You're spending a lot of time crafting emails to your subscribers, but none of that will do you any good if you don't have a decent delivery rate. If those emails land in your potential customers' spam folders, you don't have much of a chance of making a sale or building a relationship with them. Here are three tips that will help make sure your email list is healthy and that emails make it to your subscribers' inboxes.
Use A Reputable Auto Responder Service To Send your Emails
Using a reputable autoresponder service is the best thing you can do to improve your chances of avoiding spam folders. Sending blast emails from your Gmail or Yahoo accounts is a BIG NO NO! These services have limits on the number of emails you can send. They will start marking your account as spam if you continue to send mass emails. Email service providers like Aweber, MailChimp (my favorite) and Get Response make sure they are whitelisted with the big Internet Service Providers and email providers like Gmail. They make sure that your emails are following current email marketing laws, so you don't have to ;). These companies also give you analytics and delivery stats on your emails. This lets you know what emails are being read and what people are clicking on as well as other actions that are being taken with your emails.
Set an Email Schedule and Stick to It
Your chances of staying in the main inbox are high when your subscribers regularly open your email. The first step to making sure your subscribers open your emails, is to email them consistently (the next is to make your subject lines interesting but more on that in another post). Let your subscribers know early on when and how often they can expect an email from you. You can even use foreshadowing in your messages. For example, toward the end of your email, mention that they can look for another email from you next Tuesday. Another tactic is to automate messages based on different things your subscriber does. For example, if they click on a link in one email they receive a series of other emails related to the link that they clicked).
Clean Up Your Email List Regularly
Another good habit is to clean up your list regularly. If subscribers haven't been opening your emails for the past six months, they are likely no longer interested in what you have to offer.
You can use an automated sequence to tag those who have not engaged with your emails in a certain amount of time, then send a re-engagement series. Once they finish that series you can set it so they are deleted if they still have not engaged. If that freaks you think of it this way, you would continue a face to face conversation with someone who didn't reply or even pay attention to you, so don't do it with email! You're better off with a smaller list that is engaged with you and your emails than with a large one that doesn't read them.
Following these tips will help make sure your emails are being read by your subscribers otherwise what's the point?
If you need help setting up your email list click here to drop me a line. I am currently accepting a few clients.