In the last article, I talked about how to define your audience and how to supply your chosen audience with the most relevant content at the most relevant time in the user’s journey.
Now we have the targeting down, in this article, we are following up with how to increase the connection between your business and your customers with personalisation. We will also have a look at length and spacing to increase the readability.
Personalisation
Email marketing works great when it comes to creating a unique experience for your prospects and existing customers. By leveraging the power of personalization, you can make them feel exclusive and special, which in turn increases the chance of them converting to a customer. According to the email marketing company Campaign Monitor, emails that have a personalized subject line are over 20% more likely to be opened, compared to emails that have a generic subject line.
So if you have access to the first name of your email recipients, it makes sense to use it in the subject line as well as in the body of the email. The most common place you see personalisation is in the opening line of some emails, they usually say something like “Hi ‘your name’” or “welcome back ‘your name’”. You can also go about asking easy and relevant questions in the email to give a personalised feel.
You can even take things a step ahead by adding your own pieces of information you have collected about your users. The idea is to think outside the box. One company I have seen pull this off spectacularly is Suiteness. See their email below, it’s rather long so I have split it in two.
Being a business, you should understand the importance of adding a personal touch to your email marketing as it has a direct impact on the number of conversions you get. Suiteness have included the customer’s name, previous trips, history of the user and even where they think the user will visit next, very well done.
Keep Your Email Content Simple
Many email marketing tips you find online talk about improving the open rate of your emails, but once you have achieved this you need a way to keep the users engaged. I feel the key to this is to write clear and concise content so that your subscribers get the message, and act on it.
Keeping your email simple helps you get a better response from your campaign. The idea is to not write an essay where people will get bored or be put off by the sheer size of the content, on the other hand, there needs to be enough content to sell the idea and make your subscribers aware of the offer you have for them. In regards to the Suiteness email I have already mentioned that it is quite a large email, however, there is not a lot of block text content in it. It is well spaced and the images are well used to break up the content.
Keep in mind you don’t need to hard-sell them, but you can give them a soft nudge in the right direction. If they find your offer enticing enough, they will most likely visit your website to learn more about it. Keep your emails to the point, try not to distract from the journey you want them to take, just make it easy for people to take action.
One more thing that you need to keep in mind is the fact that more than 60% of people are now viewing the emails on their mobile. So now more than ever it’s imperative that mobile responsiveness is taken into account when creating your emails.
Here’s a quick overview of how you can keep your emails short and still get the message across:
- Be direct and avoid beating around the bush, write as much as required to convey your message.
- If you want to share more information in the email, use bullet points to break up the content in your email.
- To keep that direct approach and lead them in the right direction, have one primary call to action per email rather than adding multiple.
