growth strategies

six tips to improve your email marketing

with email marketing emerging as the weapon of choice for business-hungry accounting firms, we figured some firms could use a few pointers

e-mail marketing giant mailermailer’s latest e-mail marketing metrics report reveals the six key factors that determine whether or not clients and prospects open (and respond to) your e-mail newsletters and promotions.

here are the study’s six key findings, based on a study of over 300 million business e-mails sent over two years:

1. e-mails with subject lines that are less than 35 characters are opened 3-4% more often than those with longer subject lines.

2. while personalizing the e-mail message itself actually increases open rates, personalizing the subject line significantly decreases open and response rates (because recipients tend to feel any message with their name in the subject line is spam).

3. open rates are highest on monday and decrease steadily as the week goes on (e.g., 4-6% fewer e-mails sent on friday are opened than those sent on monday).

4. the smaller and more targeted a list, the greater the response rate (lists that have 250-500 recipients and segment by title, industry or past buying history have the highest response rate). as recipient lists increase in size, response rates decrease.

5. a marketingsherpa survey quoted in the study found that 64% of decision makers now view most of their e-mail via a mobile device (like a blackberry or iphone), which means you may need to adjust and send more “mobile-friendly” e-mails.

6. prospects prefer html to regular text.

via mailermailer’s email metrics report

3 responses to “six tips to improve your email marketing”

  1. marty desmond

    it’s a good idea to set up accounts to test all the different email clients, gmail, yahoo! mail, aol etc. to test how your mail performs. does it pass the spam filter? do all the links work? how does it look?

    i like nate’s comment. i read lots of websites and newsletters from cpas. many are the same information. the best ones are much more than just technical information. what does that information mean to your clients? what problem will it solve?

  2. nate hagerty

    these issues are *exactly* why we started providing a very different approach to email marketing for cpa’s, and it’s been quite successful.

    we’ve found that conversational, personalized emails written about subject matter that clients actually care about (current events, personal finance, you, etc) get much better response than the current “tax tip” approach used so numbingly by so many accountants.

    chris, check out that website linked above, and my staff can send you a couple samples…

    nate hagerty

  3. chris lantini

    you forgot the main thing about client emails: you have to make them useful!

    how many tax checklists can our clients stand?

    where can i get good, relevant, newsy material for my newsletter without spending a fortune?