Email Marketing: A nuisance or an ill-used strategy?

 

Email marketing is simply any commercial information that you send to your audience via email. This commercial information includes ads, promotions, and requests for customer information. For most brands, email marketing is an alternate strategy for reaching out to their audience with the aim to build loyalty and rapport with them. Though this marketing strategy has proven effective for multiple brands, most campaigns do not return the high engagement or response rates that marketers expect, and as such most remove email marketing from their digital strategy altogether.  However, the solution may not be to eliminate email marketing , but rather to analyse and improve the way it is executed.

Yes, writing an email is quite simple (most of us do it at least 10 times per day), but crafting a marketing email requires a bit more strategy and creativity to encourage readers to open, and act on it. It is worthwhile to remember that your brand is not the only one emailing your audience, and receiving multiple emails can be overwhelming and bothersome. To break through this barrier, your email needs to be carefully crafted to stand out. Here are five things to consider when crafting emails to market your brand:

1. Get creative with the subject lines: The subject line is the first thing that the reader will see when they receive your email. Much like the headline of a news story, you want to make your email subject attention grabbing. It should tease the content; give the reader a reason to open the email, and a reason to read through its contents. Here’s an example from BuzzFeed:

2. Keep your content short– Though you are writing an email and not a 30 second TV/ radio ad, the same principles of keeping the content short, and giving the most important details first, still apply. Think about receiving a lengthy email while going about your day, compared to getting a short one, which are you most likely to read? Most persons would opt to read a short but informative email over a long one that gives too much information. Craft your email messages and then re-read and edit multiple times before sending- there is always a simpler and more concise way to say what you are trying to. In the example below, Birchbox kept their content short, and ensured to say what the email was about in the first sentence:

3. Include a clear call to action– After reading your email, or even half way through, the reader should not be left wondering what you want them to do, or why you are sharing this email with them. Make your intent/ call to action clear. This will prove beneficial for those readers who are not reading your entire email but are merely skimming through. In addition to getting them to perform the action, a call to action can also prompt a reader that is skimming through your content to take a deeper look. For instance if your call to action is “Buy it Now” the reader may be inclined to go back and take a look at what is being sold, and why it is worth buying. In the example below Uber highlights its call to action by making it another colour and also states clearly what you will get when you act on its call to action.

4. Keep your email design simple and consistent– If you are using artwork to enhance your email (which is highly recommended), the key is to keep the design simple. Make the design interesting enough to get the reader’s attention, but simple enough to place focus on the content. The design of the email is as much a part of the communication as the words in the email. Time should be taken to ensure that the design and the content are working together and communicating a clear message. In this example InVision merges a vibrant colour with a crisp simple design to amplify the content and make the email easy to navigate.

5. Refer to your reader in the content – When crafting the content for your email; try to let the reader feel a part of it. Using words such as you and your makes the content more personal to the reader and makes them feel that you are speaking directly to them without even calling their name. The personal appeal of your message increases the chances of the reader reading the content and more likely to execute your call to action. Have a look at how Stitcher personalizes its emails below:

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