Today’s post is brought to you by our guest blogger, Matt Krautstrunk.  To learn more about Matt, see his bio at the end of the post.

With all this micro-blogging & instant chatting going on these days, email marketing is beginning to seem like a fossilized communication channel. However, email marketing still fits in to a lot of businesses marketing mix, because of its low-cost and high potential for exposure on massive scale. In fact a popular email marketing solution provider did a study on the advent of social in the email marketing industry and found that, ìsocial networks were not decreasing the time Internet users spent on email.î

Whether you are small business marketing to a few hundred people, or a corporation sending out an email to thousands, understand your content is the key determinate of your email newsletters success.

1. The Shorter. The Better

Email that has shorter sentences tends to bode well with readers. If your readers open an email with 2,000 words they are going to panic and most likely close out of your email. Your goal is grab the user with your subject line and essentially catch them with your first two sentences. This can be increasingly difficult for many content writers, so make sure your companies email marketer understands a customerís state of mind when marketing to them. It comes off bad to the company image if they are receiving poor content, so your job is to convince the recipient that your email isnít SPAM and has value to them.

2. Keep it Timely

Articles that are relevant to a certain time will create action. Whether you are reporting on a news story, or simply giving readers a seasonal time frame for a purchase decision. Try to incorporate the clock in your content; doing so correctly will increase open rates and click through rates.

Examples of timely content:

• Spring is here: Getting Hopping With 15% off April Purchases
• Blagojevich is Ousted, What Can Your Business Do Foster a Trusting Environment?
• Party in Red, White and Blue This Summer! Get 25% all 4th of July Merch

Tying your content into your audienceís lives is the key to engagement. You would rather have 100 people find and open your email and click through, than have 250 people open it and then delete it.

3. Solve a Problem

Before you send an email out, ask yourself, ìwhat is the point of this email?î If you canít answer that question, you may want to revise your email. Get to the point within the first paragraph and then back up your point in the remainder of the email. If you are trying to help business owners find a suitable VoIP phone system, the first paragraph may look start out.
ìIf you are like many, your only exposure to VoIP has been watching your wife and kids playing around with Skype. But Skype is feeble in comparison to many corporate VoIP solutions. If your business is looking to lower overhead, unify communication channels and improve sales and customer service, VoIP is for you.î

4. Give Links

Links, Links, Links! With email, the more relevant links you can throw in your email the better. I tend to appreciate emails with timely, relevant links because they can expand on an idea easier than adding another few sentences. If you are able to shorten your content by adding links to explain statements, the do so. More links will also give you more opportunities to drive traffic to your site.

5. Have Fun!

Even some of the most corporate companies able to lighten up a bit on their email content; this gives them a human touch. Social media has become so popular because it allows people to a see more human side of a company. When writing your email content, try and speak with a human voice and reason with your audience with a happy tone.

Remember you are competing with a wide variety of things in a userís inbox. The only way you will stand out in the crowd is getting your audience to trust you by creating engaging and fun content. Give links to relevant material, keep your emails timely and solve a problem; you will begin to see higher open rates and better click through rates as a result.

Today’s post is brought to you by our guest blogger, Matt Krautstrunk.  Matt Krautstrunk is an expert writer on business pos systems based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as point of sale systems at Resource Nation.

Tags: email marketing tips, Guest Post

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