With the mainstream emergence of social media marketing platforms, some experts have declared Email Marketing dead.
It all depends on how you approach your email marketing strategy. Today, consumers crave a personal connection with a brand. So, the days of generic emails that sound like formal letters are over. Now, you can choose a more personalized, unique content tone to grow your audience and conversion rates.
Let’s explore how to create the perfect content for your email marketing campaign and why your business needs to do so to succeed.
Why should your Email Marketing Content matter?
You may be wondering who is still using email to promote and sell their products.
But think about it; even companies like Google, Apple, etc. still market their products. Just check your mail and see many of their email threads.
This means that email must be profitable for such prominent corporations to use it consistently.
So, here are the reasons why your business or startup should optimize email marketing content and reap all the benefits of email marketing:
- Half of the world’s population – around 4 billion people – have an active email account, and as you’ll learn below, that number is still growing. So this increases the number of potential customers you can reach with your content.
- Email channels offer more freedom for content creation than social media platforms. You can’t lose customers because of ‘community guidelines violations’ or algorithms that you have no control over.
- Email marketing, when done right, can help you build personal relationships with customers.
- You can use email to promote new products and content.
- Email marketing is an effective lead generation medium.
Now that you have seen the benefits of email marketing, you should be convinced that your business can benefit from it and generate a positive email marketing ROI.
However, you need to follow specific rules and avoid spam content to get great returns. It all comes down to the heart of your email marketing: Your actual content.
13 Ways to Create Perfect Email Marketing Content
Define your Marketing Goals
Before choosing a marketing medium, you need to define your goals. Once your goals are clear, you can begin to develop an overall strategy to achieve them.
When it comes to email marketing, your goals can fall into the following categories:
- Create more subscribers;
- Promote new products and services;
- Reach new audiences;
- Increase sales;
- Increase website traffic.
Depending on your specific goals, you should tailor your email marketing content to reach the perfect audience.
Alternatively, you can create email content that addresses multiple goals at once. This approach is more effective, of course. But the problem is that you can’t always combine everything into one.
So focus on a single message in your email content. And if necessary, create separate email campaigns for different marketing goals.
Use a Compelling Email Subject Line
To avoid your email ending up in the spam folder, you need to write an attention-grabbing subject line.
Internet users have short attention spans and are bombarded with notifications all day long.
So they have a limited opportunity to evaluate the sender and their intentions. That’s why you need to make a lasting first impression with your subject line and headline.
Try to encapsulate the entire gist of your email in the subject line. Keep it short and to the point. You can also elaborate in your opening by highlighting the benefit your customer will get from opening your email.
But to come up with compelling subject lines, some people rely on clickbait subject lines. While this approach may work the first time, your emails can end up in spam or trash folders over time, wasting both your time and your customers’ time.
Personalize your Emails
Now, when it comes to email content, you should personalize the message for each individual.
But that doesn’t mean you have to create a separate email for each subscriber. You just need to have the right tone for a fictional customer.
How can you figure out the best way to personalize?
Start by creating a customer persona.
Customer personas contain a set of information about your audience’s interests and demographics.
You can collect information to develop your customer persona through surveys, live interactions, and questionnaires. With the information from these surveys, you can create personalized messages to send to every potential customer.
And most importantly, use the second person in your emails. Focus on “you and me” instead of writing about “the company.” This conversational tone makes your customers feel at home and increases the chances of them opening your emails.
Don’t start with a presentation
We always hate it when people try to sell to us and here’s why…
Pushy salespeople make us feel skeptical about the product.
Why is this person trying to pressure me into buying this? What is their intention? Is this product genuine?
When you start your letter with a sales pitch, your customer will react like a suspicious buyer. So never pitch your product right out of the gate.
Create a mailing strategy to attract potential customers before selling them your product. This approach will also show customers that you are trustworthy and caring.
Make them an offer they can’t refuse
With compelling form designs and headlines, you still need to support them with top-quality offers.
First, always deliver on the promise you make in your opt-in form and subject line. This is the first test of your company or brand’s credibility.
Second, think about an offer your audience would love. Do they want regular product updates or newsletters? Are they interested in promotions and freebies?
By identifying their interests, you can tailor your email marketing content to address them. You should also segment your mailing list based on their opt-in path.
For example, if someone signs up for a newsletter, you should only send them newsletters. Otherwise, they will get bored and unsubscribe.
Most importantly, always provide the most value in every email you send. If a visitor or potential website subscriber opens your email, they should receive a beneficial product – a free e-book, a promo code, or a discount offer.
Tell a story
You might be wondering why you should tell a story in your email. Famous writers like Jon Morrow use stories in their newsletters — and it works like a charm.
You don’t need to create long stories to make your point. Just keep it short and relevant to the message.
For example, you could tell a short story about a student’s struggles with writing to market a Grammarly discount.
Additional notes
People always scan the document to get to the end. And they always read the footnotes and the PS at the end.
Think about it; you read those things in any letter all the time.
So adding this line as a warning or additional information adds a sense of familiarity to the entire email. Additionally, you can use the caveat line to specify a time limit for a promotion or product availability.
Use FOMO and Urgency in your email copy
You must have seen countdown clocks on e-commerce websites.
But why do you think that timer is there? To evoke a sense of urgency and at the same time act as a reminder.
Of course, you’re going to buy the product anyway, but the fear of missing out (FOMO) will convince you to act faster than you normally would. So always add a sense of urgency and FOMO to your email copy. You don’t need a countdown timer for this. You can craft your wording to create the same feeling.
Here are some ways to use FOMO in writing:
- “Offer lasts/is valid until…”
- “Hurry while the offer is still valid!”
- “Limited quantity…”
- “Free for 48 hours only..”
By the way, you can also use the ‘exclusive’ clause as an incentive to convince email recipients to take action.
Optimize Buttons and CTAs
When creating email content, marketers often forget to pay attention to their buttons and CTAs. This oversight is understandable because most people don’t realize the importance of highlighting buttons. If you want your recipients to follow a link, make it stand out from the rest of the page. Use a contrasting color to differentiate the button from the surrounding text.
You should also place buttons in the middle of the email content and display them.
Also, don’t forget to add a call to action to each button. CTAs act as psychological triggers for customers to take action after reading the email content. You can always use generic CTAs like “Order Now” and “Download PDF” to optimize your buttons. Alternatively, you can come up with custom, user-friendly CTAs for every email sequence.
Encourage feedback
Your email marketing content should focus on continuing a dialogue with your customers rather than one-way communication. Writing open-ended messages leads to greater engagement and familiarity with your customers.
So try adding a direct feedback link to your email sequence. And better yet, encourage readers to get in touch if they have any concerns or questions. It’s a simple thing that shows you care and will increase engagement.
Beautify the User Interface
Technically, there’s nothing wrong with posting plain text as the body of your email. But here’s the thing: humans are visual creatures. We absorb visual content faster and better than written content. And let’s face it, text-only emails are hard to read and as a result, they lower your CTR and subscription rates.
That’s why you need to beautify your email UI and content. Use attractive images and colors to design your interface. And try to use relevant images for your products and promotions.
You should also add social proof by including links to your social media platforms in your footer content.
Avoid the spam folder
As you may have guessed at this point, the spam folder is where all emails end up before they’ve served their purpose. Imagine you spend time, money, and effort creating an email content marketing campaign and everything ends up in the spam folder.
You definitely don’t want that. However, you can keep your messages out of the spam folder by following these rules:
- Don’t overuse vague phrases like “free content” and “make money” in your emails.
- Avoid misleading subject lines because once people get frustrated with your emails, your reputation will suffer.
- Be aware of CAN-SPAM laws when gathering your mailing list.
- Don’t add suspicious third-party links to your email content.
- Stop saying things like “definitely not spam” because that’s what spammers will say.
Finally, you should always read your email before sending it to ensure it is not considered ‘spam’.
Always be Flexible
Finding the perfect content marketing strategy requires careful planning and research. And once you find that perfect formula, you’ll hit your marketing goals.
But here’s the thing: Email Marketing is a constantly evolving field.
Not so long ago, all email communication was formal. But today, companies are using conversational and informal messaging for their content. And who’s to say this trend won’t change in the coming years? As automation begins to take hold, new email marketing trends will emerge to address changes in consumer behavior.
To stay on top of things, you need to collect A/B analytics for every email initiative. Use the metrics to learn what works and what doesn’t.
And from this data, you should adjust your email content marketing strategy to meet the new standards and generate more leads and sales.
Finding the perfect content formula for your email marketing strategy can be difficult if you lack the necessary experience and skills. But you need to focus on the needs of your end customers at every stage of the email marketing funnel.
Summarize
Start by creating customer personas and growing your mailing list. Keep all your communications personal and relevant with well-crafted subject lines. And don’t forget design and CTAs.
Follow the steps in this article to keep your emails out of the spam folder and into the inboxes of your customers, who will be waiting for every email communication from you!
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