When you think of email marketing, equating emails to dating isn’t the first thing that pops in your mind, but they’re pretty similar. Your inbox is your love life and the emails are your suitors pining for your attention. Like dating in real life, it’s going to take more than a catchy subject line to get your affection or in this case your business.
Like in real life you have have categories you place people. Emails are no different. There are emails from companies that you already have parked in the “friend zone.” They’re nice, but they’re never going to be anything more than just a nice email and more than likely they will never get your business. You have the wannabe hipsters and trendsetters trying so hard to be cool to woo you, but you can see through their façade and their gimmicky tactics. You also have the weirdos who just want photos of your feet and you immediately mark those as spam.
So how do you get the attention of your love interest? You be yourself, be original. You can only fake being someone else for so long before who you truly are makes an appearance. And email marketing is no different.
With your email campaigns you don’t want to come off to desperate. You don’t want to scare people off by blasting them over and over with emails. In the movie, “Swingers,” a character, Mike, got the phone number of this girl and he just repeatedly called her over and over leaving message after message and one time she picks up and basically tells him to lose her number. The same can happen with you. They could unsubscribe from receiving your campaigns or just “ghost” you completely.
You basically have one chance to make an impression with your email marketing. If your subject line game is weak you can forget ever moving to the next level. You have to be witty, but there is a fine line between corny and witty. Remember the optimal subject line is about 45-60 characters. It’s not a lot to get their attention. Be original, but get to the point and fast.
Take the subject line, “Fall into Savings.” It’s cute and it’s seasonal, but is it enough to get them to open your email, especially if they’ve never heard from you before? The answer is no. Try adding something to it like, “Fall into the Savings with 50% Off” or something catchy, “The temperatures are dropping and so are our prices,” or “There is a chill in the air, but our sales are heating up.”
Getting them to open your email is the hard part, but getting them to click on a link or button to get to your site is the next hurdle. This is the first date of email marketing. You don’t want to overwhelm them with your entire life story or in this case every product or service you offer. Nobody has time these days to sit there and just scroll through your Harry Potter novel of an email. Some best practice analytics say that somewhere between 75 and 150 words is perfect.
Imagery is like the perfume or cologne of the email. It can either enhance it or you email could reek of too much imagery. It’s best to keep it simple and just spray a little imagery into your email. You don’t want them waiting for your emails to completely load before they can see anything and if they’re using a mobile device it’s even more of a turn off.
Don’t forget to include links to your social media pages as well. Maybe they’re interested, but before they make the move to click your link they want to do some background checks on your via social media. Just make sure those pages are up to date and show who you are trying to be in your emails. Nothing worse than someone pretending to be someone else just to get a date or a click for their link.
And if you make it all the way into the recurring visits phase of your emails, don’t be like Mike from Swingers and bombard them. Play it cool and let them know you’re interested and you can check on them from time to time with some amazing deals. Their time is important so don’t waste it with pointless emails or regurgitate the same message email after email.
Email marketing is a relationship between you and your customers and you constantly have to work to show them that you’re worth it and that they mean the world to you. Don’t be afraid to spice it up either just as long as your stay true to who you are.
Photo by René Ranisch on Unsplash