5 Steps for Building a Successful Marketing Email

Email campaigns are key to any digital marketing strategy. They allow you to directly connect with consumers and, if done right, email marketing campaigns can lead to a high ROI. Since consumers are inundated with emails, it’s important to make sure yours will be noticed. Below are five email marketing tactics you can pursue to guarantee your marketing message is getting across.

Write an Eye-Catching Subject Line

Want to end up on the high priority list instead of in the spam folder? Ensure the subject line of your email is enticing, descriptive and stylistically distinct. According to Unbounce’s Oli Gardner, your subject line should state exactly what’s inside the email and who it’s from. Marketers can use exclamation points and a few words in all uppercase to ensure their email stands out in the inbox-just as long as they don’t make the subject line too lengthy or oversell the product too much. Doing so will turn consumers off of what you have to offer.

Make it Look Good

A great design often communicates your message better than plain text. As an infographic from Email Monks points out, graphics are important and should be used to “delineate the content sections well.” Don’t include long lines of text; instead, separate sections with spacing and use bulleted lists. The most crucial lines should be in bold.

Personalize the Content

Treating every one of your loyal customers the same is not going to be effective. Instead, personalize your emails. Dan Farootan of Stream Send says marketers “need to craft an email that sounds as if it was written by a real person for a real person,” and companies should “make the content feel folksy and personal and aimed specifically at the recipient.” If you track consumer spending habits, send your customers coupons and discounts through email whenever possible. Include their first names, and segment them by sending out targeted messages. A one-size-fits-all approach is not going to be useful.

Include a Call to Action

The whole point of an email marketing campaign, like any marketing campaign, is to drive sales. A call to action will help accomplish this. Call to actions should have a sense of urgencyand spell out to consumers how clicking CTAs will benefit them. Fulcrum Tech’s Mitch Lapides also states CTAs should be easier to identify than the rest of the text. Marketers can put them inside graphics or buttons or simply bold them.

Promote Your Social Networks

If customers don’t respond to your call to action, give them a secondary way to become more involved with your company. Include your social network buttons for sites like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest and Instagram within your email. If you get customers to engage with you on these networks, your ROI can be much higher.

Email is increasingly the preferred mode of communication for billions of consumers around the globe. Make sure you get it right so your brand message will stand out above the rest and encourage sales. For more helpful tips to improve your marketing emails, download “Email Deliverability: 21 Steps to Success.”

Photo Credit: Horia Varlan