Email marketing is the oldest form of digital marketing now in its 40th decade, but that does not mean the channel is obsolete. In fact most companies still use email marketing to this date, either sending offers via email, or newsletters that are tied to their blogs; the channel is still going strong to date, might be the fact that you’re engaging with your audience in their own terms with them choosing where and when to see what’s been sent. Whatever the reason, a lot of companies are sending out mailshots nowadays and the international education media is no exception. Here’s how you can generate successful marketing email content that can make you stand out from the rest.

Of teasers and cliff hangers

When setting up your marketing email, you need to tease what’s to come in your subject line, keep your audience interested - just make sure that you deliver on your promise. When your teasing leads to nothing, you may risk your relationship with your customers and subscribers, and even though the open rate at first will be high you will risk them adding you to their spam folder. Once you’ve gotten them to open their email it's time for some cliff hanging headlines. Do not put all the information right there on your email; after all you want them to click further and get to your website. Same rule applies though, only tease headlines that you can deliver on.

Personalize it

The more oriented to your customer’s interests the email is, the higher the chances of them following through on your email. The first question that comes to mind is "how can one email cater to the interests of all?’’ Well it can’t, but most email marketing services out there allow you to have more than one subscriber group. For a higher open rate, group your customers according to their interest. You can do so through surveys they fill in and through questions added to your subscription form. You can still send out your generic mailshot to all your subscribers, but getting a more personalized marketing email to each subscriber group will gain more interest from your customers.

Be more engaging by educating

Everyone loves a few tips and tricks to make their lives easier and who better to provide those tips and tricks from within your industry than you? Whatever your corner of the market is, you have been working in it for quite a while and you know the subject inside out. So share your expertise with your audience, use your email marketing campaigns as a teaching platform for your followers, and this will not only increase customer engagement, but you also have a shot at becoming the go-to expert everyone flocks to for all things tied to your industry.

Tried and Tested

There are so many layout options out there, so many styles you can set to your email campaign. Why just stick to one? Whether you are at the initial stages of email marketing, or whether your mailshot layout has been around for a while, it might be time to stretch your boundaries a bit and test out different layouts. Try a few different ones in your upcoming campaigns and see which style has had higher click rates and engagement. Through testing you get to know which layouts are most liked by your customers and more beneficial to you.

Analyze your email’s performance

We’ve hinted at this in our last point, email campaigns will not get you revenue straight away but it gets the conversation started to eventually lead to more revenue. So you do need to track engagement with your email campaigns, see that your campaigns are improving and if not, delve further to find out why and make the necessary changes.

Follow these tips and tricks, experiment, see what works best for you and your audience and if you have any tips and tricks of your own you’d like to share, we would love to hear them.