Perfect These Elements For Emails That Captivate Contacts And Fulfill Business Goals
Variety is the spice of your email marketing efforts. However, there are foundational elements every marketing email your business sends should share.
Keep the following three components at the top of mind when you are building each email marketing campaign to ensure you further your business’ goals with increased website traffic and new leads.
1. Email Goal Setting
Marketing emails can serve many purposes, so it’s important to start each campaign with a clear goal. Are you promoting a certain discount, introducing a new product, sending a seasonal promotion, offering valuable content, or simply welcoming new contacts to your newsletter?
A clear goal will inform the way you design your email as well as the style and tone you take when writing the email’s copy. It will also guide the design of the landing page that the email links to on your website.
Create a landing page that is clearly relevant to the email, one that includes a call-to-action that offers a deeper relationship with your company.
The email goal-setting process also helps determine to whom your email will be sent. The introduction of a new product, for example, is a great email to send to your existing customers; a seasonal promotion or special discount might best fit prospects who have not yet made a purchase from you; a welcoming email is a good send for prospects who have recently joined your email list or subscribed to your newsletter.
Email lists can be segmented so you send only highly relevant, personalized emails to your contacts.
2. Inbox Elements
Your opportunity to create compelling copy starts with your email’s subject line and inbox preview text. These are the only elements of your email that your recipient list can read without opening your email. How they are written is the key determining factor to whether a contact will open the email.
Hubspot’s list of awesome subject line examples illustrates ways to optimize the subject line field to increase your open rate.
What follows the subject line in your recipient’s inbox? Your email preview text!
Without guidance from you the sender, email service providers will automatically pull from the first sentence of the email’s body copy to create an automatic text preview.
Instead, take the opportunity to write an original line that complements your subject line and further entices recipients to open your email.
3. Body Copy, Imagery, Calls-To-Action
An open email presents the full power of your message. It’s a versatile design platform where you can intersperse images and videos alongside text and calls-to-action to tell your story.
Aim for a balance of visual elements, text and open space, and thoughtfully place your call-to-action. A well-designed email leaves no room for interpretation what you are offering to your contact and what action you are asking them to take.
Here are a couple notes on the primary elements of an open marketing email.
- Video: Keep it under 30 seconds if you choose to embed it in the email. Consider linking to the full-play video on your webpage. Use animated GIFs as a quicker-loading alternative to video.
- Imagery: Avoid relying on stock image banks. Invest in original imagery and choose a photo that tells the story of the particular email you are sending.
- Copy: Keep it short. Edit your original draft to eliminate unnecessary words and use the most compelling, action-oriented language in your arsenal.
- Color: You’ll have full choice on the color scheme of your email. Make sure the background color and font color complement each other, and don’t be afraid to go off brand with a vibrant red or yellow background for an occasional special promotion.
- Call-to-action: For most emails, a call-to-action is the critical lead-conversion piece that leads your contacts to the corresponding landing page on your website. Similar to email subject lines, concise, client-focused language is most effective. A call-to-action design that is distinct from the rest of the email – in color, shape, and placement – will perform best. Design them to stand out, and place them prominently in the email.
Build your marketing emails with these key components in mind to create emails that are valuable to your recipients and fulfill your marketing and business goals.
Thanks for stopping by,
Laura
Breezy Hill Marketing is a Vermont web design company offering digital advertising strategy and execution, responsive web design, inbound marketing, and social media marketing for clients throughout the United States. We work closely with our clients to craft strategies specific to their needs.
