Take any email marketing strategy, break it down to the bare essentials and you’ll agree that effective content makes all the difference between success and failure. Whether you maneuver the campaign manually or automatically, it’s content that gets people to open emails and be inspired to respond.
But how do you relentlessly create a compelling copy? Is it all about catchy headlines and hard-hitting CTAs? Well, the wisest of marketing gurus would have us believe that the whole shebang starts with knowing your audience and writing copy that resonates with the customer’s intent, and elicits a response.
We picked the best marketing brains executing content strategy by Miromind and discovered that there are four clear cut content strategies and four essential writing skills that power successful email marketing campaigns.
This is precisely how you go about it.
The 4 content best practices that clearly communicate your message in your email
Consistently clear communication lays the foundation for successful content shares. Before you give full vent to your creative instincts, follow these tips, so you don’t lose sight of the goal – enhancing the customer experience.
Content strategy 1#: Define the goal driving the campaign before crafting content
Whether you’re attracting traffic, retaining existing customers, or boosting sales, it’s critical to define the goal that drives your email campaign. Without a clear cut goal, your content will act as a misguided missile – it won’t hit the target. Goal-oriented content brings brevity to the message, making it easy for customers to understand what you’re conveying and respond immediately.
Content strategy 2#: Focus on content that is relevant to the target, trim away the fat
Generic content with a one-size-fits-all message almost always fails. Identify the target audience, understand what they need, and customize the copy, so it makes sense to the target. This is possible by splitting a larger demographic into smaller groups based on their intent. Making the content more relevant to each group improves campaign outcomes.
Not being a professional writer is forgivable as long as your content resonates with the audience, creates value, and offers something the competition doesn’t.
Content strategy 3#: Make content easily scannable and visually pleasing
Customers, sifting through hundreds of emails, ignore large chunks of uninspiring content. Messages that follow each other in staccato bursts with stunning images accompanying the text come off with flying colors.
A scannable message with appealing images looks better when the customer is using a mobile device. Make sure your pictures are conveying stories by themselves, stories that are relevant to and complement the message you’re texting.
Content strategy 4#: Create CTA-driven content that hooks the customer
Customers reading the message and interested in your advertising spiel need your guidance to follow through and reach you. The Call-to-Action must use direct and unambiguous language designed to elicit a positive response.
The content (used sparingly), and the images (stunningly appealing) should complement each other, creating a story that draws the customer like a magnet to the CTA that is prominently placed to attract immediate attention. Use these tips to design the perfect CTA.
These 4 fundamental best practices create the foundation for successful email marketing campaigns, but you still need to work on writing the best copy that customers enjoy reading and responding.
Here’s writing advice, sourced from the most exceptional content wizards in the business, which preps you for efficient marketing.
The 4 content writing secrets that hook customers
Content writing secret 1#: The second person narrative makes customers a part of your story
Writing all that’s wise and wonderful about your company is fine, but what’s in it for the customer? Writing in the second person with a strong emphasis on “You,” “Your,” and “Yours” brings the customer into sharp focus.
You may have an impeccable reputation, and the product is of inestimable value, but it’s when you highlight the benefits that you succeed in hooking the customer.
For example, let’s say you’re marketing CRM software. Instead of listing to-die-for features, try explaining how it’s easier for the client to manage customers on a single unified platform, with a couple of live examples thrown in.
Devise a short video with a pleasant voiceover explaining the benefits, so the possibilities of the software unravel before the eyes of the customer. After all, seeing is believing.
Content writing secret 2#: Personalize your content keeping the target audience’s intent in mind
Focus unwaveringly on the customer, not just the product. If you initiate the selling pitch before establishing a personal rapport with the customer, you’re bound to fail. The best way is to spend quality time building your brand and developing an online persona that makes people love you and want to come back for more.
Make your emails sound like you’re speaking to a friend and keep the tone direct and uncomplicated, devoid of business jargon. Try lowering the sales pitch to 30 percent of the email. Use the main body of your message to establish a rapport with the customer and dovetail the benefits the customer derives from the product.
Remember that your goal is to befriend the customer and create lasting relationships, and that comes through when you personalize each mail to fulfill the intent of the target audience.
Content writing secret 3#: Review, refine, and rework your content with Email marketing A/B testing
The question may cross your mind; how do you know whether your email marketing content is resonating with audiences?
The success of email marketing as a cost-effective way of reaching customers owes a lot to the measurability of campaign performance.
A/B testing affords you the luxury of evaluating two or more marketing ideas simultaneously, so you know which campaign performs better. The concept is easy to execute.
Design two or more email templates and address those emails to your target audience to see which campaign resonates better and elicits maximum responses. Try a different CTA, or add images complementing the text for better visual impact. There are thousands of measurable variables that prompt better email open rates.
Content writing secret 4#: The writing hacks that spark customer engagement
Want to know the simple yet effective strategies that propel the world’s most iconic advertising spiels and brand imaging campaigns? These are the tricks of the content writing trade that ought to be in your armory when you battle for customer engagement.
1. Know the customer’s desire so you can hand it on a platter
What’s the sure shot way of knowing what customers want? By directly asking what interests customers. Customers love to engage surveys and take part in contests, especially when there’s a cozy incentive at the end of the rainbow.
Embedding a customer feedback loop makes even hesitant customers want to engage with you. Provide a survey related link or ask for a direct response. The feedback you get will go a long way in improving your offers and services.
2. Bring a sense of urgency to your message, make customers click
There are two ways of making customers want to click immediately. One is to present the kind of offer that’s hard to refuse like a no-obligation free trial with a lower-cost premium upgrade for first comers. The other is to position a timer counting the days to offer expiry, and with a series of emails leading up to D-day.
3. Pack a punch in delivering the after-thought
When you forward a soulful message to a friend, you often catch yourself saying something pithy in your P.S. line. This may sound old-fashioned, but content marketing geniuses are waking up to the power of the P.S. line.
Customer psychology tells you that the catchy headline and the bottom-ended bold-typed P.S. line linger in the minds of readers that speed-read messages.
So the P.S. line is the right place to mention the problem (the customer’s pain), your solution (the customer’s gain), and a deadline to spark an immediate customer response.
4. Avoid the “spammy content” look that messes with mail delivery
Unknown to you, your creative content-rich emails could be landing up in the receiver’s spam box because overactive spam filters detected spam trigger words you’re better off avoiding. Keep these spam filter-fighting tips in mind:
Limit the content to 150-200 words to keep under the spam radar.Avoid image-only emails with low textual content as filters treat them as empty messages.Avoid all-caps sentences, red highlighting, exclamation marks, and phrases like “Click here,” “Free offer,” “Don’t miss,” and what’s very obvious “This is not spam!” triggers that spam filters regularly pick up.
Improving email deliverability through email validation
What’s the point in serving up personalized customer-friendly emails if messages don’t land in the customer’s inbox?
Sanitize customer contact information and validate email addresses using a high-quality email validator adhering to GDPR-compliant security protocols.
Reputed email validators maintain the quality of your customer data, prevent emails from bouncing undelivered, maximize ROI by savings expenses, and kick-start customer engagement.
The Bottom-Line for your Email Marketing Strategy
The time, energy, and resources you commit to crafting compelling content translate to better ROI, boosting your email marketing campaign.
High-quality content grabs eyeballs when you’ve researched your audience, and you’ve figured out the ideal way of aligning the content to suit the audience’s interests.
Walk the talk that every single word you write has to earn its presence in the body of your email message. Then you’ll be extra careful in keeping content concise and perfectly tuned to connect with the audience.
It’s ok if you’re not born to write; understand your audience and deliver what they’re asking for in a language that is instantly appealing, emotionally upbeat, and sparks a positive response.
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