If potential customers have signed up for your email list, then you know they are looking forward to hearing from you. But how can you ensure that your emails will have the maximum conversion rate? In this blog post, we’ll examine the elements that go into an effective marketing email.
Mobile Support
This is perhaps the most important thing to get right. In today’s world, many emails are opened from a mobile device. An email that requires the user to scroll left and right or try to zoom in on the text is going to immediately put them off. Heck, if your email isn’t extremely important, they might not even bother. Marketing emails are going to be a far harder sale if the customer can’t easily view it. So make sure it’s mobile compatible!
Branding
If you’ve ever gotten an email from a large company such as Amazon or eBay, you’ll notice branding. The layout and colors of the emails look similar to that of their website. Creating consistent branding is as important for email as it is in all of the other aspects of your business. Strong branding separates you from your competition! It makes you seem more professional and builds trust with your customer base.
Matching your branding can be as simple as putting your logo at the top of the email. It might be ensuring that all buttons or other graphic elements match the color scheme of your other promotional materials. If you have a company motto or slogan, that can also be front and center near the top of the email.
Images
In addition to having your company logo at the top of your page, you should also have a relevant image somewhere on the page. Our brains process images almost immediately. You’ll be able to engage your prospect’s interest before they’ve even started reading the email. In the case of selling a product, obviously include a picture of that image. For other types of marketing emails, get creative and find an image that will not only grab the viewers’ attention but will communicate in some way what the email is about.
Personalization
All good mail marketing services have an option to personalize the email that you send out to customers. At the very least, you want to try to refer to the prospect by their legal name or username. More advanced marketing automation software allows you to more precisely target your emails to a prospect’s individual needs and their position in the buying process. Depending on the nature of your business, it may be worth investing in these higher-priced services.
Prominent call to action
What is the purpose of your email? If you want the customer to buy something, you should have a ‘Buy Now’ button somewhere in a highly visible place in the email. Preferably that CTA is before the fold, so the customer sees it as soon as they open the email. The same goes for other goals. Always be sure to ask the customer to do what you are hoping they will do and make that request highly visible to make responding to your wishes as easy as possible.
CAN-SPAM Compliance
If not properly written, your marketing email may run afoul of United States law. This will not only ruin your customer’s trust in you but could potentially get you into legal trouble. The full compliance checklist can be found here. The big takeaways are that you must have your physical address listed somewhere in the email, and you must include a link to opt-out of the email list.
These items are generally written in smaller text at the bottom of the email, but should always be easily visible to people reading the email. People are used to associating CAN-SPAM compliance with an air of legitimacy, so you don’t want your readers to miss it.
If you want to know more about email marketing check out my Electrified Email Marketing Ebook.
Resources:
https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34247/dissecting-the-anatomy-of-a-five-star-email-5-free-templates.aspx?_ga=2.61541224.518524594.1518200307-1753867678.1512670682
