Email Marketing – Mix It Up for Best Results

Success in any email marketing campaign is usually a combination of art and science.

The science comes in to play when we use proven best practices such as personalizing your messages, including a clear call to action, keeping your content relevant to your subscribers’ interests, etc…

The art comes in when we use a well formatted message and write compelling informative copy.

Getting the mix between the two just right is usually a matter of testing, tweaking, and yes … a little bit of luck.

Sometimes, though, you can get some pretty strong results by just mixing things up a little bit.

As an example: Try sending a plain text message every once in a while. Why? These days, just about every ad or promotional email you receive is formatted with graphics, colors, and quite a bit of design. There is good reason for this, of course.

But sometimes, familiarity becomes a little bit boring. If your readers are always seeing the same format, the same layout, the same images, they may start ignoring your messages.  Mix it up to see what happens.

Now think about this: Personal emails from friends are usually sent as plain text. There may be a little bit of color thrown in for emphasis or to be cute but the overall message is really just plain old text.

So, every once in a while, send out your email marketing message as plain text or use just a minimum of colors. Track your open rates and click-throughs to see what effect it has.

Note: If you try this one, use it every once in a while. You do want to keep your branding in front of your readers.

Of course, if your messages are usually sent as plain text, put together a well formatted HTML version every once in a while. The idea is to simply do something that is unexpected to catch your subscribers’ attention long enough that they will read your message.

Feel free to leave your comments and share any results you’ve experienced with mixing things up in your own email marketing.