When composing marketing emails, you do it with one goal in mind:
Entice the reader to click through your email to your website.
Converting casual readers into loyal customers is what your carefully planned marketing campaign is all about.
Below, you will find seven foolproof writing tips. They’ll help you write email marketing copy that converts your list of email addresses into full-fledged customers.
Table of Contents
1. Get to Know Your Customers
What’s the number-one thing you should be focusing on to get the most conversions?
Your audience.
Before you even start composing your email, you need to know who it is you’re sending them to. It pays in full to do your research about the people you’ll be reaching out to so you know what they want to see.
Discover the key segments of your customer base and use that to define no less than three unique buyer personas for them.
Use a combination of social media and website analytics to see what kind of people are looking at your product or service. Conduct surveys using tools like SurveyMonkey to discover details about your audience, such as age ranges, gender, and occupation.
Once the details start coming in, you will begin to identify patterns in the people interested in what you have to offer. Those patterns will translate into your buyer personas.
With that information, you can tailor your copy more efficiently toward your customers.
2. Personalize Your Marketing Emails
Now that you know your customers, you can make your emails more personal.
Start by creating a segmented email list that separates your buyers.
There are a lot of ways you can separate your customers to make sure they get the email that suits them best. After all, you don’t want to send the same exact email to a prospective customer and someone you’re hoping will be a repeat customer.
When you have your segmented email list, set a clear goal for each group. You’ll build your copy around these goals.
An easy way to make your marketing emails feel more personal is to use customer names in the subject line and copy of the email. Use you, me, and us in the body of your email, as well as plain language that’s easy for anyone to read.
The more personal you make your email campaign, the more likely potential customers are to become actual customers.
3. Really Think About Your Subject Line
The first thing anyone will see of your email is the subject line sitting in their inbox. They’re more than likely going to base their entire decision to open it or not on the subject line.
So it has to be good!
Here’s how you can make your email subject lines so good they can’t be ignored:
- Put the customer’s name in the subject line.
- Appeal to their sense of curiosity.
- Make them feel like they’ll miss out if they don’t open your email.
- Offer a solution to a specific problem based on buyer personas.
- Make your customers feel special.
And remember: don’t make promises you can’t keep!
Whatever you put in your subject line should carry through to the body of your email, which should carry through to what you’re actually offering. If you start making false promises, people will stop opening your emails.
If you find yourself stuck for ideas, there are plenty of email subject line examples out there on the web that you can take inspiration from!
4. And Don’t Neglect the Preview Text
When you look at your email, you may notice a line or two under the subject line that shows you a little sneak peek of what’s inside. That’s called the preview text and it can be found on a lot of the email services we use today.
This is why it’s not something you can afford to ignore.
The preview text is usually pulled from the first lines of your email marketing copy to give the receiver an idea of what’s on the inside. It can be anywhere from 40-140 characters, depending on the service someone is using.
Your best bet is to think of the preview text as a second subject line and write it accordingly.
It will cost you nothing to give some extra thought to the first few lines of your copy to make sure they translate into amazing preview text. It’s just another thing that can significantly boost your open rate.
5. Weave in a Bit of Psychology
There are plenty of tried-and-true tactics to get inside the head of your audience and make them feel like they absolutely have to open your email or click through to your landing page.
You want to make them an offer they can’t refuse.
FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is a great way to get people to click — something like a limited-time offer where they have to go right now or miss out on your product entirely.
Use sensory words to describe what you’re selling to give your readers a more real feel for your product.
You can even put colors to work for you in order to get more conversions. Some colors catch people’s attention more than others. They also elicit different emotional responses in someone’s mind.
Red conveys a sense of urgency, while blue makes them feel secure.
Whatever you write in the body of your email, it should be separated into sections by easy-to-see headers. That way, everyone gets your most important points, even when they’re just skimming over it.
6. Create an Irresistible Call-to-Action
Your call-to-action is what gets people to click. It’s usually a big obvious button with a few words on it that convey what you want your customers to do once they read your email.
Here are three ways you can create a call-to-action that gets you those clicks:
- Action words are your best friend (buy, download, grab, start, etc.)
- Sprinkle in benefit words such as free or custom to make it special.
- Use a strong contrasting color for your call-to-action button so it stands out.
By the time your audience makes it through your email to your CTA, there’s no way they won’t be ready to click through. But make sure you really seal the deal so there’s no chance of anyone turning back!
7. Make Your Copy a Matching Set
Now, it’s extremely important that every piece of your marketing campaign remains consistent. Everything from your subject line to your email to your landing page needs to match up to ensure you get the conversions you want.
If things are inconsistent from one step to the next, you are likely to miss out on new customers.
Just imagine how confusing it would be for someone who has never been to your website before to go from a warm, cozy email to a landing page full of vibrant colors and all-caps text yelling at them.
Chances are, they’re not going to stick around.
Use a consistent tone across all your copy to avoid scaring anyone off. Your words, images, and colors should remain similar from start to finish if you want your marketing to be successful.
In Conclusion
You already have a stellar product and plenty of people on your email list. You’re ready to get this thing out the door, you just need the perfect marketing copy to get the job done.
Now you can write email marketing copy to appeal to your audience without fail.
These seven essential tips will put you on the right track to converting your email subscribers into customers that will come back over and over again.
Author Bio
Caitlin Sinclair is the property manager at Escaya, a luxury apartment community in Chula Vista, CA.