How To Create An Email That Entices And Engages
Email marketing has been around for what seems like forever, and for good reason. It's estimated that by 2023, the internet will host approximately 4.3 billion daily email users – and marketers are looking for new and effective ways to tap into this consumer base.
After all, emails are 40x more effective than social media platforms at acquiring new clients. This makes emails a highly effective way to reach, engage, and nurture your leads into loyal customers.
Similarly, marketers also leverage email marketing to build upon (and strengthen) existing relationships by providing valuable information and to interact with their audience.
So, how do you measure your email marketing efforts to prove their effectiveness for your business?
In this guide, we'll walk you through the best practices behind:
Creating subject lines
Crafting email content
Incorporating visual content
Using email campaign tools
Creating Subject Lines That Compel Recipients To Open Your Emails
A powerful email starts with a subject line that attracts and retains its recipients' attention. In fact, 47% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line alone.
Strong subject lines are personal, descriptive, and aim to provide readers with value. Not only does your subject line need to be captivating, but it should also come across as reliable. That’s because 69% of email recipients are likely to report emails as spam if they find a subject line fishy.
Part of drafting the perfect email subject line revolves around knowing your audience and what makes them tick. Regardless of your approach, it's vital to keep your audience in mind throughout the process, testing words and phrases as you go along.
Here are ten subject line best practices to boost your email opening rates:
Personalize Your Text
Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened than those that aren't. Not only does it increase open rates, but combined with automated emails such as follow-ups, it can encourage purchases too.
The good news is that marketers today can leverage an infinite supply of consumer data and customize email subject lines according to the prospects' location, industry, buying behavior, and preferences.
And the targeted audience loves that, as made evident by the fact that 91% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer recommendations that are relevant to their preferences. They are even willing to provide information to make this possible.
Merge tags are a great way to personalize your subject lines with your recipient's name or location. You can also customize your email subject lines with actions your customers have previously taken – get this info from the forms they've filled out or surveys they might've taken.
The more personal your subject lines are, the higher the open rates will be.
What To Do:
“Jacob, check out these hand-picked Christmas gifts your kids will love”
What Not To Do:
“Christmas gifts you should buy this holiday season.”
Segment Your Audiences
If you typically send the same email to all your subscribers, you might be doing more damage than good in convincing subscribers to open your email.
Unless your subscribers are demographically uniform, you should aim to segment your audience and customize your email subject lines accordingly. Marketers who used segmented campaigns said they experienced as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
When used in conjunction with segmentation, subject lines will stand out to recipients and get them to open your email.
For example, if you sell home design services to customers in varying locations, a subject line that reads "New Designs Ideas You Might Like" will attract less views than one that reads "New Home Design Ideas For New Yorkers." This is because the latter speaks to the local population, instead of a generic header.
You can easily achieve email segmentation using consumer information such as their previous purchases and browsing patterns (easy to track if your website uses cookies).
What To Do:
“11 new houses in California that could be your dream home”
What Not To Do:
“New houses that you be your dream home ”
Keep It Short And Concise
For many recipients, shorter subject lines are the best way to go, especially for those reading your emails on mobile devices, where they'll see email subject lines as short as 60 characters.
That said, some email subject lines will vary on the subject – and may even require a lengthy sentence to get the point across.
Here, the trick is to make it as concise as possible: you need to be clear about what your message contains and say it in the fewest words possible. This also helps to build intrigue about the content of your email, so readers are compelled to open it and learn what you have to say.
What To Do:
“Two razors for you and a friend (on us)”
What Not To Do:
“New offer! [Brand Name] is giving away one free razor for every razor you buy!”
Conduct A/B Tests
A/B tests help reveal the gaps in your email marketing techniques and their impact on the success of your campaigns. Similarly, they also tell you what types of email subject lines work best to boost your open rates, making them an essential tool for testing out your subject lines before you set them in motion.
Start by creating multiple versions of a subject line for the same email – and send them across various segments of your subscribed audience members. Pick the option that shows the best open rate and send it to the rest of your audience.
This way, you'll learn more about your audience preferences and how to create email subject lines that appeal to your contacts.
For example, when HubSpot tested the effects of a personalized sender name in their emails instead of a generic company name, they experienced a 0.23% higher click-through rate, a 0.53% higher open rate – and 131 new leads!
Avoid Deceptive Tactics
There's nothing worse than misleading email subject lines.
Brands that use misleading subject lines and trick audiences into opening their email often forget that their aim is a lot more than simply getting the message read.
If your email subject lines are deceptive, people will quickly realize and unsubscribe. So while it may temporarily boost your open rate, it's bound to drop as soon as your subscribers catch on.
Be honest with your audience and communicate your offer transparently.
Work Around Spam Detectors
69% of email recipients flag an email as spam because of the email subject line.
Luckily, research has helped identify certain words that trigger the spam filter and throw up red flags.
Here is the list of the most common spam trigger words that are frequently flagged by spam detectors:
Act now
Get started now
Best price
Click here
Cheap
Action
Drastically reduced
Risk-free
No strings attached
You've been selected!
What are you waiting for?
Serious cash
Use these words in the subject line at your own risk as they’ll get your email blocked and sent straight away to the spam folders, laying all your hard work to waste.
What To Do:
“Take 5 minutes out of your day and tell us how we can serve you better”
What Not To Do:
“Take this 5 minute survey and win a discount!”
Tap Into The Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)
Communicating urgency can do wonders to compel subscribers to check the content of your email.
So try to build a sense of urgency but don’t use overtly jarring vocabulary to grab their attention, especially if your content doesn't match the tone of your subject line. Try to limit your use of it down to events that genuinely call for immediate action.
You don’t want to traumatize them!
What To Do:
“Whoops! Your prescription is expiring. Renew now to continue using [Brand Name]”
What Not To Do:
“There’s two weeks left until your prescription expires”
Time It Right
Hitting the mark with the right time can make all the difference in getting your subscribers to open an email – and ignoring it for later.
If you're a food business, framing your subject line around happy hour can re-ignite cravings and inspire an impromptu order your subscriber didn't plan on making. Similarly, follow up emails around holidays can create intrigue and stimulate your open rate.
For example, during a Black Friday promotion, Australian fashion brand The Iconic Shop set itself apart from other brands by avoiding any mention of Black Friday in their subject line. Instead, they opted for the following subject:
"Items in Your Wish List Are on Sale *insert party cap emoji*."
By timing your emails to the right moment, you increase the chances of subscribers opening your email! Surprisingly enough, research by Campaign Monitor points to Tuesday being the best day for the highest open rates!
What To Do:
“22 Mother’s day gift ideas to surprise your mom before Sunday!”
What Not To Do:
“Mother’s day gift ideas for 2020”
Email Content That Sparks Interest And Boosts Your Click-Through Rate
Whether you're sending a weekly newsletter or promoting a holiday discount, generic emails can quickly become ineffective and boring – which is why you need to spice up your messaging with new content now and then.
Below you'll find eight types of email content you can leverage to refresh your email strategy:
The Welcome Series
The welcome email is an integral aspect of embracing new subscribers and is a common practice for most organizations today. Welcome emails generate four times more opens than typical email marketing campaigns.
Generally, consumers will expect a welcome email their way as soon as they make their first purchase or sign up for a subscription – which allows you to exceed their expectations and engage their interest from the get-go.
A brilliant example of an engaging welcome email is the writing assistant Grammarly.
With a subject line that reads "You + Grammarly = Ready for Action" – the brand uses playful, witty language to start the conversation and lead users to the next point in their journey, i.e., to install the Grammarly app.
Source: Grammarly
Promotional Emails
Now more than ever, consumers are more resilient to overly promotional emails, so you need to offer a mix of engaging content – how-to guides, informational posts – along with your promotions.
One way you can do this is to focus on selling your product/services using an effective call to action (CTA). Then, provide content that supplements your offer, which allows customers to engage with your email – and you the opportunity to convert them later on.
Guides, Blogs, And Other Content Marketing
If your email strategy consists of inbound marketing, content marketing emails are a great way to go! Consumers want to view relevant content in the quickest possible way.
By sending them emails that offer a brief overview of guides and blogs they might be interested in, you can grab their attention and get them to visit your website!
Rewards And Loyalty Programs
Loyalty and rewards emails can take on a variety of different forms – especially if you use them in conjunction with automated emails. Offer incentives such as a free e-book or free shipping (for orders above a certain threshold), to encourage your audiences to finish the actions you want them to take.
Similarly, if you have particular workflows you want audience members to complete, you can email them with a reward for their good work.
Testimonials
Email content that contains social proof is one of the best ways to drive sales and close deals.
Dive deep into unique customer stories that detail how your brand helped people similar to your subscribers or even throw in one-off quotes to spark a conversation of a mutually beneficial relationship for your customer and your brand.
In any case, testimonial emails allow you to nurture and engage prospects with your success stories.
Surveys And Net Promoter Feedback
Use surveys to know how you're performing as a brand, and get insights into your performance and the effectiveness of the culture you foster.
Like market research, you get information on who your customers are, what content they like to engage with, and how your brand might serve them better.
Despite having a 30% response rate, however, spam detectors filter the word "survey," which essentially renders survey emails useless. However, you can easily navigate past these by avoiding the use of the word in your email subject line.
Trigger Emails
Automated, triggered, and transactional emails are forms of behavior-based emails that are generated when someone takes a unique action on your website/app.
As long as you can track users on your online channels, you can send behavioral emails to just about anyone. Use this ability to set up a variety of emails to re-engage customers that haven’t opened an email in a while.
You’ll find that the triggered emails have a higher open and click-through rate than regular emails. In this regard, shopping cart abandonment emails work great to follow up with prospects in the process of making a purchase and re-ignite their interest in an abandoned cart with a discount or new deal.
Newsletters And Product/Company Announcements
If you're in the content marketing business, a newsletter is a crucial aspect of your marketing strategy as it allows you to maintain a consistent touchpoint with your audience and showcase new offerings.
Any sales you make on top of that are a bonus, so you should optimize your campaigns to improve engagement.
Take Medium, for example. The blog-publishing platform uses its newsletter to filter through thousands of articles and bring readers the crème de la crème of its content. This helps the platform stay on top of the readers' minds and encourages them to visit their website.
Visual Content Affects The Way People Interact With Your Emails
One of the best ways for your emails to stand out to recipients and increase conversions is through the use of visual content.
Research proves that people who follow directions accompanied by illustrations do 323% better than those who follow instructions that don't. This means that your readers and prospects are more likely to act in response to a visual guide.
Here are different types of visuals you can incorporate in your emails to boost your conversion rates:
Videos
In the last two years alone, mobile video usage has increased by 10 million daily viewing minutes, which makes videos an incredibly powerful medium to showcase your offerings and entice interest. A video also wins extra brownie points from users, as it demonstrates a dedication to quality.
You can use many types of videos to enhance the effect of your message and leave a greater impact on your audiences. Consider instructional videos alongside text that boasts about your products, animated explainer videos, video testimonials, or even a video message from someone on the team!
Regardless of what you choose, the videos should match up to your brand message and imagery.
Take a look at this email from Mailigen, which includes a welcoming video from the brand's co-founders. It defines what the company has to offer and demonstrates the passion of its team members – which helps to build rapport and trust.
Source: Mailigen
The email also makes a free offer for the "best information and insights," which does wonder to inform readers of the quality they'll receive in the coming weeks (more incentive to open future emails).
Images
Attention spans are shorter than ever; a recent study finds that the average human attention is down to eight seconds (a fall from 12 seconds in early 2000).
Source: PolicyViz
Consequently, the digital realm is saturated with content, which makes the information presented in blocks of text extremely frustrating for users who are prone to skimming the web. When you break the content up using images, people are inclined to read through your message.
Customers want to see more images in emails, that's a given. How you use them to build trust is entirely up to you. Original or self-taken photos cannot only liven up your emails but also add a personal touch to your campaign.
If your email goals are to boost sales, product images allow you to showcase your merchandise firsthand, especially if your image shows them in use. For example, if you're a clothing brand, pictures of models wearing a product in different sizes may give users more insight into how your products will fit them.
However, if you don't have the time to build your own portfolio of images, photo sharing sites like Morguefile and Flickr offer an infinite selection of excellent quality photos.
Infographics
65% of B2B marketers in the last four years have increased their usage of infographics, and for good reason.
Infographics are a great tool for when you want to draw on complicated statistics and turn them into a compelling visual display of knowledge. When used in conjunction with promotions – such as key industry statistics or reports – infographics become crucial to the success of your email marketing strategy.
The layout must make an impact on its viewers, i.e., utilize the right colors, font, and shapes to get the message across. The information you use also needs to be accurate and relevant to the subject. Here, peer-reviewed sources can be a great source of facts and figures that matter to your reader.
When you finally share your infographic, you will encounter size restrictions. However, you can easily bypass these by using a thumbnail image along with a hyperlink to where the full picture is hosted.
As such, you'll be able to offer value to your subscribers and bring more traffic to your website. If you haven’t created an infographic before, create one in no time by customizing professionally designed infographic templates.
The Email Campaign Tool To Get You Started
PosterMyWall’s email campaign platform allows marketers to create their own email campaigns and send them to their recipients using a powerful interface virtually instantly.
It’s Free To Use
This email campaign tool is completely free to use. If you’re looking to tap into more advanced features, however, PosterMyWall’s premium subscription plans allow you to send up to 10,000 free emails each month!
What’s more? You can use your monthly free credits to buy up to 1,000,000 email sends, so there’s no limit to what you can achieve.
Streamlined Into The Design Process
With limitless visuals at your disposal, designing emails is now hassle-free! All visual formats are optimized in our interface to let you create emails in three simple steps:
Pick images or videos
Type in your subject line and email content
Upload your recipient list and hit send!
Key Takeaways
Emails are a marketing technique that can get quite complicated for the uninitiated. Here’s some key takeaways you should keep in mind when preparing your next email campaign:
Email was – and still is – one of the most cost-efficient ways for brands to engage consumers with – and offers an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent.
A subject line can make or break the success of your email, depending on how captivating it is, which makes it crucial to get it right.
Videos are going to be the highest-ranking content medium for 2020, so you should aim to incorporate it into your email marketing campaigns
One size never fits all: Tailor your emails to the preferences and needs of your consumers. Personalization will have the greatest impact on your relationship with consumers.
A perfectly curated email not only generates awareness about your brand, but it can strengthen your relationship with your customers, especially when you leverage the right strategies to help you make it big.
