3 Key Dimensions of a Highly Compelling Marketing Email

Many marketing professionals constantly challenge the value of email marketing, insisting newer digital marketing tactics-such as blogging and social media-have replaced it entirely. While this may be a widely held view, it by no means reflects the reality of the data regarding what constitutes successful digital marketing efforts.

According to Econsultancy’s 2013 email marketing census, 66 percent of in-house marketers consider their email to produce either an “excellent” or “good” ROI. What’s more, 75 percent of social media users say email is the best way for brands to communicate with them, according to a MarketingSherpa survey.

Despite this compelling data, the idea of email marketing campaigns often leaves a bad taste in marketers’ mouths for their potential to be pesky and intrusive. It’s true many companies produce less than stellar email campaigns that make us want to swear off email for good, but it’s also true these companies are doing email marketing the wrong way.

Your email marketing campaigns should stand out for the right reasons. Here, we share three key strategies for producing a highly compelling marketing email.

• Include Useful & Interesting Content Targeted at Your Buyer Personas: The first thing to mull over when developing a marketing email is what your buyer personas are interested in knowing. Without this basic understanding, your email will fall on deaf ears. For example, most mountain biking enthusiasts won’t care to read about new trends in basket weaving. One of our recent blog posts offers a framework for finding out what content your buyers would like to see.
• Pay Attention to Aesthetics: When you open an email, what immediately grabs your attention? Does your answer include an interesting design with stimulating visual content? If so, you are similar to most consumers. The way your email looks upon first glance is an important indicator in achieving high click-through-rates.
• Make it Personal: Whether engaging in email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing or all three, marketers agree personalization is key to success. However, when it comes to email marketing, a whopping 70 percent of brands are not personalizing emails sent to subscribers, according to the 2013 Experian Digital Marketer Report. And many of those who are engaging in personalization are doing little more than addressing recipients by their first names. The best personalized marketing emails, however, go beyond “Hello, {FirstName}” to deliver relevant content subscribers likely want to receive.

Email marketing that delivers worthwhile information is not going out of style. In fact, when used in tandem with other marketing efforts like social media, email marketing can prove to be a highly effective strategy.

Discover more tips for highly compelling email marketing with our free download, “5 Easy Ways to Take Your Email List to the Next Level.”

Photo Credit: David Goehring