In an age of saturated inboxes and spam filters smart enough to join MENSA, how do we make email marketing irresistible? We need to become more innovative when designing email marketing campaigns to ensure our hard work isn’t relegated to the junk mail folder. Huge strides in technology have been made in recent years that help digital marketers with their email campaigns and to save you valuable time, we’ve done the leg work for you and created the holy grail of marketing strategy. So, dear readers, if you want your customers eagerly anticipating your next email gem landing in their inbox, this blog is for you.
It’s all in the title.
An attractive, catchy title is always going to entice readers into opening your email, however your choice of title and the phrasing you use should depend on your database and past campaign results. Look at what has been successful for you previously and use this to build on in the future- analysing the results of past campaigns will help you better understand your audience. Above all, keep your email title simple and seductive.
Say hello!
Before you do anything else, think about how you’re planning to greet your clients. Don’t forget your readers are bombarded on a daily basis with news and offers all jostling for their attention, so a simple, personalised greeting will cut through the swamp of spam. Now you’ve got their attention, it’s just you and them- what do you want to say?
Content is everything.
If your title is your bait, then the content is your juicy fish for your readers to savour, enjoy and then rave about afterwards… so make sure it’s worth devouring with relish! Keep the content relevant and snappy, and lead readers back to your call to action with clever use of hyperlinks, headings and bold images. It should be obvious what the focus of your email is, so create an email with a clear call-to-action to tempt your readers into making that all-important purchase. The key is not be too ‘fluffy’ with your wording as that can turn readers off.
The Goldfish Effect
How much time do you have to really read your emails? Attention spans are short, so ensure you reward your readers’ interest with useful, relevant content. Don’t make them work to find out what you’re offering, be direct and make it easy for them to access your product or offer through links and images.
Know your audience
Customer intelligence must be applied to email marketing to nurture sales leads. A good database is worth its weight in gold, especially if utilised properly through insights, reports and demographic data. These aren’t just pretty graphs, they truly help you create an effective campaign by identifying which of your readers you are, or aren’t engaging. Use them, and learn from them as they’ll teach you to speak your customers’ language fluently. Find out how to be ‘the one’ in your recipients inbox here.
Keep it Simple
Images are great- often tantalising enough to engage your reader them without any text at all. That being said, they can cause your email to load at a snail’s pace and your reader to navigate away from your email as a result. Emails now need to open across all platforms, so make sure your images are optimised for mobile devices and don’t forget to run a test before you send your campaign out.
A final thought
Make an inbox a marketplace, not a meeting place. Email is a quick, inexpensive tool that can be used effectively to nurture sales leads and develop customer relationships through the power of direct communication. Technology has both helped and hindered email marketing, the constant innovation and evolution of mobile devices and platforms can sometimes make it hard to keep up so our unflinching focus is on quality content and databases.
Done well, email marketing can be the most valuable sales tool you have in your pocket and utilising our holy grail of email marketing strategy can be the key to your success. No matter how advanced your campaigns are, use our simple steps to hone your strategy.
Discover what clients really want from your emails with our ‘Forget friendship. Show me the goods!’ research. Download the report here.