Effectiveness comes from knowing your audience instinctively. Are you listening to their wants? Answering their questions? Meeting their needs? Just “blasting” content to get something out the door isn’t the answer. Email marketing can be a challenging, unending journey but to be a better marketer, placing our audience first is essential.  

ELIMINATE THE WORDY EMAIL

Here is a collection of tips offered by email and content marketers (referenced below) as well as our own team of experts.

PREPARE

• Set a clear goal.

DRAFT

• Lead with a value proposition.
• Personalize in ways that give insight that you know who they are.
• Write for scanning using the “F” pattern.  People scan left to right then up and down.
• Be brief. Eliminate useless adjectives that take up space instead of adding value.
• Write for a sixth grade reading level.
• Watch including industry jargon – keep it simple.

DESIGN

• Use supporting images.
• Use a clear, strong and friction free call-to-action button.
• Lead readers to a landing page for deeper insight.

REFINE

• Read the content aloud to see how it sounds.
• Segment and send to those that will find the content useful.
• Test. Test not only how the email renders on all devices but test the message, too. Did your content resonate with your audience?  Did they engage or better yet, convert?  Did you accomplish your goal?
• Adjust. If you answered “no” to any of the questions above, then adjust and test again.

RESOURCES

MarketingProfs Take 10: “Three Principles That Will Increase Your Email Marketing Conversions”

Litmus – “The Evolution of Email Spam: Here’s How Your Customers Now Define It”

Litmus – “How to Design Email Landing Pages that Convert”

MarketingProfs University – Marketing Writing Bootcamp, 2015 “Improve your Marketing Content by Writing with Purpose”,  Amy Thibodeau, presenter.*

*Registration to the latest Marketing Writing Bootcamp course is required to access this resource, but the course is well worth it!

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