How to Write Marketing Emails That Get Results

Email marketing is possibly one of the longest living digital marketing avenues. Most businesses are aware of email marketing and what it does. However, probably because of it’s legacy in regards to digital marketing, email marketing is often forgotten in place of “sexier” digital counterparts such as SEO, social media or mobile optimisation.

Although it may not be the most exciting of digital marketing channels, there’s no rejecting that email marketing still obtains outcomes and should remain an integral part of any digital marketing strategy.

As a matter of fact, “email is 40 times more reliable at acquiring brand-new customers than Facebook or Twitter.” (from PR daily).

If you’ve let your email marketing slip, you’re not alone. Here are some pointers to help get back to writing emails that get results!

The subject line of your marketing email is the most important sentence that you’ll write for that email. And often the most overlooked. Simply put, your customer will not open your email unless the subject line piques their interest. You could be offering them a free car in the body of the email, but unless you can effectively communicate that to them through the email subject line, they will often discount the email as spam.

The hard and fast rules for email subject lines is to make it personal, offer value or create urgency.

For more information read our guide to “The importance of email subject lines”

You’re launching a new product. How would you explain your new product to your friend? What language would you use? When writing copy for your marketing email campaigns simple is always best. Write your email content to read just like a conversation. Don’t use big blocks of text, instead use subheadings, paragraphs and blank space to make your content easy to scan. The easier your content is to digest the more likely your customers are to engage with it! Remember who your target customer is, and what type and tone of content would appeal to them – then write to them, just as if you were having a conversation with them in store.

What is a Call to Action (CTA)? A CTA tells your customers to do something. This could be “buy” or “download”, as examples. Calls to action often appear as a button with text, like Book your Free Consultation or Shop Sale and should tell customers exactly what they need to do in a concise manner.

Calls to action should be specific. A recent study found that specific CTAs outperformed their generic counterparts. ‘Make a reservation’ is more effective than ‘book now’, and ‘register for your free trial’ will gain better results than ‘register’. You should also aim for your CTAs to be persuasive without being salesy. If you sell a subscription service effective CTA copy, ‘Get started today’ is an effective way to motivate your customers to join your service.

Staying on top of your email marketing is critical to success. A key component of your email strategy should be determining how often you should be sending out your emails (once a month should be a minimum send). Once you know this, we recommend building out an email marketing calendar which identifies what “topics” or “campaigns” will be sent in each email. Doing this gives you a timeline to work back from to ensure any required content is created before the marked email send date. Below are a few examples of good (and bad) email CTAs:

Look over the above buttons and then open the last few emails you sent out. Would the CTAs you used be enough to make you click? Show a few close family and friends – would the button be enough to entice them? If you want even more clues into the most engaging CTA’s to use, why not set up A/B testing on the CTA to see what appeals more to your customers. A/B testing could be further used to improve all areas of your email from the layout to content used, to even colours and fonts!

Want help implementing an email strategy?Contact Us to get started.