How to Create the Perfect Email
Email marketing can still be one of the most effective ways to reach and engage your target audience. In fact, it yields an average 4,300% ROI for businesses in the US.
That being said, people receive hundreds of emails a day. Just take a look at your own inbox! After you've set up email captures to continuously generate new email addresses, focus on these factors to create the perfect email:
Objective. First and foremost, every email you send should have a clear, and well-thought out objective. Don't send email just to send email and expect to see an ROI. Make sure your objective is clear from the start. Is it to generate sales? Get website traffic? Get webinar sign ups?
Personalization. Personalization adds another layer of connection to any email. Personalization can mean adding their name and/or the name of the city or state they live in.
Emojis. You may have noticed an emoji or two in your recent email subject lines from brands you love. That's because these days, everyone uses emojis- why wouldn't marketers?! Adding one to your subject line just adds that extra layer of communicating with your target audience in the way that they want to be communicated with. Plus, they are fun! ;)
Enticing subject line. Your subject line needs to stand out from the hundreds of other emails your audience is receiving a day. According to Litmus, you have 3-4 seconds to grab your readers attention.
Here are some of my recent favorites:
Shopify Blog- "7+ ways to streamline your ecommerce business with Zapier"
The Muse- "Question- Just how bad do my emails sound when read outloud?"
Pure Wow- "Finding the perfect bra is kind of like dating"
Enticing content. Great, you got them to open your email, congratulations! Now you need to get them to actually read the email and take the next step. Make sure your subject line delivers and your content lives up to the enticement.
Clear Call to Action/ What's the next step. Open rates mean nothing without click-through-rates. Again, what was the objective of the email? This is the point where you need to make it easy and mindless for the reader to know what the next step is and how to take it.
MOBILE. No questions asked- your email needs to be easy to read on mobile as well as desktop.
"72% of US online adults send or receive personal emails via smartphone at least weekly." -Forrester
Images/Animated Gifs. Make your email visually appealing. No one wants to read a bunch of text- they just don't. Make you content easy to consume by adding fun images or animated GIFs.
A/B test. Certain email platforms, like MailChimp, allow you to A/B test different subject lines and times emails are sent. Take advantage of this. If you want to go the extra mile, create emails with different images and CTAs as well. However, try to only A/B test one element at a time so you can see which has the greater impact.
Analyze. Lastly, and almost always, analyze your efforts. Which A/B test performed better? How did your sales email do vs. your webinar email? Did you get more click throughs on Tuesday or Thursday? You can never stop improving!
These factors are a great place to focus your efforts. It's important to remember that everyone's target audience is different, so you can't rely on some cookie cutter formula to generate the optimal ROI for your business. Get creative and stay true to your business.
