Email campaigns play a vital role in your business’ marketing strategy by establishing a direct connection with your audience through their inbox. However, crafting captivating email marketing campaigns that excite your readers and motivate them to act involves many tried and tested steps. Here's our guide on crafting beautifully designed emails that resonate with your audience, empower action and drive business growth.
A crucial step in any successful email marketing campaign is identifying the audience you want to target. But once you’ve done that, it is key that you know and understand them and their preferences, behaviours and pain points. Not only will this knowledge help you create an email that is highly relevant to those reading it, but it also puts you and your communications in a prime spot for offering them a solution.
The best way to get to know your audience is through analysis and profiling, reviewing past email performance data and segmenting your target audience based on their preferences and behaviours. Having data insights into your audience will enable you to create content that speaks to them personally and will enhance the likelihood that your email will be opened, read and acted upon.
Your email subject line serves as the gateway to your message, it's the first impression for your reader; the deciding factor between an opened email or one consigned to the depths of the dreaded spam folder, so it’s important to learn how to get it right.
Studies consistently show that a well-crafted subject line, to entice and engage the reader from the offset, can significantly impact open rates, making it a critical element of any successful marketing strategy. Using action-oriented language, posing a question or instilling a sense of urgency like ‘Last chance: don't miss out!’ and ‘Important notice: act now’ will encourage your reader to open your email and become more invested in what you’ve got to say. Incorporating personal touches like the recipient’s name can also boost open and click rates.
What makes content valuable? Well, that depends on who your intended reader is, as different segments of your audience will be motivated by different things. But to answer this question more generally, valuable content is first and foremost relevant to the person reading it, but also informative, engaging, exclusive, credible and actionable.
Getting these characteristics correct in your communications will enable you to create emails that cater to your audiences’ wants and likes, positioning your email marketing content as a valuable resource.
Visual elements – such as high-quality images, infographics and videos that complement your written content – can enhance the appeal and readability of your email marketing. It's essential that these visuals are relevant to the copy and add value, rather than simply occupying space. Consistent branding, incorporating your logo and brand colours, can also strengthen your audience’s engagement with, and awareness of, your brand identity.
Visual appeal also involves making your marketing content easy on the eye, so break up text with images to keep it concise and your reader engaged. As people often skim through emails, it’s important to have a clear, easy to read structure that’s easily scannable. Using concise paragraphs, bullet points and subheadings to break up the text and emphasise points.
Personalisation is more than just addressing your recipients by their name. It comes back to having a solid understanding of your audience, segmenting them according to their preferences, and creating content accordingly.
This may mean you send out different versions of your email based on your recipients’ preferred engagement level, favourite products, location, language preference, behavioural triggers, and personalised recommendations.
For example, if you have data that informs you of behavioural insights, such as cart abandonment or inactive subscribers, you can tailor your content with cart abandonment reminders or re-engagement emails. Or, if you’ve got data insights on your readers’ engagement levels, you can tweak how often you hit their inboxes to ensure you’re not contacting them to the point they unsubscribe. Knowing your audience well and tailoring as many aspects of your email as possible accordingly, is what personalisation is all about.
Calls to action are the reason for your email marketing campaign. What is it you want your reader to do? It could be to drive traffic to your website, promote a product or boost your social media presence. It is best to keep CTAs to a minimum, ideally one or two per email, however, if your email has several CTAs, the key is that they are relevant and not overwhelming to your reader.
Whatever the aim of your CTA, it is important to make sure it’s compelling by using language that prompts the action you want. For example, an email newsletter advertising a new product launch would ideally have several “Buy Now” buttons dotted throughout the text for the reader to easily act upon your core message. Lastly, ensure that the CTA buttons are visually prominent throughout this part needs to be easy as it could be the difference between further action and your email being marked as junk.
Your email is likely to be ignored if it’s unreadable on mobile devices – such as a smartphone or tablet. You want to account for as many possibilities as you can, if your audience is reading on the go, make it easy for them to do so.
Optimising your content for mobile means using a design that adapts to screen sizes and ensures that your text, images and CTAs are easily readable and clickable on smaller screens.
Continuous improvement is essential for successful email marketing outcomes. A great way to do this is to conduct A/B tests on all aspects of your content from subject lines, text, images and CTAs to the time at which you send out your comms.
Analyse the outcomes using metrics like open rates, click-through rates and conversions, to determine what resonates best with your audience and your goals, and to assess the overall performance of your campaign.
Creating an email campaign that your audience will love requires a mix of knowing your audience and providing readable, engaging content that resonates with their needs or interests, while consistently tracking your results and refining your methods. By concentrating on these aspects, you can do more than just grab your recipients’ attention; you can nurture a dedicated and active audience. Start incorporating these tactics and see how your marketing increases engagement and helps drive business growth.
If you’re looking to grow your customer base or for more email marketing advice – get in touch with one of our expert team members: https://acquirz.co.uk/contact