As a marketing channel, email has recently been proven to be 40 times more effective* than the new social kids on the block – Facebook and Twitter. But not every marketing email succeeds in delivering a business’ intended message.
By Dela Quist, CEO at Alchemy Worx
Read On:
The Haiku of the subject line
How to do cross-device marketing
Easy sales increases with email
How can you ensure that your email campaign gets the right information across in the right way?
Unfortunately, the headline is somewhat of a misnomer. After all, the perfect email will consist of different elements for each business – depending on the sector it operates in, the existing relationship it has with customers, and the type of audience it wants to reach.
Having said that, there are some established practices that can help you to capitalise on the potential marketing power of email.
Don’t underestimate first impressions
There has been a lot written about subject lines – should they be long or short, specific or generic, personalised or not, and so on. But the key to writing a good subject line is to be meaningful.
Inboxes around the world are filled with generic and uninspiring subject lines like “our August newsletter” and “Offers of the week”. Clarity is certainly a virtue, but using these lacklustre phrases means that countless businesses are wasting a golden branding opportunity.
As the first (and sometimes only) part of an email that recipients will read, you should be working twice as hard to convey a brand and marketing message in the subject line space. Rather than sending a message entitled “Summer Sale”, why not say “Summer Sale – up to 50% off men’s shirts”?
The expanded version is not only more interesting, but it gives the reader all of the information they need about the brand’s offering – even if they don’t open that particular email.
Keeping the eyes on you
So you’ve mastered the art of the subject line, but how can you make the copy in the body of your email dazzle?
According to Nielsen, consumers spend an average of 51 seconds on each of the marketing messages they read in the inbox, so the key with copy is to be concise and to-the-point.
On the whole, email copy is scanned rather than carefully read, so regardless of the total amount of text, key points should stand out. Using bold fonts, bullet points and call-out boxes are all good tactics to employ as they make text easy to read.
A key reason to avoid long copy is that it can dis-incentivise clicking. This isn’t a problem if you want subscribers to consume content within their inboxes.
However, if your objectives mean encouraging people to click through to your website, it’s best not to give everything away in the body of your email.
If you do choose to include longer chunks of text in your email, this email from Zipcar showcases some useful tactics. Here, quite complicated processes are explained in simple, straightforward English – a deceptively difficult task.
Plus, to ensure readers don’t lose interest, the writers use short, punchy sentences (here copy averages around 6 words per sentence). Use of the active – rather than passive – voice further aids the flow and pace of the text.
Pictures can speak 1,000 words
Using large, impactful images is all the rage in email marketing these days. But rather than sticking to staged photography or product images, think about playing with other types of pictures.
From illustrations, to real-life customer photographs, departing from the norm can set your email apart from the other marketing emails landing in the inbox each day.
The stylised drawing in the email shown below, for example, immediately stands out from the crowd, while communicating MAC’s creative credentials.
Since it is still very common for many email inbox providers to automatically prevent images from downloading, it can be useful to ensure that your email works with the pictures missing.
Using HTML for links and headers and keeping the layout of your email on-brand can help to get your message across, whether or not images appear in the recipients reading pane.
One technique that has proven to be particularly effective in this regard is the use of “Pixel Art”. The idea is to turn the dead space displayed before images load into a pixelated image that maintains the essence of the full message.
In the example below of a Sony PlayStation email promoting the Transformers video game, a modern, full-colour image of the Transformers appears as the famous, eighties Autobot logo when the images are disabled.
And because the message is clear with images off, the email engages instantly with 100% of the audience that opened.
Having said all of that, the powerful impact that strong imagery has means that requiring subscribers to download images to fully engage with your email content – rather than compromising for the images-off environment – can generate the best overall returns.
This strategy has the added benefit of knowing when someone has read your email.
Given all of the buzz around data analytics and audience targeting recently, email marketing has been discussed in a scientific context.
In reality, all the predictive analytics in the world or the most statistically sound email strategy still relies on great creative to succeed, because that is what subscribers value. Bringing together the science and the art of email marketing is the secret to success.
Fore more visit www.alchemyworx.com
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