You would not believe how many solo and other micro entrepreneurs miss these three basic features in their email marketing, and how much you can stand out from the competition this way. Read these easy tips, ponder, and implement our suggestions—in less than an hour!
Improvement 1: A Greeting
It sounds unbelievable, but I have stumbled upon newsletters without any sort of greeting on top more times than I can remember. It definitely is a thing—and both a quick and easy improvement to implement!
If your email-service provider doesn’t help you with the code snippet to add a first name easily, just go with a hello, hi, or such. Anything is better than simply starting the letter with something like “So today I…” or “Yesterday someone called me about…”
Just as a book has a cover with title and other info to put us in the right frame of mind, the greeting warms us readers up to engage with the main content of your newsletter.
Especially if you choose to use email templates made by others, be sure to read through them all before sending, to customise these things each time. There could be typos, too, to fix, and this greeting is the first thing after the email subject that your recipient reads, so a streamlined start makes it less obvious that you have put to use a template.
Pro tip: Make the field to capture first names compulsory to fill out in your forms, so everyone gets an email with their name as part of the greeting. Kit, our choice, makes this very easy.
Improvement 2: A Catchy Sign-off
Just like the greeting at the beginning, it is nice to be properly sent out from your sphere with a catchy sign-off.
Once you are done writing, a sign-off creates a feeling of fellowship just like when saying farewell to colleagues or business partners in “real life”.
Pro tip: It doesn’t have to be cheesy, but should feel natural and sound like you. I have read a wide range of short blurbs and few are exactly the same, so choose something to reflect your brand voice.
Improvement 3: Website Link
I have lost count of the small-business owners that include no link to their website anywhere in their emails.
Guess what? The only way to find out how to reach your website is by opening the sender details, then copy-pasting part of that email address into a browser’s navigation bar. It makes for an appalling customer experience!
In our emails I have typed Website in the footer region, then added a link to it. No fancy images at this point, but at least it is there to use. As you can tell, this improvement is as easy as our previous suggestions to implement, and if you are using a custom template for your newsletters, you just have to create this link once after which it will show up automatically in subsequent emails.
Pro tip: Another far too overlooked alternative (or rather addition) is to add your logo to the top of each email, above the greeting, so that you provide instant recognition in your readers. Lots of people use it in my other business for quick access to the online shop with its handicrafts goods.
Improvements For More Trust And A Better Customer Experience
These may sound like ridiculously basic improvement tips, but off the top of my head about half (!) of all business emails I have subscribed to miss at least one of them. Often two.
We all know how likely people are to stick around if they can’t easily access a website, so be as emotionally distant as you want from your audience, but at least point them to your home online, lol. No visitors, no revenue!
And now I am eager to read your thoughts in the comments below! Do you feel singled out? Or is everything smooth sailing already?
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