Smartphone has left us with such a short attention span that even a goldfish can easily hold a thought for longer, based on research by Microsoft.
The average human attention span has decreased from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds today, found by the researchers who surveyed 2000 participants and studied the brain activity of 122 other participants.
The estimated attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds.
The growing use of smartphones and the subsequent decrease in the attention span of humans has significantly increased the value of great writing. You’ll never get your subscribers to open your emails if you can’t write a great subject line that effectively captures their attention. Additionally, if you can’t explain your message easily and quickly, you’ll never get them to click-through and buy your offering.
Creating your emails so that it clearly stands out in any crowded inbox can be challenging. Many email subscribers are overloaded with a constant stream of communications, which means email senders have to put much more work to stand out in the inbox and get noticed.
Getting your email marketing strategy right is both a science and an art. Part of both is to understand how to create a high-converting email copy. But the good news is that by the time you’re completed reading this blog post, you’ll understand how to improve conversion from email marketing so that you can generate more leads and make more sales.
What makes a successful email campaign?
As it’s true for most things in life that are actually worth achieving, there’s no easy answer to what makes a successful email marketing campaign.
There are a lot of factors that go into creating a great email copy. Just by adding all of these elements together can you truly hope to develop an email copy and also an email campaign that actually goes above and beyond your expectations.
You can consider the following helpful tips to ensure that your email campaign generates results.
1. Use a familiar “from” name:
The “from” name of your emails is one of the most prominently displayed elements of your email campaign when it lands in your subscriber’s inbox.
Given its prominence, it’s probably not surprising to see that more than 68% of American people say they base their decision for opening an email on the “from” name.
So how do you leverage this information and optimize this important piece of your email campaign to help boost your open rate into the additional 30% range? The key here is to match it up with the expectations of your subscribers.
For example, consider that you recently subscriber to an email newsletter from TechChrunch website. Would you expect to receive emails from TechChrunch or BuzzFeed? Given that you’ve signed up for email newsletters from the TechChrunch website, chances are it’s the former.
2. Write a short, benefit-focused subject line:
When it comes to driving email opens, the email subject line, after the “from” name, is the second most prominent element in the inbox.
The email subject line, on most devices, is formatted with heavier, darker text in an attempt to make it stand out among other elements of the email.
It’s inevitable that the email subject line will have a significant effect on the open rates, given its prominence in the inbox. So how should you be optimizing the subject line of your emails to drive more conversions?
The first thing to consider is its length. Although many research has clearly shown that the length of a subject line doesn’t have a big effect on the email open and email click-through rates, however, it is highly advisable to keep them under 30 characters long to ensure they appear in full on both mobile and desktop devices.
3. Write compelling pre-header text:
When an email gets viewed in the inbox, the pre-header text is the one that follows the subject line.
A pre-header text is an important element your subscribers use to decide whether or not they open your email and engage with it.
The two need to work together to tell a cohesive story, given that the pre-header text appears next to the email subject line, rather than be thought about as two separate parts of your emails.
4. Write a simple, compelling email copy:
With your optimized “from” name, email subject line, and pre-header text driving more email opens, now it’s time for you to focus on click-through rates of your emails with quality email copy.
Writing good content isn’t just about using any particular magic words, but about words getting to your audience to easily understand your offering along with the benefits it brings them in the simplest way possible, as that’s what drives buyers to purchase.
5. Optimize your button:
The final step towards getting your subscribers to click-through from your emails and visit your website, are the buttons you use in your email marketing campaigns. And the words you choose for them can play a huge part in determining whether someone will click-through or not.
But what do you write in your buttons to ensure your subscribers click your buttons?
The key here is to use the button in such a way that it reinforces the benefit you promised your subscribers throughout the rest of the email.
Your buttons can also help to reduce perceived barriers. You can do this by just removing friction words.
Friction words are the ones that imply that your subscribers have to do something they don’t necessarily want to do.
Some of the commonly used friction words are the following;
- Download
- Apply
- Order
- Submit
Just think about it for a second, no one wants to spend their time applying for something or downloading something, they just want the end benefit applying or downloading for the item brings.
So, in order to decrease the perceived effort of your subscribers, just replace the friction words with frictionless words like “Learn” or “Get” and follow them up with a benefit statement like “Get your free account.”
6. Evade the spam filter:
It could all be for nothing even if you’ve gotten every single step right up to this point if you don’t avoid the spam filter. The spam filter will just take all of your hard work and throw it away, never to be seen by your subscribers.
You’ll want to ensure you refrain from the overuse of any spam-friendly language to successfully evade the spam filter. You could easily trigger the spam filter even with some innocent words like “free” or “buy.” The spam filter will easily pick this up and assume your email is spam.
Alternatively, you can always ask your subscribers to add you to their contacts. You’ll be whitelisted and all of your emails will automatically go through just by being on their contact list.
5 steps to write the perfect email:
What we need to do now is nail down a replicable process for writing them. Of course, you have to start with a subscriber list. Gather email address from your audience and followers so you can communicate with as many as possible.
1. Segmenting the right audiences:
We have established that email is highly effective, but we don’t have the time to manually send emails to every subscriber on our email list. Although, each email needs to feel personal.
When your subscriber lists are properly segmented, it’s quite simple and easy to send emails at scale, that feels personal.
Your emails should be based on the interactions of your target customers with your brand and website. As a result, they won’t feel sporadic, generic, or irrelevant.
More than 51% of marketers consider email list segmentation to be the most effective personalization tactic according to a recent Ascend2 survey.
MailChimp recently measured 11,000 segmented email campaigns against non-segmented email campaigns from the same senders. They found that the segmented email campaigns outperformed non-segmented email campaigns across every metric.
So what are some of the best ways to easily segment your subscriber list?
Basic demographic information like age, gender, and location are a great place to start. They’re not always enough, but they’ll definitely help you to get started.
It is highly likely that you’re going to speak very differently to a retired veteran than you would to a young teenager or a college grad. Additionally, women and men may respond very differently to the language you use in your emails.
Of course, this kind of personal information may not be available. And it’s also not the most effective way to segment your audiences.
2. Use a compelling subject line:
You get just one chance to make a first impression, and your email subject line is that chance for your email subscribers.
Your subject line helps your subscribers decide whether or not to read your emails. More than 33% of the email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone, based on a recent survey.
You have to nail that first impression with your email subject line if you want your emails to get opened.
It’s vital to keep the email subject line short and snappy. Many email marketing programs cut off long subject lines, your subscribers won’t be able to see your entire subject line.
An announcement or a teaser can provide a great way to entice your subscribers to click-through and read your emails. People just love an opportunity or a mystery, so they’re much more likely to check out what’s in the email if the subject line arouses their interest.
Whatever you choose to do, just avoid using any spammy language like “buy now.”
You don’t have to be overly promotional in your email campaigns. Just focus on being informative while being entertaining and delivering great experiences.
Actually funny and/or entertaining subject lines are one of the very effective ways to boost the chances of an email getting opened.
3. Keep it short and friendly:
One of the worst mistakes you can make with your emails is trying to cram too much information into it. And the document ends up being too long.
Sure, your subscribers need to know all the relevant information, but you can spread out all the information over multiple emails.
Alternatively, you can add a link to your website so your subscribers can easily seek out more information if they want.
Whatever be the case, just avoid wasting the time of your subscribers. That’s the quickest way to the “unsubscribe” button.
With a link to your website, a simple teaser is all that’s needed.
4. Add relevant information and calls to action:
Journalists around the world are required to find out the what, who, where, when, why, and how of a story before publishing. That’s the standard we’re going to set for our email marketing programs. Each of the emails you send needs to answer these critical questions.
Let’s take an example of a holiday sale that’s coming up soon.
So, the sale is the what, the store location is the where, the business offering the sale is who, the holiday is the when, special pricing is why, and showing up is how it’s done.
Your subscribers will be lost without this information.
It’s very important to have a CTA button, otherwise, how can your subscribers take the action.
5. Personalize each email and use the second-person point of view:
No one wants to be treated like just another number without a face.
So, it’s vital to greet each subscriber using personal language, which becomes quite an easy thing to accomplish with the ESPs like SendGrid, MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc.
Another great tactic is to write emails in the second person. Focusing on “you” open a conversation in which the subscriber feels valued.
6. Proofread and check your grammar multiple times:
As a marketer, there’s no worse feeling than spending so much time designing the perfect email, sending that to your entire subscriber list, and then finding a glaring typographical error in your email campaign.
Typos are the worst, and with emails, they can easily act as a sign of spam. It just looks highly unprofessional and may even get your emails blocked by the spam filters.
So, take the time to execute 2-3 rounds of checks to find and remove any typos and ensure that everything is fine-tuned before you out your email campaign to your subscribers and customers.
Now that everything is in perfect order free of any grammatical error, you can finally send out your email campaign and reap the benefits.
Conclusion:
In today’s world, email is the most widely-used form of communication. More people use email than social media, forums, and chat programs.
In other words, an email is a perfect chance for you to connect with your audience. But only if you follow the best practices and get creative with your emails, only then you can effectively reach your subscribers and engage with them to reap into the huge benefits of email marketing.
