through rate is 21%.(Source: Business.com)

6. Try sending cart abandonment emails.

According to Business.com, over 40% of all cart abandonment emails are opened, and their click-through rate is 21%. Cart abandonment emails are meant to remind potential customers of items they’ve expressed interest in on your website. Try sending these emails hot off the customer’s intended purchase to maintain as much interest as possible. Remind customers about products they showed interest in, perhaps offering discounts, and even offering a lineup of similar items to peruse.