Email Marketing: Crafting Campaigns That Convert

In today’s digital and media-driven world, email marketing is one of the most effective tools for businesses to reach, connect, and grow their audience with. The reach and impact of email is immense. It is estimated that there are currently 4.3 billion email users worldwide, making email marketing one of the most important and lucrative strategies. 

While hiring an email expert for email marketing is something that businesses should consider investing in, it is also crucial to create a marketing plan to not only make your brand stand out from the crowd, but to also know what your goals are and ensure your strategies align with those goals. 

Driving engagement to your brand and creating an email list that grabs your audience's attention takes planning and strategy, but never fear! In this blog, we will walk you through the best ways to use email marketing to your advantage, allowing you to grow your brand and create a more meaningful connection with your audience. 

Understanding Your Audience

Understanding your audience – who they are, what they want, their behaviors, preferences, and what you can provide them – is vital to creating a successful email marketing campaign. Before launching your campaign, take the time to create a list that is based on your audience demographics, engagement levels, and other insightful factors that you observe through engagement.

By crafting a message and creating content that speaks to your specific audience, you will create a personalized experience that will capture your audience's attention and resonate with them. Knowing your audience and creating something that speaks directly to them will help increase the chances of bringing consumers to your brand again and again. Consumers crave connection, even with brands and they want that personalized touch so lean into it.

Compelling Subject Lines and Preview Text

While this may be obvious, the subject line and preview text for your email are critical to whether or not the email you’ve sent to your audience will be a success. These components are the first thing your audience will see, so they must grab attention right off the bat. 

A compelling subject line ought to be concise, attention-grabbing, and relevant to your audience. Without using click-bait subject lines, you want to create a subject line that sparks curiosity and urges your audience to open the email to see what you have to say.

The preview text, which appears directly after the subject line in most emails, should provide additional information to the subject line without giving everything away. This text has the power to draw your audience in fully. This text should emphasize the value of taking the time to read your email.

Remember, subject lines and preview texts are things you can and should A/B test. Experiment with emojis. Do you have more success if you mention the discount in the subject line or if you call out a product? Do questions perform better or exclamation points? These small changes may feel trivial, but testing and seeing what succeeds will give you better insight into your audience’s preferences.

Compelling Content and Call-to-Action (CTA)

Once your audience opens the email, the body and content should complete the picture of your subject line, providing value to the reader. It doesn’t matter if you’re promoting a product, experience, educational content, discounts, etc.; your message should be compelling, informative, and clear. To go a step further, add images, photos, or graphics to visually appeal to the reader and add further value to the written body of the email.

As a side note, ensure any media added to the email is optimized for cell phone usage, as many will read your email on their phone. If your media isn’t correctly formatted to be viewed via phone, chances are you will lose your audience's attention. Details like these are vitally important, no matter how small they seem! 

Finally, you must add a call-to-action, as this is the gem that your audience will be looking for when they take the time to read your email. The body of your content should guide the reader to the final destination, whether purchasing a product, attending a webinar, downloading a resource, signing up for a trip, or donating to a cause. Make the call-to-action compelling and action-oriented, encouraging your audience to further engage with your content and brand.

Call to actions are another area you can experiment with. Does your audience prefer something straight to the point or something cheeky? Should you have one CTA or more than one? Also experiment with location. Often people will include links in the CTA button, an image, and body text. While most articles will tell you that you only need a link in your CTA button, I’ve had clients who have seen more clicks via the link in the body of the email. So always test and find what works best for your audience. 

Optimizing for Deliverability and Engagement

Other important details are the best time to send your email and how often to send an email to your audience. Insights found on Instagram and Google can help you see what days of the week and times of the day your audience is most active online. For instance, if your Instagram insights say that 65% of your audience is the most active online Friday around 4 p.m., it would be in your best interest to send your email at that time, knowing that your audience will already be active online and more apt to read your email as it appears in their inbox. This will help drive meaningful engagement back to your brand and chosen call-to-action. 

Another essential item to note is to keep your email list clean to maximize engagement. Be sure to periodically go through your email list and remove inactive subscribers. This helps ensure that your emails reach people actively participating and engaging with your content. You should also encourage your audience to engage with your emails by asking for feedback, including polls, encouraging them to connect with you on social media, and more.

Conclusion

Email marketing remains a powerful tool for businesses to engage with their customers, build relationships, and drive conversions. In fact, email is still seen as the most effective for driving conversions, with the average being 2.8% for B2C and 2.4% for B2B, according to First Page Sage. 

If you wish to start an email marketing campaign for your brand but don’t know where to start, don’t worry! At Personalized Creative, we will work with you to create your brand's perfect email marketing strategy. Don’t hesitate! Contact us today to get started and begin driving higher engagement and visibility to your brand.