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The average business professional sends and receives about 126 emails per day.
For many of you reading this, that may seem like a light morning — but it only goes to further the argument that in order to be successful, one must find a way to stand out in the crowded inbox and make the most of each second in front of a reader.
So, in the world of too many emails, too little time, and too much distraction, how can marketers optimize their email content to ensure they make the most of every opportunity to break through to their audience?
If you’re doing it right, each one of your recipients should read your email and think that you wrote it just for them. By having a firm grasp on your audience, and segmenting your database into tightly related groups, marketers can send hyper-targeted personalized email campaigns that specifically speak to each segment of their audience. A study by The Aberdeen Group found that personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14 percent, and conversion rates by 10 percent. Put simply, send people the emails that matter to them.
The average newsletter only gets read from start to finish by 19% of the people who opened it. This means that on top of providing relevant content, marketers must deliver the content in a way that is focused and attention-grabbing if they want the reader to retain anything from it at all. The most common mistake marketers make is to try to squeeze too much content into a single email. The message then loses focus, readers don’t naturally understand what to do next, and the email loses the battle for attention.
As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Images in emails are worth at least that when it comes to capturing attention in a limited window. It’s OK to obsess about your email’s featured content; the right image and a perfectly written headline might just buy you those extra few seconds of attention you need to deliver your message or pitch your service.
Not sure which image, headline, or subject will incite the most action from your subscribers? The beauty of modern email marketing technology is that you don’t need to guess. Split testing allows you to test a couple variations of your email with a sample of your contacts and determine which one generated the best results (more opens, more clicks, etc.). Split test your email campaigns to determine the optimal versions of all of the email’s elements. Common elements to test that can pay huge dividends are:
With the rise of social media marketing and the personal communication between consumers and brands that it brought, people have become accustomed to putting a “face” on a brand. When it comes to email marketing, recipients are more likely to pay attention to your email if feels genuine and not like some faceless software just pushed out 100,000 emails to a database purchased online.
For starters, make sure the “reply-to” email is a real person, so recipients can continue the conversation if they want to. Instead of the sender being just the name of your company, use a real person to start building relationships. Emails from “Mailify” might be great, but when recipients become accustomed to emails from “Eric at Mailify,” and the quality content that comes with them, we’ve started to leverage human relationships to build brand loyalty.
In just a few seconds your email needs to capture your reader’s attention, add value to their lives, and convince them to take action. If you can do that, then email marketing will continue to be one of the most cost-effective marketing channels available to businesses of all sizes and industries.
Eric Krattenstein is the US CMO for Mailify, a global email marketing app with over 30,000 users worldwide. Formerly the VP of internet marketing for an digital agency in NYC, Eric has helped dozens of businesses over the last several years create and implement impactful digital marketing strategies.
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