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With the amount of time and effort it takes to craft the perfect email aimed at attracting new traders or increasing deposits from your current traders, you would expect it to pay off.
But if your email lands in the junk folder and not the inbox, your time and effort have gone to waste.
There are a number of factors which play a significant role in making sure that your emails hit the inbox so that they get noticed and read, and so help contribute towards higher conversions, engagement with your Leads and gaining loyal traders.
Let’s take a look at some of the important aspects to keep in mind when aiming for the inbox of your prospective trader:
1. Set Expectations
It may seem adequate to whip up an email with content that YOU find interesting. But you need to think about what your prospective trader finds interesting, what is of value to them and how they will benefit from opening your emails.
What kinds of topics and content will you be delivering? Why should they care?
Let your readers know from the very first email what they can expect from you. How often should they expect to receive your emails and what kinds of topic and content will you be delivering? Why should they care and how are you going to make their lives that little bit better?
This way, your potential traders are prepared for your communications, already knowing that they will likely benefit from what you will be saying in your next email– making it far more likely that your emails will be opened and read.
This could be in the form of an educational email, such as market updates or trading strategies, which requires nothing in return from your reader. Another option is a promotional email, such as a deposit bonus offer or a risk free trade, or something more entertaining, such as relaying the story of a famous trader or discussing a recent financial news event- this will really entice your prospective trader to want to begin a relationship with your brand.
A good rule of thumb is to mix these types of messages up to give variety and maintain interest. Not only will this aid towards creating engagement with your readers, it will also help you hit the inbox. The more your readers interact with your emails (opening them and clicking on the links within them), the better your deliverability becomes.
Inboxes can pile up rapidly, so even if your email does hit your readers’ inbox at the start of your communication with them, if your content is useless, always remember it is just a click away from the junk folder. And, the more your emails are deleted before opening, the more likely your future emails will be automatically filtered into the junk folder.
2. Segmentation
This aspect of email Marketing is hugely important. It separates your leads into sectors based on a number of factors, from gender to personal interests.
This is important as it ensures that your emails are to be of particular interest to that specific reader segmentation, as opposed to sending the same message to all of your potential traders.
By targeting your email content and offers towards specific lead preferences, you can in turn increase your trader conversion rates. Nothing stops a conversion more than sending the wrong offer to the wrong person at the wrong time.
Segmenting your list will lead to:
- Better deliverability
- Increased FTDs
- Fewer spam complaints
- Improved brand reputation
- Increased engagement (open and click rates)
All of these factors work towards your brand gaining more traders through your email marketing plan. A few ways you can segment your list:
- By interest
- By purchasing habits
- Behavioral data
- Prospective vs. customers
- By survey answers
- Inactive subscribers
- By demographic
If you continue to send generic emails of no targeted significance to your readers, chances are that they will simply add you to their junk folder, because your email is (for them) irrelevant.
3. A healthy list
Before you send out any emails to your leads, you should check on the health of your list. This means running an email validation check on your lead list, which allows you to determine if an email address is 'real' or 'legitimate'.
Validating your email addresses helps to ensure the highest deliverability as you will reduce the chances of sending your messages to email addresses that will bounce.
Start by eliminating any duplicate subscribers on your database.
If you send generic emails of no targeted significance, chances are that readers will simply add you to their junk folder.
Then, check for typos. For example: name@gmial.com or name@yaho.com.
Mistyped email addresses need to be corrected or removed from your database as they can affect your sender score when your emails are bounced back, creating more chances of your email ending in the junk Sending too many emails that bounce may get you flagged as a spammer by your email service provider (ESP) and result in your account being terminated.
You need to take into account 'hard bounce emails', which are when an email bounces permanently, due to being an invalid address or a blocked one. These types of ‘leads’ should be immediately removed from your list. 'Soft bounce' happens due to a full inbox, thus, these leads can be kept on your list. But if they continue to bounce, then you should consider removing them as they are more than likely to be inactive email addresses.
Your messages may end up in the junk folder, no matter how legitimate they are, if your sender reputation is lowered from high bounce rates.
On this note, it is important to have an unsubscribe option in your email so that the lead can opt out when they want, instead of having to be forced to mark your email as junk, due to it not being of interest to them. Be sure to immediately remove emails that have unsubscribed from receiving content from you. Once an address is unsubscribed, never email them again.
It is estimated that 30% of email addresses change on a yearly basis (www.emailanswers.com). Validation helps to refresh your email to only contain current and active email addresses.
Conclusion
So, if you send relevant messages, set expectations from the first contact, email the correct segments on your list, and deliver your emails to valid addresses, you can drastically improve your chances of hitting the inbox. Thus, you will boost your chances to getting your emails read and in turn increasing trader conversions.
