12 Impactful Email Marketing Tactics That Convert
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True or False:
Email is the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you look at before going to sleep.
If you said true, welcome to 2021.
For many, email has become an escape of sorts…it’s an opportunity to read, visualize, and watch custom content of interest at a time that is most convenient.
If your email isn't in your customer’s inbox, you’re losing out on some highly coveted 1:1 time.
It’s time you change that.
Does Email Marketing really matter?
Does ice melt in the sun?
Yes and yes.
We can’t blame you if you’re wondering whether email marketing actually works, especially if you’ve been clicking the unsubscribe button lately.
Since you already know we love data, we figured we’d put some statistics behind our answer and let you decide for yourself:
- For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42.
-80 percent of professionals say email marketing drives customer acquisition and retention.
-91 percent of consumers want to receive promotional emails.
Still questioning the impact of email marketing?
12 Impactful Email Marketing Tactics That Convert
Unlock the true potential of your email marketing with these 12 impactful email marketing tactics that are bound to help you convert and grow your business:
Avoid shortcuts
Sign up with an email marketing platform
Set the blueprint
Create a double-opt-in form
Brand your emails
Become a copy king
Remember the footer
Incorporate visuals
Focus on clickbait
Always have a call to action
Scrub your email list
Make it mobile-friendly
1. Avoid shortcuts
In the beginning, your email list likely consists of your most loyal friends and a few network professionals you’ve acquired over the years.
Nothing to write home about, but that’s okay.
Avoid the temptation of buying new subscribers.
Not only will having these email addresses jeopardize your deliverability and open rates, but they also won’t help you grow your business.
For starters, these ‘subscribers’ will likely unsubscribe after receiving your first email or worse yet, might mark you as spam, putting email providers on alert every time they receive your emails.
Second, you want to target customers with intent to buy.
They need to qualify as a potential customer and fall somewhere inside your sales funnel. If not, get used to the saying, “in one ear and out the other,” because these audience members won’t care about what you have to say.
Real businesses build real lists.
Start with an offer your subscribers can’t resist and consider extending benefits for those that share your email newsletter.
Pro Tip: Think discounts, freebies, special offers, early access.
2. Sign up with an email marketing platform
Make your life easier by signing up with Mailchimp, Convert Kit, Active Campaign, or any other email marketing platform available.
From maintaining audiences to creating forms, workflows, automations, and more, using a platform will make your email marketing efforts that much more manageable and save you time.
Pro Tip: Many of these platforms offer a free or reduced-price option for those just getting started.
3. Set the blueprint
Good design improves readability.
Fortunately, many platforms offer pre-built templates to help you get started.
If you’re feeling inspired and want to create your own, remember that a standard emailer starts with a header image, which should likely be your logo or a special offer followed by some combination of visual content and support text.
Pro Tip: Save emails you receive from brands you love and reference them for inspiration.
4. Create a double-opt-in form
Running a successful business is all about finding potential customers.
As previously mentioned, this can often be accomplished by leveraging intent.
As it relates to email marketing, utilizing double opt-in forms, or the need for a user to sign up and then verify for a second time that they do want to receive future emails, is a fool-proof way to ensure intent exists.
You’ll weed out the accidental signups, the fraudulent accounts, or any of the other low-to-zero intent audience members and lock in those with a much higher likelihood of becoming a customer.
After all, those are the individuals you want to provide value to.
5. Brand your emails
We already know that great branding matters and is often the X-factor as to whether a business finds long-term success.
Your emails should be a clear extension of your brand. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
When it comes to branding your emails, here’s a checklist to get you started:
Logo: Ensure your emails lead off with your primary, secondary or tertiary logo – whichever is most appropriate from a design standpoint.
Color Palette: Leverage your color palette where appropriate to put an emphasis on certain copy or calls to action.
Pro Tip: Don’t jeopardize readability with brightly colored text.
Typography: Limit your email design to two font types. Ideally, your heading should utilize your primary brand font with a basic sans serif for the email body text (think Arial or Calibri).
Pro Tip: The reason we recommend a basic sans serif is that they are easier on the eyes to read and nearly all computers have them pre-installed. You don’t want to run into a situation where your font can’t be recognized by the email client your customer is using.
Imagery: When you do incorporate images, which you should, ensure they accurately reflect your brand’s identity. Because of how visual we are today, using the wrong images can quickly change the perception of your brand in an unintended way.
Make sure to always do a once-over whenever you are finished with your emails and utilize your brand style guide for guardrails.
Does the entire email design accurately reflect your identity?
If yes, then you’re on track with your email branding.
6. Become a copy king
If opening the email is the first big hurdle, then capturing your audience’s attention inside the email is the second.
This is where copy becomes king.
During the brand strategy phase, you defined your brand voice; things like what you say and how you say it.
As you write copy for your emails, stay true to character from a voice perspective but look to capture your audience’s attention.
Consider the following ideas:
Document a personal story
Include some jaw-dropping stats
Shock ‘em with a powerful statement
Pro Tip: Check out these copywriting tips for help on ways to skill up.
7. Remember the footer
A footer is the post-script to your emailer.
Not only does it visually balance your email, it also offers a space to prompt additional action such as directing customers to your website and social media channels.
Additionally, a footer serves the purpose of offering transparency.
Subscribers can learn where you are located, how they can contact you, and how they can unsubscribe from your emails.
Pro Tip: Learn to embrace the unsubscribe button. Not only does it build trust but it allows you to speak to the right audience. You can’t be all things to all people.
8. Incorporate visuals
Pictures and videos always win over copy – they are simple and highly engaging.
Imagine a history book void of pictures.
Odds are, you wouldn’t make it past the third sentence without beginning to drift off.
Next thing you know, you’ve read five pages and can’t remember a single thing.
But what if that same history book had images all throughout?
Be certain to include visuals in your emails to engage your audience and add depth.
9. Focus on clickbait
If you’re anything like the average person, you receive way too many emails in a single day.
What makes you open one and not the other?
While loyalty certainly plays a role, most often it has to do with the subject line and preview text.
You need to pay attention to these two critical components of an email.
To find success here, you must have a deep understanding of your audience members--what is it that motivates them?
Depending on where they are in your sales funnel you will have some members who are more attracted to certain subject lines than others, but you still need to understand them completely.
Once you do, consider subject and preview line copy that teases them with a secret ingredient, a pro tip, a unique question or something that is highly personalized with their first names.
It is important to recognize that the wrong subject and preview line copy can do more harm than good (hello spam or promotional folder).
Consider the following to help ensure you don’t wind up there:
Avoid an all-caps subject line
Stay away from too many exclamation marks
Stop using spam trigger words such as Free, Earn $, Best Price, Offer, Open, Deal
10. Always have a call to action
Why are you writing an email?
Maybe you are focused on brand awareness, you want a prospect to buy something from you, you are trying to drive sign-ups to your Facebook group…the list goes on.
Whatever your reason, your email should ALWAYS have a call to action. Incorporate a button in your email that readers can click on moving them one step closer to your specific goal.
11. Scrub your email list
On average, only 18% of emails that are sent are opened.
If you have 1,000 subscribers, you can assume roughly 180 of them will actually open your email. The other 820? Not so much.
Why are you sending them emails?
While you might think the larger the list the better, remember—it is all about intent.
A good idea is to scrub your email list roughly every six months to ensure you are including only the readers who engage with you.
Shocked? There are a few important reasons we suggest this:
Analytics: Important metrics used in email marketing will be heavily skewed, making your decision-making process challenging when it comes to tactic or strategy changes.
Spam Classification: Users can label emails as spam if they feel they received an unsolicited email. If this happens frequently enough, email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook who keep track of these labels might push your emails into the spam or promotional folders never to be seen by your subscribers again.
12. Make it mobile-friendly
85% of users use mobile to open their emails.
When we say make it mobile-friendly, we mean exactly that—make it mobile-friendly:
Keep the subject line short. Mobile viewing widths are smaller than desktops.
Keep it concise. People aren’t going to read a 3,000-word email on a mobile screen.
Highlight your call to action(s). Even on a small screen, your call to action(s) should be front and center.
Test it. NEVER send an email without sending yourself a test email (10x).
Start converting today
Email marketing is not only a phenomenal way to speak directly to your customers but also an opportunity for you to create and offer value in a world where content is king.
While these tips will give you a platform to begin or level up your email marketing efforts, always remember, creativity captures consciousness.
Stuck with writing your first email? Drop us a note below or reach out to us to see how we can help.
