Email Marketing | AltusHost

One of the most effective marketing channels that can bring conversions and enrich businesses with a lot more connections is email marketing. However, if not done properly, it can only lead to wasted efforts and emails that do not even get opened and read.

How can you get your subscribers to open your emails and actually make a purchase? The key is to write an email copy that will entice and engage your email participants and make them really want to check out your offer and decide to buy your products or hire your services. Your email copy is exactly what will determine the success or failure of your email marketing campaign.

When you are a newbie, it can certainly seem a bit confusing and perhaps even a difficult thing to do, but it is actually quite easily achievable. The most important thing to remember is to address your email recipients as humans, instead of a faceless brand. You need to make sure you don’t come out as a robot, but as a professional who cares about the customers and wants to address their pain points in order to solve their problems and satisfy their needs.

Perhaps, at this point, you think this is easier said than done, but all you have to do is really think like your customers and you will know exactly what to do and what not to do. You need to be able to resonate with their needs before you hit the “send” button and, before you know it, it will become second nature to you.

Here are the most important steps you need to take in order to write an email copy that will not only get opened and read, but that will also convert and help you increase your sales and your ROI.

Write for Your Recipients

When writing an email copy, the key is to write with your email recipients in mind. You need to know exactly what their needs and preferences are, so that you can know which direction to take when trying to present them with your offer.

You need to segment your, because that is what will help you increase your conversions. Segmented emails result in 50% higher click-through rates than those that are not, so you need to make this your top priority in order to effectively target your email copy.

Make sure you provide information in your email copy that will answer all of the potential questions your recipients might have, including why they should engage in your brand and how it will benefit them. Don’t write simply about your brand and your products or services, but write about what your customers are interested in and what they need in order to be engaged in a brand. Learn about their end goals and provide them with a perfect solution to their problems.

When you write for them, instead of only for your benefit, you will get a lot higher CTRs and generate more revenue for your business.

Write a Killer Subject Line

Your customers are certainly receiving dozens of emails every single day, so how can you get them to open yours? The answer is your subject line. Namely, 35% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line, so you must put some effort into making it as attention-grabbing as possible.

Therefore, your subject line needs to capture their attention and invite them to open you email and find out more about your offer. It needs to be clear and concise and it needs to address your customers’ needs, because that is exactly what will make them open your email. After all, that is the point of your subject line – to get your recipients to open your email.

For instance, if you’re presenting your customers with particular diet tips, your subject line may be “Eat the Cake and Lose the Weight”, as it will definitely get their attention and incite them to actually open the email. If you’re running an ecommerce business and want to share information about your new discounts, you can write a subject line such as “Get 30% off on Your Favorite Shoes”, as you will certainly attract your segments and make them want to check out your offer and actually make a purchase.

Match Your Subject Line with Your Email Copy

Your subject line and the text of your email copy must match, because you must ensure that what you promise in the subject like gets delivered in the content of your email copy. Otherwise, you will definitely not succeed in receiving higher click-through rates and increasing your sales. Yes, people will open the email due to a catchy subject line, but what’s the point if that does not result in more conversions?

Therefore, your subject line must be consistent with the content of your email copy, because not only will you convert your email recipients into customers, but you will also build trust with them. If you show that you are trustworthy, you will certainly drive traffic further into your sales funnel and, what’s more, your targeted segments will not unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.

Optimize Your Email for Skimmers

Whether you want to admit it or not, the truth of the matter is that most people don’t read emails, but just simply skim through. This is nothing new or unusual, because in today’s information overloaded world, people tend to receive a lot of spam emails that they are not interested in.

This is why you need to format your email copy in a way that enables it to grab the attention of the skimmers in less than 5 seconds. You will successfully accomplish that by keeping your sentences short and simple and, more importantly, making your points bolded and bulleted.

That way, your email copy will be easier to skim through and you will succeed not only in making your recipients read your email, but also in converting them.

Use a Compelling Call-to-Action

A compelling call-to-action can really motivate your email recipients to click on your offer and find out more about it. Your CTA needs to be simple and easy to understand, but it also needs to be enticing and engaging in order for your segments to take the action you want them to take.

The most effective way to drive more conversions with the use of a call-to-action is to use verbs, such as “sign up”, “order”, “get” and “buy”, as those create urgency and motivate people to take certain action. You can drive even more conversions by adding words such as “free” or “customized”, as that will instantly grab the attention of your readers and make them want to click through.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you will certainly succeed in creating an email copy that converts your segments into quality leads and further converts those leads into actual customers, thus eventually increasing your sales and generating more revenue.

However, don’t forget the most important part – always test your emails and analyze the results in order to have an insight into the performance of your every email copy, as that will help you optimize your email copies and always improve upon your conversions.

Running an effective marketing strategy is tremendously important for every company in the world. One part of the whole marketing strategy is constantly staying in touch with your existing customers and keeping them interested in your company and your brand.

However, there are many things that companies around the world do wrong in their email marketing procedure, making the campaign much less efficient. Take a look at some of the things that you should pay attention to when you are running your email marketing campaign in 2016.

Not getting the message across

Every mail you create should carry a certain message. Once you are finished with the email creation process, make sure that the message remains pretty clear. Don’t end up in a situation where the person you are sending the email to is left puzzled and does not understand what you actually wanted from them. Make sure that, between those lines, you are clearly expressing the message.

Take your time and read the email carefully before you send it, and once you are sure that you are delivering the message in a fairly straightforward way, you can expect a higher number of conversions or responses, depending on what your goal is.

The length of content

Have you ever received a wall of text in your email? You can admit that it is not quite a pleasant experience. People nowadays don’t have time for reading walls of texts, especially those found in the email. This medium is meant for the creation of medium-sized messages that do not take a lot of time for people to read and understand.

This is the reason why you should keep your email short and concise; don’t make it too short with a sentence or two, but steer away from long texts, as it will make those conversion rates and the number of replied emails much lower. Remember to rely on simple words and shorter sentences, your message will remain clear and easy for the customer to understand.

Subject line is tremendously important

No matter how good your email content is and how clear the message is, people will not read those emails if you pick the wrong approach with the subject line. People need to see a concise subject line.

Most people get tens or hundreds of emails every day, meaning that you have to create a subject line that is going to make the customer read your email. Remember to make the subject line action-oriented, as it will engage your target audience to click and see what you have to say.

Another important thing to pay attention to is the first sentence of your email. It is something that people are going to see first on their phones and computers, and it is also going to affect whether people are going to finish reading the email. Take some time and create a great subject line; your email is going to stand out in your customers’ inboxes.

Pay attention to some basic elements

A majority of companies already takes care of this issue, but it is important to mention, as it can severely affect your email marketing performance.

*Address your customer with a polite tone and avoid using slang in your emails. While it may look interesting to you, some of your customers are not going to feel respected and will most likely unsubscribe from your mailing list.

*Always, and I do mean always, check your grammar. Every single grammar mistake or typo makes you look unprofessional, which is going to be noticed by every single customer in your mailing list.

*Don’t write short, single-sentence emails; it is going to make the users feel like you are ordering them to do something too directly. Compose a sensible email and focus on remaining polite; it is going to give much better results.

*Avoid using CAPS. People consider large text as spam, which is only going to make them exit the mail and stop reading. Instead, simply bold some parts of the text, guiding your readers to what is important.

Is the email medium perfect for your purpose?

There are plenty of other ways of communicating with your customers. Rethink whether the email is the right choice for the message you are sending to your customers. Consider your mailing list as something that provides benefits for those who subscribe and share content that is inaccessible to other people visiting your website, without subscribing for updates about the awesome new piece of content you have published on your website.

For other types, it might be a better option to use some other kind of communication system, to reach out to your followers; for example, your social media networks.

These are some of the mistakes that many businesses make when they are conducting their email marketing campaign. Avoiding these mistakes is going to help you improve your conversion rates, not to mention that it is also going to increase traffic to your website. Simply revise every email you send out to your customers and ensure that your subject line, email length and the tone of the text are flawless.