If done right, a well-crafted email marketing campaign can generate an impressive ROI. As revealed by DMA’s Marketer Email Tracker 2020 report, every dollar spent on email marketing can produce an average return of $35.40. The investment includes what you pay your email writer.

If you wish to experience similar results and achieve skyrocketing business growth, study how to create an effective email marketing campaign:

Formulate a Catchy Header

The email header is the first thing recipients see when your email lands in their inbox, describing everything they should expect to see upon opening the email. Your aim should be to develop a headline that entices users to click open the email and consume the content contained in it.

There are a number of aspects to pay attention to that relate to your email header. Before anything else, send out your email from a recognizable name rather than using an anonymous account. Some marketers won’t give much importance to the ‘From Name’, not realizing that it can make a huge difference to whether the recipients will open the email or mark them spam without clicking.

Moving forward, make sure that your email Subject Line is action-oriented, personalized, and most importantly honest. Keeping it honest means that it shouldn’t mislead the users to trick them into opening the emails. If the content doesn’t relate to the Subject Line, the recipients won’t trust your brand or convert. Besides, keep it short; not more than 50 characters.

Depending on the email client you use, recipients might be presented with a short preview of the email body. This is commonly referred to as the Preheader Text. If you don’t specify this text, the system will automatically pull some of the words from the beginning of your email body, possibly cutting off the content mid-sentence. To avoid this, add a 6- to the 11-word description that succinctly explains what the email is about.

Write an Engaging Email Body

The next big challenge to develop an effective email marketing campaign is to create content that genuinely provides value to the users. It’s important to understand that the content forms the core of your email marketing strategy. It must strongly resonate with your target audience to be able to engage the readers.

However, with over 306.4 billion emails sent every day, it can be difficult to stand out and compel the recipients to decide in your favour. This is where hiring a skilled, experienced email writer can come to your rescue. You’ll need to hire someone who’s been writing conversion-oriented emails for businesses similar to yours. They’ll know exactly what vocabulary to use and which commonplace terms to avoid, while also ensuring the ideal positioning for calls-to-action (CTAs).

When working with your email writer, be mindful of the following critical elements of your email body:

Brand Logo

When a recipient, clicks open your email, your company logo should appear at the top and be clickable so that it takes users directly to your business website.

Text

The text content of your email provides a unique opportunity to convey your underlying brand message and deliver value to your targeted users. But at the same time, lengthy blocks of text will most likely be ignored. Therefore, no matter how tempting it is to share as much information as possible, keep your text body concise and focused. Based on studies, emails containing not more than 20 lines of text and a maximum of three images get the highest click-through rates.

Call-to-Action (CTA)

Many marketers new to email marketing will place the CTA at the end of the email body. Keep in mind that emails are less likely to be fully read than blog posts. Most users who click an email will only skim through it and won’t likely reach the end of it before going back to their inbox. Hence, you need to think differently to optimize your email for a high click-through rate. That’s why the best position for a CTA is around the point where your audience should have read enough to be intrigued but won’t be required to scroll downward.

Don’t Ignore the Footer

This is often the most ignored part of creating marketing emails. Both from the perspective of making the desired impact and ensuring compliance, the footer is a vital element of email marketing. Include social media links in the email footer to nurture the relationship with your target audience. The links will provide them with ways to connect with you on other avenues to keep the engagement going.

In addition, the footer should always contain your contact information and email address so that the recipients know exactly how to reach out to you for further queries or to partner up. Responding to the email should be made as convenient to the recipients as possible. To comply with CAN-SPAM, don’t forget to include the physical address of your company too.

You must also provide your recipients with a simple way to unsubscribe or opt out of receiving marketing emails. This is another requirement for CAN-SPAM compliance. Including an easy-to-spot unsubscribe link in the email footer should be sufficient.

Leverage Split Testing

The emails you develop won’t necessarily work out to produce the desired results. The smallest of changes and tweaks in your email can make a massive difference to how its content is consumed. For example, you might be of the view that the subject line you developed should make the greatest impact. That’s not usually the case. There might be a more compelling subject line that proves more engaging and another that makes an even greater impact.

Thus, it’s rational to develop more than a single subject line and compare them by conducting a split of A/B testing. This method involves sending out different versions of the same email to evaluate which one generates better results. When testing email versions for different subject lines, be sure to keep the rest of the elements completely the same. Otherwise, you won’t know what exactly is causing a change in the result.

Similarly, you can test varying versions of the email design, content, colours, CTA buttons, and font sizes across different devices. When you send out the different versions of emails, track and compare the click-through rates, bounce rates, and open rates. This method should help you improve and refine your email marketing strategy quickly.

Conclusion

To sum up, email marketing is a tried and tested method to build brand awareness and expand customer base. As long as you understand your target audience inside out and are aware of some simple tricks, creating an effective email marketing campaign shouldn’t be too difficult. Following the tips mentioned in this article should help set your marketing email apart from the other emails landing in recipients’ inboxes.

Yet, as mentioned earlier, nothing can match the expertise of an experienced email writer. If you need help creating content for your conversion-oriented marketing emails, hire a professional email writer at your earliest.

Suggested:

How To Create a Professional Email Address?

The post How to Construct an Effective Email Marketing Campaign? appeared first on Tricky Enough.

However, persistently sending emails to prospects over and over again could cost you. Your standard consumer’s inbox is probably already flooded with marketing messages and attention-seeking emails. That’s why email providers like Gmail and Outlook have created a separate section called “Promotion” or “Focused” to filter such emails.

How then, can your email stand out while being unobtrusive? We’ve narrowed down 7 must-follow strategies for effective email marketing.

1. Use Caution When Addressing Clients by Name

In the earlier days of email marketing, it was considered a huge plus to send personalized emails to clients by directly addressing their names. The prevalence of ransomware attacks, cybersecurity crimes, identity theft, and credit card fraud has killed this trend. It’s not a viable marketing strategy anymore if you haven’t already ‘earned’ familiarity with your consumers.

When a business tries to force familiarity too soon, it sets off all kinds of alarm bells and scares prospects away. This kind of familiarity can’t be forced – it has to be earned by means of mutual correspondence – probably through a little back of forth between your sales team and the client.

Worse still, you also run the risk of ‘faking’ familiarity with subscribers. It’s the easiest way to push sceptic subscribers away. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use personalization at all. Your email works best when it acknowledges your client’s individuality (usually through their purchase habits, demographics, and other interests). Most e-commerce businesses often do this.

A few good examples of personalization (that most of us are already familiar with) are email alerts for abandoned carts, new discounts, promos for a favourite product, and new stock.

2. Choosing the Right Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing your reader will see. A poorly thought-out subject line could get your email deleted, or worse, sent to the spam folder.

Try to keep the email subject line concise and to the point. Don’t write anything misleading or you’ll leave a negative impression. The subject line should be relevant to the client. People don’t like reading generic emails that have nothing at all to do with them. Here’s an example of a bad email subject line:

“Huge alert! Buy this product and get $50 off!!!”

This is an example of a bad subject line because it’s not clear. The word ‘huge alert’ doesn’t send the right vibes to clients. It’s probably misleading too. If the reader opens the email for the $50 discount, they’ll realize they won’t get it unless they win a contest (which means it was a bluff all along). Finally, the number of exclamation points at the end of the subject line appears too spammy.

Below is a better alternative to the email:

“Unraveling the new XYZ – sign up to win a $50 discount”

Rather than being vague, the subject line tells the consumer that the email contains a link to their favourite product, and that they could win a discount. The phrase also makes it clear that they will have to sign up to win a discount.

3. How to Use an Email Opening Line

You would think that an email opening with a simple greeting such as, “We hope you’re doing fine” would suffice. But, we’ve found that landing the perfect email opener that seamlessly takes the reader into the rest of the email is easier said than done. It’s a powerful art form that a professional email writer spends years learning and perfecting.

When it comes to writing email openers, you have to use the proper degree of formality. This awareness comes with the knowledge of your audience. Will your audience appreciate the informal greeting, or will they feel offended? You won’t know the answer until you’ve learned more about your readers.

Regardless of your email’s purpose, there are a few obvious things you can do to avoid sounding too unprofessional. Here’s an example:

“What’s up XYZ user? We’ve made a few changes to your software”

Even if your email is written in a casual tone, “What’s up” is practically never a good email greeting. Contrast the above opening with the following, more professional-looking email opening:

“Hey XYZ,

As mentioned in our terms of service agreement, we have updated your software to version 2.3.”

The email maintains a formal tone while informing the user about changes made to the product/service they purchased.

You can use different kinds of tones to address various events. For example, if you need something formal, a simple “Hello” would be fine. If you’re following up on something, try something like, “As promised, we’re…”

There are more variations of email openers here.

4. Get to the Point Quickly

In hopes of being catchy with our marketing slogans and buzzwords, we often miss out on clarity. Here’s a simple rule of thumb: write your email with clarity first, and catchy second – in this order. When writing an email copy, clarity should be your main priority.

This saves time because you already have a body of text to work with right away. Marketing teams spend too much time thinking about catchy slogans and then forcefully fitting them around their actual message. It’s like a square peg in a round hole. By the time they send their email, the true message of their email is lost in translation.

Here’s a cool subject line by The Telegraph:

“4 Whole Months. Just £3. Subscribe now.”

And this promo email by Wish:

“Laptop Liquidation? Get a faster laptop for 77 € today.”

These subject lines are creative enough to pique your interest. But they’re clear enough to set the right expectations for when you open the email.

5. Address the Reader in the Second Person

You can address the reader in the second person by using pronouns such as, “you”, “your”, and “yours.” Here’s an example, “Before you take your furry friend for a walk in the morning, remember to bring your water bottle with you.” It means you’ve oriented the email towards the reader, and not yourself or your business.

It’s a clever psychological tactic that pulls the reader into action and makes them the centre of your attention. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use ‘we’ and ‘I’ and ‘Our’. The goal should be to create a healthy balance between the first person and the second person.

6. Discuss the Benefits Instead of Listing out the Features

You know the value of your features, but your readers have no idea what to expect. This is why it’s your job to explain it to them.

However, most emails only give surface-level explanations (usually textbook definitions) of what they’re offering. Leaving it up to the reader to put two and two together – now that’s just lazy.

What do your products, discounts, or features do for your client’s goals? How do they translate into benefits for the client? If your email doesn’t explain the benefit of redeeming a generic feature, it won’t be endearing to the reader.

7. Don’t Write an Entire Story – Be Brief

This one is easy. Simply put yourself in your reader’s shoes. When was the last time you read through an entire email message? Even if the email truly piqued your interest and got you hyped up about a product or discount – did you bother reading the whole message? Probably not. You got the gist of it and scanned through the email for important points to decide whether it’s worth converting.

Most of your readers operate the same way. They quickly sift through the information to make up their minds.

That’s why instead of trying to fit an entire novel into your email message, try to summarize everything in a clear, concise, and if possible, compelling way.

Email writing doesn’t have to be difficult. You just have to get the basics right, keep your message clear, and concise, and that’s usually it.

What email marketing strategies do you use? Let us know in the comments below.

Suggested:

8 Tips to Increase Email Open Rates Using Trigger Words.

Most Effective Words to Use in Writing Your Next Email.

The post 7 Strategies for Writing Effective Emails appeared first on Tricky Enough.