Customer data, such as email, is one of the most powerful items of information a small business can use to increase its sales. Email marketing allows a small business to contact new and past customers to drum up excitement into their business, build better relationships and bring customers back into the fold. If used in conjunction with social media marketing techniques, such as posting on Instagram, the results are incredible. Businesses also use social media marketplaces such as SocialWick to help boost their social media marketing efforts. However, email marketing is not as simple. Here’s an overview of how to master the art of email marketing.
Every successful business has a running log of their customer’s data, but unfortunately, it often goes unused.
If you’re a small business owner and have decided to begin marketing your business through email, consider the following guides to help improve your overall response and success.
1) It starts with a great headline
Billions of emails are sent over the web each day and have many people overwhelmed by the amount of spam they receive in their inbox. Another offer from an unknown company quickly becomes deleted, which places a high amount of importance on capturing your recipients on the first past.
The email subject line is the single barrier between being opened and being trashed.
Each email your small business sends out should be crafted in a way that improves the click-through rate by not only piquing the recipient’s interest but also tells them what to expect.
Although it’s not recommended to write a link-bait headline (one which is often over exenterated to improve click-through), a great headline should use all of the characteristics of a great line of copywriting:
- Tell them what you’re going to tell them
- Stir up interest by exclaiming an outrageous (but true) claim
- Use their name (people respond to their names)
Take time to craft the email subject line like a great headline from your sales copy; test out your email on a segmented group, record the results, and after you’ve found one which converts readers into buyers, run it in your full email marketing campaign.
2) Keep it short and to the point
There are two reasons why you want to keep your email marketing messages short:
- People don’t have a lot of time
- Longer text increases the chance of being flagged as spam
First, it’s inherent that people do not have a lot of time in their daily lives, especially to take the time to read another email from a company offering their products or services.
Ideally, your email marketing messages should always include all of the required information to tell them what you want your recipients to do but not drag on through fluff copy.
When writing your email, always ask yourself, “Is this really needed?” and edit down the message into only the bare essentials. This way, you don’t waste a reader’s time and bore them with a long-winded copy.
Secondly, the more text you include in your email, the higher chances it begins to be caught in spam filters. There are hundreds of words that have been flagged as spam over the years, and by using long amounts of copy, you could unknowingly be adding these words within the body text.
Keep your email short, so your email can create excitement within the first few seconds, follow through with your email and get them to buy based on emotional response.
3) Utilize the fundamental emotional response
People buy things based on two different mindsets: Logical and Emotional.
The logical mindset is one based around facts, while emotional is based around the emotions associated with how they react to the marketing message.
Most people will buy on an emotional response; create your email to touch on a select emotion and dig deeper into the problems behind each person.
For example:
Instead of writing “you’ll save $100 if you buy my widget”, try going with “you’ll save 10 hours of your time if you buy my widget”.
People often don’t associate the items they buy with the dollar amount and features – they’re buying it because it fulfills an emotion. In the above example, that emotion is time; anyone can save money, but time is precious to everyone.
4) Use a call-to-action
So now you’ve created your email: you have a great headline, body copy is short, and to the point, you’re touching on deep emotional levels but never forget to tell them what you want them to do.
Sure, many marketers will say that you should just let people choose on their own accord, but these marketers are broke. The only way you’re going to increase your sales is by telling the recipient exactly what you want them to do: the call to action.
There’s no point to work extensively on your email marketing if you’re not going to tell people you want them to do something; really, it can be anything:
- Buy a product or service
- Give customer feedback
- Read a new entry on the website
Your message needs to guide them into doing what you want them to do, so be sure to create call-to-actions throughout your email and always close on a note which piques their interest and entices them to click through and buy.