Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing channels that allows to communicate with consumers directly and reach them with personalized, relevant offers. In fact, it has the highest median return on investment (ROI) of 122 percent, which is 4 times higher than social media and paid search channels combined.
However, achieving such an impressive ROI requires much more than creating promotional emails and sending them out to subscribers. Every day, they receive a lot of emails from other brands (in fact, the total number of business-related emails sent and received per day in 2018 exceeded 281 billion!), so making your emails as attractive to recipients as possible is simply a must.
Since relevancy to consumers is your number one priority, writing consumer-focused emails is a good way to maximize the chances that your messages will be noticed and opened in an overfilled inbox.
Here’s how you do it.
Step #1: Make Subject Lines irresistible
A subject line is the first email element that you need to optimize because it’s the first thing that a recipient sees when he or she opens their inbox. If they find a subject line to be unattractive, there’s a great chance that the email will be ignored.
In fact, 47 percent of email recipients say that they open emails based on the subject line alone, according to Super Office survey.
Making subject lines customer-focused is the best way to maximize their attractiveness:
- Personalize them by including the name of the recipient. “It’s easy if you’re using an email marketing platform but it can make a difference for your subscribers,” shares Amanda Sparks, a marketing specialist from EssaySupply writing service.
- Describe the benefits to the recipient. For example, “Style for every Party. Be the Best-Dressed Guest” – (Rue La La on a party style collection)
- Offer products and services based on the recipient’s purchase or browsing history. It’ll entice them to check out the new offers because they’re based on their interests.
Step #2: Make Preview Text Compelling
This text is displayed right after the subject line and it provides a little bit more information about the content. “Even though the recipient can see about five or six words depending on their length, this is another good way to provide that much-needed additional push to open the message,” says Seth Rivers, a digital marketing specialist from online writers rating.
To make the message even more appealing with the preview text, you need to give the recipient more information about the content of the email and how they can benefit from it.
For example, here’s how a British health retailer Holland & Barrett wisely provides additional details of the sale to entice the consumer to open the message (“Plus £5 off every £ you spend”).
Step #3: The Same for the Copy
To make the copy of the email as attractive as possible and maximize the chance of conversion, keep in mind that:
- The content of the email should be relevant to the recipient’s interests. For example, if a subscriber provided their email to receive sale alerts, that’s what you should send them. No hard sell. No irrelevant material. Only timely notifications about upcoming sales and discounts.
- Induce a sense of urgency to encourage immediate action. You do so by letting the recipient about time-bound deals in the body of the email like this:
Or through the CTA button like this:
Important!
The text of the copy should meet the following requirements to help you maximize conversion rates:
- Readability. The copy shouldn’t be too long and easy to read so the recipient clearly understands what you need from them
- Include text links. An email is an excellent chance to direct readers to your site, social media pages, or landing pages. That’s why your copy should always have the room for some links.
- Have a clear and distinctive call to action. The CTA button should always stand out from the rest of the message to draw the eye.
The quality of the text is another important consideration. Since a copy that contains errors is a sure-fire way to get your emails deleted, feel free to check your texts by using the help of professional marketing writers on services like Writing service; or checking them with online tools such as Hemingway or Grammarly.
Time to Write High-Performing Emails
Compelling, customer-focused, and relevant email content is a powerful way to draw attention to your offers and brand. An enticing subject line, preview text, and copy will maximize the chances of conversion and the effectiveness of your email marketing effort.