The Anatomy of the Perfect Marketing Email

With 91% of consumers checking their email at least once a day, email is still one of the best places to reach and market to your target audience.

To inspire them to open and engage with your emails, however, you’ll need to consistently send great marketing emails that warrant your recipients’ time and attention. Doing so will position you to generate favorable outcomes like more traffic to your website, increased revenue, repeat sales, and loyal customers.

The good news is that you can easily craft the perfect email message that fosters engagement and creates results. The following illustrates the anatomy of a winning marketing email that you can use every time you send a message to your list.

#1 Create a Compelling Subject Line

Your headline is the first thing your recipient sees so you want to make it great. Your open percentages significantly depends on how catchy and intriguing your subject line is to your readers. It’s imperative that it grabs attention, resonates with your audience, and gives readers a glimpse of the contents inside.

Here are a few ideas to crafting winning subject lines to improve open rates:

  • Keep it short so your title doesn’t get cut off for mobile users
  • Personalize it with their name or location for better responsiveness
  • Do tell them what to expect inside
  • Use action-oriented verbs to inspire readers to move
  • Create a sense of urgency
  • Using “Sale”, “New”, or “Video” in subject lines boost open and click-through rates
  • Numbers work extremely well with subject lines
  • Pose a question to boost engagement

#2 Keep the Body Short, Sweet, and to the Point!

In the body of your email, clearly convey your offer and how it can benefit your readers. Always keep your target audience in mind when writing your emails. You see, you want to create your message as if you’re speaking directly to your prospect…because you are. So make it friendly, valuable, yet to the point to maintain interest.

It’s also important that your content is easy to read and flows well for your list. Since email is the most popular activity performed on smartphones, your viewer is most likely engaging in your content on their mobile device. Be sure that it’s legible by using short paragraphs and bullet points throughout the body.

#3 Use Visuals to Capture Attention

Did you know that adding video multimedia to an email can increase click rates by 300% (Source: Emma)? Also, 65% of users prefer emails to contain mostly images. Including visuals within the body can significantly improve engagement and email experience with your list. Therefore, plan to use more graphics in your email marketing strategy to get more readers interacting with your message.

Consider adding a branded banner in each email. Leverage beautiful email design that aligns with your brand colors and logo. Finally, including video, funny (but appropriate) GIFs, and images can truly enhance your message, but don’t overdo it. Two visuals maximum does the job!

Need help with custom graphics and design that exudes your brand message and vision? Reach out to us here and let’s chat!

#4 Have One Clear CTA

The goal to sending an email is to get your list to take a specific action that ultimately moves them further down your sales funnel to the purchase. Typically, you want them to click on the link that leads to the next step. Whether it directs to a blog post, video, or sales page, the objective is to get them there. So it’s important that your call-to-action is stated clearly so readers know where to go next.

The following are best practices for optimizing CTAs in your email content:

  • Focus on one primary action you want your audience to take
  • Create a CTA with a button or link. Make it stand out
  • Keep your CTAs above the fold so its visible without having to scroll down
  • Use action, urgency, and friendly words in your CTA
  • Include multiple, but the same, links and buttons throughout your email. The more they see it, they more apt they are to take action

#5 Segment Your List for Increased Responsiveness

Email segmentation is a powerful strategy that yields amazing results in your email marketing. Actually, marketers who segmented their email lists experienced 28% lower unsubscribed rates. They’ve also noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns (Source: Campaign Monitor). It pays to categorize your list for greater optimization.

With segmenting, you’re able to personalize your content so it truly speaks and resonates with your reader. You can divide your list by location, the content types they prefer, a recent purchase they made, age, gender, preferred customer status, or based on buyer personas. By doing so, you can send messages that relates to their interest or recent action they made as a follow-up.

Conclusion

One final piece to the perfect marketing email is ensuring your message is mobile-friendly. If users are unable to read your email properly because it doesn’t fit their screen, they will quickly discard it. Test your email message before sending it to make sure it looks well for mobile readers.

Use this anatomy as a guide towards sending the perfect marketing email. By bolstering your email strategy, you will experience better engagement and generate more revenue with your list.