Has this ever happened to you? You spend hours putting together the perfect marketing email, carefully crafting the copy, subject line and design, only for it to fall way short of the mark when it comes to open and click through rates. This is likely to be because the emails you are producing are not persuasive enough. It’s no good just producing an email that you think is good; it also needs to speak to your customers. Your subscribers should look forward to receiving emails from your company, and the contents within them should engage with them and encourage them to take action. Here are just some of the things you can do to make your email marketing output more persuasive:
Build Anticipation
Your subscribers will more likely to open your emails if they look forward to receiving them. However, this is easier said than done – not many people say that they look forward to receiving emails from companies! You can help overcome this by seeming less like a company are more like a friend to your customers. Use their name in the emails you send them, and write as if you are only talking to one person.
Costa did this particularly well in a recent email:
Here, they have used my name in both the subject line and the body of the email. Even though the copy is just referring to a generic offer than Costa is running, it has been worded to make it seem like the offer is personal to me. Techniques like this help the customer feel more valued, and makes them think that emails from this company contain information that is valuable to them.
Encourage Opens
Most of your customers will have inboxes that are filled with dull, repetitive emails. It’s your job to make yours the email that your customers want to read. This is usually done with an interesting subject line, although an increasing number of companies are also making use of the pre-header text for this purpose.
In order to stand out in the inbox, you don’t necessarily have to do things that are wacky or unusual. You just simply have to show that you are offering something that your customer will be interested in. Avoid using generic, meaningless subject lines. Instead, use it as an opportunity to show the reader what they will find in the body of the email.
This subject line from Kurt Geiger might be simple, but it clearly describes what the reader will find when they open the email:
They also built on what was said in the subject line with their pre-header text:
If the reader is interested in boots (which, if they’ve signed up to emails from this company, they are likely to be), they will want to open this email to see the contents.
Write Engaging Emails
Now that you have your subscribers interested in opening your emails, you have to make sure that they are interested in what’s inside them. Make sure that you write in a way that will connect with your readers. Keep your email’s body copy as short as possible while still being informative and, like I mentioned before, give it a personal touch.
Also, avoid going for the hard sell in all your emails. Try to present your emails as being informative, rather than just an extended advertisement. This will help your customers see you as a more trustworthy source and, therefore, be more likely to purchase from you in the future.
Take a look at this example from Debenhams:
The subject line presents the email as being informative, rather than a sales pitch. This will make the company seem more authoritative to the customer, even though the body of the email contains links to products to buy. The copy in the email is minimal, but it helps to expand upon the products that are showcased with the body, and it uses a friendly tone to help build trust with the customer.
In this world of increasingly busy inboxes, you have to make sure that you are consistently persuading your subscribers to open and read your emails. Work hard on building trust between you and your customers, and continue offering things that are of value to them, and you’ll hopefully develop a long and successful relationship.
