We all receive heaps of emails. Every. Single. Day. If yours doesn’t stand out, you’ll get sent straight to the trash. How can you engage your target audience’s attention so they MUST open your email?
1) Send emails from a personal email
We’ve been trained to remember names and people from 3 years old. That’s why people are more likely to open your email if it’s attributed to a real individual. Seeing someone’s name makes the information shared seem more valuable. Like it was picked out by one person specifically for another. This is a good way to gain their attention as the first thing they see.
2) Use short, to the point subject lines that can be skimmed quickly
You have two seconds to keep the attention and convince your audience to open your email. A subject line that gets straight to the point and doesn’t reel on will work best. Avoid “Offer inside!” subject lines, as most people will instantly label it spam. Put the effort in! Tell your audience exactly what the email is in only a few sharp words. If it’s relevant to them, you might just get them opening your email.
3) Make sure it’s relevant
A lot of businesses have lost the importance of a personal relationship with customers. This comes with immense growth or simply getting wrapped up in the business side of a company. People are far more responsive to personalised, well thought-out emails than your standard email marketing newsletter.
Find out what interests your client and craft your email around that idea. Offer them a blog post or a video that might engage them, something they would actually value. It’s best to start with this rather than direct self-promotion. This light content introduces a positive rapport with your prospects, which can lead up to higher conversion when emails become more heavily promotional.
4) Don’t know what’s relevant? Go for popularity
If there’s one thing you can be sure of, it’s that people tend to be similar in general taste. When you find it hard to pinpoint what exactly some contacts are most interested in, go for what’s popular. It’s better than not trying at all – plus, you can grasp their initial attention with something like “Is this something that would interest you?” If it’s not, you’ve narrowed it down somewhat for the next campaign!
5) Content depends on your audience
An email from New Look offering summer trends can use as many emojis and abbreviations as it wants, and it’ll probably be read by its target audience for doing so. An email trying to set up a meeting with a CEO – probably not.
It’s up to you to find out what to use with your contacts. Know what kind of relationship it is that you have with them, and use that to your advantage. Can you reach out in a slightly less formal way? Do you need to sound entirely professional and in-the-know? With each email’s voice, there are different aspects which will impress and engage your client. Make sure you choose wisely.
6) As a final note: be visual
If I receive an email that I know will have aesthetically gorgeous pictures inside, I want to open it. Ryanair is especially good at this – mainly because the clients they’re targeting are holidaymakers looking for summer getaways. As long as your visuals don’t detract from your content, they can be effective. It’s all about enhancing your words with pleasing eye-catchy visuals. Particularly if your plain text emails aren’t winning your unengaged audience over.
Use these tips to engage with that percentage of your audience that just seems to be ignoring you. You might just be surprised by their response.
Now you have those sorted – try implementing them into your marketing strategy. Don’t worry we are here to help with our guide on how to create highly effective email marketing campaigns.
Better yet, why not have a look at our Performance Marketing Guide for other ways you can inspire prospect engagement.
