Sales and marketing emails are a fantastic opportunity to convert more leads into sales. A classic nurturing tool; these can be used at any point in the funnel to turn a visitor into a lead, a lead into a sale or a sale into a returning customer.
According to Hubspot, on average, email generates $38 for every dollar spent, showing the serious ROI for any time, effort and money spent on nurturing your database.
The recent pandemic has shown just how crucial the digital customer experience is, and email is a core pillar of the digital marketplace. Whether you’re a B2B business, an online shop or a local tradesman, emails can support any business to engage existing prospects and cultivate more appetite for your offering, as well as providing sales opportunities and a revenue stream.
So what are the best practices for sending these marketing emails? We’ve broken down bit by bit what you need to think about for your communication efforts...
Subject Line
Your subject line is everything. It is the sole reason people will open your email, so keep it intriguing, keep it short and keep it clear. You want your subject line to be relevant to the body of the email but enticing enough that they open the email, even if just out of sheer curiosity. Our top tip; use personalisation in your subject line to make your customers feel really important and valued.
Imagery and Design
A responsive design and imagery is really important; 55% of email readers are going to be on their mobile, so consider how your email looks on a phone as well as on a desktop or tablet. You also want to consider image size; not too big or it will take too long to load, resulting in a higher bounce rate. Think of the balance between picture and text and what kind of customer you’re dealing with. If you’re selling a visual product or service, like shoes or house painting, then the image is the selling point. If you’re selling a professional service or copy writing skills, people want to read what you’ve got to say.
Content Copy
As we’ve already mentioned, copy depends on what you’re offering in your marketing emails. If you are selling ecommerce or DTC products, then your copy needs to be short, snappy and brand-aligned; don’t be afraid to show lots of personality, the modern consumer appreciates a witty caption or personalised description. If you’re selling a service or a product that isn’t purely visual, then consider enlisting a copy writer or email marketing to draft. You need to clearly identify your USPs and convey your value proposition in a way that doesn’t sound too sales-y. Empathise with your customer; what problems are they facing, how do you want them to feel and what impact do you want them to experience from your service or offering. Good copy writing is an artform, so don’t be afraid of asking for help.
Call To Action
The most crucial bit of any email; what do you want your reader to do? Are they buying the shoes now or booking a callback for later in the week? Whatever it is, in a regular marketing email you want one call to action and you want to make it as clear as possible for them to find. Think ‘all roads lead to Rome’. If you have multiple buttons and links sending your prospects to five different places, how are they supposed to know where to go and what to do? The simpler the user journey is, the higher your click through rate will be.
These are just a few of the many top tips for superlative email marketing campaigns. Here at SmartPA, we help our clients to coordinate, write, design, send and analyse their email marketing campaigns. A recent example is a London-based well being business who, amongst a whole range of platform organising, call handling and appointment booking, enlisted our services to handle an email campaign announcing their September sale. Their value was having an expert SmartPA handle the creating and sending of the campaign so they could focus on providing an excellent service to the influx of customers.
If you need help managing sales or marketing email campaigns, get in touch today.