Browse Author: Megha Sharma

6 Important Tips To Write Effective Content For Email Marketing

Email marketing has become prominent and considered as one of the utmost popular forms of marketing in this digital era.

As a matter of fact, it doesn’t matter how fancy your marketing emails look. If they’re devoid of well-written content, your subscribers will stop opening and start deleting your messages.  So, how do you write an influential marketing email? It all comes down by following few best practices which have been discussed in this blog.

Email Marketing in Terms of Statistics

To help you understand how critical and effective email marketing is today, below are some statistics for email marketing :

  • Approx. 54% of emails nowadays are accessed from mobile platforms
  • Mobile is one of the greatest popular solo platform through which users interact with emails for the first time
  • It has been seen that personalized emails have a higher click-through rate, approx. 15% than non-personalized emails
  • Probability is high that marketers will get a click on an email as they will through a Tweet

1.     Personalize Your Emails

personalize-your-emails

Personalized email copy is always better than general email copy. Always remember to input your customer’s name ( as shown in the above ICICI email) into your email subject lines. Be sure to target the body of your email so that it speaks directly to your audience and nobody else.

Email marketers might think that their emails will be lost in array of emails and the right audience might overlook them. The only way to guarantee that they won’t be overlooked is to personalize and differentiate them fully.

2.     Give Priority to Clarity First and “Catchiness” Second

clear-descriptive-emails

There is no doubt that catchy emails are attractive, but only if they’re also conveying clear message. This is what makes your audience want to click on them. Follow this principle and focus on making your emails first clear and descriptive, and then make them catchy. Just reading the first two lines in the picture above, it’s clear that the email is about latest updates for WhatsApp.

This ensure that your audience will understand the purpose of your emails and that you won’t be going out of your way to develop email campaigns that don’t draw real results.

What’s more, emails that are clear boost your authority as a company, since they promise only what they can deliver, and help readers develop realistic their expectations?

3.     Align Your Subject Line with Email Copy

align-subject-line-with-email-copy

Even though your subject line is clear and catchy, it’s of no use if it doesn’t align with your body copy. Always taken in account that delivering what you promise is critical in the world of email, and only people who can truly do this successfully in the long run. For example, in above Uber’s email, it is clear from the subject that the customer is getting 50% off on next 10 rides and same has been described in the body of the email.

Try to have a correlation between your subject line with body content. What your email subject line promises, the email message should deliver. Why? Since when audience don’t get what they’re actually promised in the subject line, click-through rates fall drastically. It will not only enhance your repute as a company and but will ensure that customers want to click your emails in the days to come.

4.     Keep it Relevant

relevant-email

Relevance is significant for a quality email, so be sure to tie the content of your email in with something that will ground it as pertinent and in-demand. Just like the email subject line should try to establish relevancy through personalization, so should the message of the email. By showing relevance, will grab the reader’s attention and there’s a greater likelihood that that person will click through. In GoDaddy’s email, reminder emails are sent to tell the reader why they’re being emailed and this email is meant to remind the user to renew their subscription before the expiry with an option to opt for auto-renew services.

5.     Prefer Writing Your Email Copy in the Second Person

second-person-email

Writing in the second person means using the pronouns “you,” “your,” and “yours.” This voice should be used because it’s personal and unique. When you put emphasis, and interact directly to your customers, it’s easier for them to relate to the voice and content of your email. As shown in Caratlane’s email, 6 times you or your is used as compared to us or we which has been used only twice. It’s clear that importance is given to the reader.

This, in turn, also makes it easier for them to connect with your emails. It will enhances the likelihood that they’ll open your emails in the future – which is a good thing for everyone.

6.     Showcase Benefits Instead the Features of Your Offer

benefits-of-products

You know the value of your email. But does your recipient knows it? No, not yet. And it’s your responsibility to explain it. The problematic area is, many emails only explain the feature they are offering, not the benefit. Make sure to focus the benefits of the offer rather than the features. This is applicable if you’re making an offer via email. As shown in the picture, Online TV 13 is emphasizing more on the benefits rather than its features.

In addition to being more valuable for readers, this also helps in presenting a realistic picture of your product. Following this principle will go a long way toward helping people understand what to expect from it. While most people focus on the features in an attempt to sell a product, focusing on the benefits can go much further toward helping the reader understand what’s unique and special about the product.

It is always recommended that emails should not be kept long-winded. As a substitute, keep your emails short and to-the-point. This boosts the prospect that you’ll keep your target audience’s interest and also serves to keep you on track and on topic throughout the duration of your email campaign.

Although you are a professional, but allowing your personality to shine through your email copy is an effective way to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Avoid spamming your readers with email marketing unnecessary. Only send out emails when you have important things to say and don’t ever send out an email just for a formality. It will only make you lose your customers and they might unsubscribe you as well.

By learning the tips on how to write content for email marketing, will only benefit you improve your content campaigns. It will also be effective in building brand engagement.

Top 6 Latest Trends To Follow In Email Marketing

Email, when used as a marketing tool to deliver a commercial message to a person or group of people, is termed as Email Marketing. Since there has been an increase in the number of internet users in the world from few years, Email Marketing comes as an effective tool for brands and companies from various segments to communicate with their followers, existing or potential clientele.

Marketers need to uninterruptedly change their email strategies to cater to a fluctuating audience. Studying and following email trends is the need of the hour. It’s true that some trends fade in a few months, while many remain for years.

To help you keep updated with the industry, I have researched and combined six of the biggest email marketing trends which every marketer should follow.

Finally, you will have the savoir-faire to help you plan a viable email marketing strategy up to par with industry trends.

Trend 1: Using Interactive Email Content

The interactive content trend has been on rise since the last few years. It is not sufficient to just send an email which is just intended to be read, there has to be a content which should involve engagement from the recipient as well.

interactive-email-marketing

Question is why interactive content is so important?

The answer is, it offers a more personalized experience for the individual. It inclines to be more enchanting than a plain old newsletter. The user can actually get involved with the experience increases interest, which can enhance the complete engagement and conversion rates.

Some of the most useful and different forms of email interactivity comprises:

  • Live menus and navigation
  • Carousels, image galleries, and sliders
  • Product tour
  • Offer reveals
  • Quizzes
  • Reviews
  • Search bars
  • Add-to-cart functionality

Major Challenge to Focus while Designing Interactive Emails

Designing interactive emails is not difficult but keep in mind to make them look same across different email platforms. Few email clients have a limited capability to work with interactive content, and at times images might not work the same depending on the email service.

  • Make sure to take support from your graphic design/front-end design team to ensure the emails look and function as per the requirement
  • It will not only increase user engagement and but also make you stand out from the rest of the emails thronging the inbox

Trend 2: Omnichannel Email Marketing Practices

Omnichannel marketing is a type of marketing where the focus is on distributing a steady and uninterrupted experience across multiple channels. Fundamentally, the shopper experience should be unified if a person tries to access it between interacting on a website to reading an email or even visiting a physical location.

omnichannel-marketing

Let’s take an example of UK fashion retailer Oasis. They have an amazing feature for online shoppers to find that if an article is out of stock at their warehouse, a feature can be used to find a store that still has the article in stock. The particular article can then be dispatched to the customer and a confirmation email will be sent to the customer to inform its status. They have also provided all the staff members with iPads. This helps the staff to cross-check the instant accessibility of items, and if the item is out of stock at their location, they can use the iPad to place an online order for the shopper.

Ways to Implement Omnichannel Marketing

For successful implementation of implement omnichannel marketing, you need to think from customer’s perspective. What would be their experience when they interact with your company? How emails can be used to improve that experience? You will need to create and follow a plan which integrates email to support every point from your website to social media.

Trend 3. Adapting Automated Emails

automated-email-marketing

The next trend is automated marketing which is already a big part of email marketing. It’s vital since it can help any business track their audiences behavior across all channels, analyze it, and automate responses for different triggers. This permits them to scale up their operations without losing leads and while maintaining the personal touch that consumers demand.

How to Implement Marketing Automation

Firstly, you will need to select a marketing automation platform that best suits your needs. Sendlane and campaign monitor automation tools used in this field, but there are other options out there as well.

Trend 4. Mobile Email Marketing

In current scenario, we see an increase in the amount of email that is being accessed from mobile devices.

mobile-email-marketing

How does marketers can benefit from it? In the past researchers have found that 37% of users have bought a product using smartphone after getting a marketing email, whereas 44% go to a retail store and 46% purchase online.

Process to Implement a Mobile Email Marketing Approach

As a marketer, there are numerous steps that you can take which would be beneficial in mobile email.

  1. Email templates for Mobile– To start, you want to develop email templates that are suitable for mobile devices. If your emails look appealing on the device, chances are high that people are more likely to open them and to follow the desired path they provide.
  2. Inadequate Space for Subject Lines– On mobile devices, there is less space for the subject line. Use of shorter subject lines is recommended for marketing emails. As per the guidelines, emails for mobile should have a subject that is 30 characters or less.
  3. Utilizing Time– Because of shortage of time use less text and more images. They should be responsive.
  4. Use of Clickable Buttons– Provide users with clear action buttons that are big enough for them to click without any problems. If following the link is hard, many people will not even make an effort to click it.
  5. Landing Pages for Mobiles– For engaging consumers, make sure that you have landing pages that are mobile optimized. If the page doesn’t look good or not user-friendly, you are going to lose a lot of people.

Evaluate Results– Finally, assess the results of your email marketing. Follow statistics like the open rates and click-through. By following the outcomes, you can gain insights that will be helpful for future campaigns.

Trend 5. Behavior Targeting Email Marketing

behavioral-email-targeting

Ensuing this trend can make a huge difference in your returns from email marketing by increasing engagement and conversions. By targeting based on behavior, you are focusing at the past actions of the individual, and sending them content that is based on their actions.

How to Target Emails Based on Behavior?

To take benefits of this trend, there are some steps that you will need to follow.

  • The first step is to collect data about your clienteles. Track the actions of customers as how they interact with your brand.
  • Once you identify behaviors, you can design emails that respond to them.
  • Use an automated system, to set up emails that are prompted by different behaviors.

A tool like Sendlane comes with built-in triggers, one can teach up your email marketing platform to do the work for you based on set parameters.

Trend 6: Personalization of a new generation

Sending email campaigns created solely for the recipient does not only contain the recipient’s name in the copy. The objective is to offer clients exactly the product they are looking for at a price they are ready to pay. Maintaining the attention of an individual, via personalized emails, is a difficult task. You are never really “safe” and one mistake can ruin everything. Explain what your email marketing campaign is all about swiftly, efficiently and informatively. People don’t have the time or patience for going through long emails.

personalized-email

Important Points While Personalizing an Email

  • It’s very important to personalize a greeting and deliver a brief message that is easy to read and grasp.
  • Design an email that gives an impression as if it was written by a real person for a real person.

Now that you have understood these trends along with how to prepare and implement, it is time to get started on your efforts toward improved email marketing to help your business grow. Always follow below given points:

  • Use Interactive emails to increase customer engagement
  • Think beyond multi-channel and start focusing on omnichannel
  • Planning of emails which can be reached to customers based on their behavior
  • Use automation to get the most out of behavioral targeting
  • Enhancing your email campaigns for mobile
  • Crafting a personalized message will only be beneficial

Share with us what you think about the coming email marketing trends? Do you have any questions about any of the email marketing tips that we have covered? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.