Stuck in a rut with your email marketing campaigns? Time and tide wait for no man (or woman, or marketer) so hitting on a successful formula is not enough. You need to carry out regular reviews of your strategy, tweaking or overhauling where necessary.
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to look beyond your tried-and-tested campaign strategies and think of something new to do. Don’t worry, here are some fresh ideas that will have your email marketing campaigns looking bright-eyed and bushy tailed in no time.
Build your marketing calendar around events
Are you getting the most out of seasonal promotions? Calendar events can be great fun and increase the sense of urgency for customers. Offering time-limited reductions, discount codes for established customers, competitions and rewards can lift your game and increase click-throughs and conversions
Some brands even build on this through playful initiatives, for example spotting hidden items on web pages in order to access a discount code, or engaging on social media for the chance to win a prize. Pop some countdown timers into emails to underline the time-limited nature of your offerings.
Make your CTA sing
As doors have handles, so emails have CTA. It’s the bit that makes the whole email marketing deal work. It’s what you want people to reach for. So make it as user-friendly as possible: it should read something like ‘open the door’, but many emails have something more akin to ‘reach out and turn this bit’ or ‘twist this bit in order to proceed through the doorway’.
A good CTA states the action you want the customer to take in simple, actionable language, using formatting and colour design to draw the eye to the action button. All too often, we draft a marketing email and slot in the CTA at the bottom without giving enough thought to whether it is really optimised.
Refine your opening line
We all know that subject lines are vital to email marketing, and you’ve probably spent time working on yours (if you haven’t, get to it now!) but how about your opening lines? The recipient has opened your email. What are you going to do to draw them into the body of the email and engage with what you’re offering?
An opening line should reflect the relationship you have with the customer: do you address them by first name? Go straight in with the context of your offer? Say something to establish your credibility? A good opening line should connect with the reader while also linking to your subject line.
Review your tone of voice
What is your brand’s personality? Are you serious, authoritative, humorous, flirty? The tone of voice that works for you will depend on what you do and who you sell it to; these things change subtly over time, so your tone of voice should too.
This doesn’t mean you should completely change how you talk to your customers, but a tweak here and there could deliver results. For example, start using shorter sentences or try a slightly chattier tone. If you have a tone of voice document, it’s also worth revisiting this to see if what’s on paper matches your actual practice.
Talk about end results, not product features
You don’t need to send customers a product specification. Talk about the end result rather than the feature. So if you’re selling a kettle that boils quietly, the end result is that you won’t need to raise your voice or turn up your music while making a cup of tea. The feature only matters in terms of how it benefits the customer’s lived experience.
Emails will be more successful where they set out your understanding of the problem faced by the customer and how your solution solves that problem. Leave out the lists of features and focus on customer needs.
Is your email marketing in need of a spring clean?
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