by Caitlin Haines These days, it seems like you need an email address for everything. I was shopping the other day, and the cashier ...
by Caitlin Haines
These days, it seems like you need an email address for everything.
I was shopping the other day, and the cashier asked for my email address so they could send me a digital receipt.
Sneaky.
What would they do with my email address afterwards?
As a loyal member of the email marketing world, I knew exactly what they’d be doing with it.
Standing there, in front of the cashier, I pictured sales emails pitching me discounts and offers.
I pictured emails highlighting the latest stock and tapping into my ego by calling me a valued customer.
With the number of email users set to rise to 2.9 billion by 2019, it’s no wonder that businesses are keen to get into their customers’ inboxes.
Unlike social media, where you have to hope that users come across your updates, emails land directly in front of your customers.
This is why more than 86% of businesses are planning to increase their email marketing budgets over the next year.
But, when almost 105 billion emails are sent every single day, it’s difficult to stand out.
It’s completely do-able, though, especially if you stick to our tried and tested method: the 3 E’s of a perfect email.
Once you’ve nailed this framework and work through it every time you want to communicate with your people, your open rates will soar and you’ll generate more leads and sales.
So what exactly are these three E’s?
When
someone’s inbox is getting flooded like that, you need to make sure you
get them excited about your email as soon as possible.
Think about it: how many times have you opened your emails in the morning, taken a quick scroll through, decided there’s nothing of interest, and deleted everything in sight?
It happens more than you think.
The excitement needs to start from the moment a consumer sees your email land in their inbox, which means your subject line needs to attract and entice.
If it doesn’t do that, they won’t click through and they won’t read the message you’ve lovingly crafted for them.
The key here is to create a subject line that’s hyped up, but not too hyped up.
Research shows that 33% of email recipients open an email based on its subject line alone. That’s a lot of pressure for a single sentence, right?
Which is why it’s vital you come up with a subject line that packs a punch.
Let’s take a look at some examples.
Our own Jimmy Kim piqued subscribers’ curiosity by pitching “Here’s how to make 20 visitors turn into 100… or 100 into 500…”
Refinery29 tapped into people’s fascination with the weird and wonderful with their “10 bizarre money habits making Millennials richer.”
Personal
finance legend Robert Kiyosaki drew attention by inspiring action and
offering something free in his email “Reject Passivity. Choose to take
action or regret it. (Free Access to my Event)”.
What
it boils down to is this: you want to make your subject line exciting
enough to get people’s attention, but still be able to deliver what
you’ve promised in the body of the email.
This is where you educate your readers and teach them exactly what you need to in order to warm them up or educate them on the product or topic.
Remember here that educating isn’t just getting them to understand the product.
You’re also warming them up to the idea of it first, and providing them with solid information about why they need it in their lives.
Email marketing is special, because it is one of the best ways to get warm traffic through your digital doors.
With our formula for the perfect email, you’re teaching your subscribers information to warm them up and turn them from cold or warm prospects into red hot ones.
You can do this in a number of ways, by creating content like:
This is your call-to-action, or the thing that makes your subscribers click through to your site or product page.
Think of it as a part of the sales process.
For sales people, the goal is very simple – to get prospects to buy.
With your emails, you want to do the same thing, but get them to click or take a specific action.
This is the moment your email has been building up to.
It’s the reason you’ve crafted 10+ subject lines, experimented with different variations, and put together a piece of writing that could win awards for its educational content.
By not including an eye-catching, powerful call-to-action, you’re falling at the last hurdle.
To put it bluntly, it would have been a waste of time writing the email.
As a marketing tactic, the end goal of email marketing isn’t to get people to open your email and read it.
The goal is to get them to take the next step after that, whether that’s clicking through to a product page or signing up for a free trial.
Without this step, you’ve created a campaign that has a vital part missing so, if you’re thinking about skipping this step of the process, don’t!
Emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%.
These numbers are hard to ignore, right?
So how can you make sure your call-to-action is getting all the attention it deserves?
Bringing Together the 3 E’s of Email Marketing
This three-step proven process brings together the three most important parts of an email – the subject line, the body of the email, and the call-to-action at the end.
Together, they are a powerful trio that turn warm prospects into hot ones by leading subscribers down a specific path.
The first step is getting them to open the email with a fun subject line that piques curiosity and promises something amazing.
The second step is creating the meat of an email that’s both educational and personal
And the final step is encouraging subscribers to click through to a sales page, a blog post, or somewhere else that gives them more information about your product or gives them the opportunity to hit buy.
If you want to generate more sales, get higher email open rates, and build stronger connections with your subscribers, creating the perfect email is the answer!
Source
These days, it seems like you need an email address for everything.
I was shopping the other day, and the cashier asked for my email address so they could send me a digital receipt.
Sneaky.
What would they do with my email address afterwards?
As a loyal member of the email marketing world, I knew exactly what they’d be doing with it.
Standing there, in front of the cashier, I pictured sales emails pitching me discounts and offers.
I pictured emails highlighting the latest stock and tapping into my ego by calling me a valued customer.
With the number of email users set to rise to 2.9 billion by 2019, it’s no wonder that businesses are keen to get into their customers’ inboxes.
Unlike social media, where you have to hope that users come across your updates, emails land directly in front of your customers.
This is why more than 86% of businesses are planning to increase their email marketing budgets over the next year.
But, when almost 105 billion emails are sent every single day, it’s difficult to stand out.
It’s completely do-able, though, especially if you stick to our tried and tested method: the 3 E’s of a perfect email.
The 3 E’s of a Perfect Email
These three aspects of a perfect email (a.k.a. an email that gets opened, gets read, and gets people to take action) are the things you should be doing for every single email you send out to your list.Once you’ve nailed this framework and work through it every time you want to communicate with your people, your open rates will soar and you’ll generate more leads and sales.
So what exactly are these three E’s?
-
Excite
When
someone’s inbox is getting flooded like that, you need to make sure you
get them excited about your email as soon as possible.Think about it: how many times have you opened your emails in the morning, taken a quick scroll through, decided there’s nothing of interest, and deleted everything in sight?
It happens more than you think.
The excitement needs to start from the moment a consumer sees your email land in their inbox, which means your subject line needs to attract and entice.
If it doesn’t do that, they won’t click through and they won’t read the message you’ve lovingly crafted for them.
The key here is to create a subject line that’s hyped up, but not too hyped up.
Research shows that 33% of email recipients open an email based on its subject line alone. That’s a lot of pressure for a single sentence, right?
Which is why it’s vital you come up with a subject line that packs a punch.
How do you do that?
- Create more than one headline – it’s unlikely the first subject line you write will be the winning one, so it’s worth writing out a few (ten is a good start) and choosing the one that is the most enticing. Feel free to ask around to see which one people are drawn to the most.
- Split test your subject lines – experiment with subject lines to see what words and phrasings get the best reaction from your subscribers. When you’ve found a winning formula, use it with every email you send.
- Personalize your subject lines – people like to feel special, and personalizing your subject lines has exactly that effect. In fact, brands can see a 37% increase in open rates on emails with personalized subject lines than those without.
Let’s take a look at some examples.
Our own Jimmy Kim piqued subscribers’ curiosity by pitching “Here’s how to make 20 visitors turn into 100… or 100 into 500…”
Refinery29 tapped into people’s fascination with the weird and wonderful with their “10 bizarre money habits making Millennials richer.”Personal
finance legend Robert Kiyosaki drew attention by inspiring action and
offering something free in his email “Reject Passivity. Choose to take
action or regret it. (Free Access to my Event)”.What
it boils down to is this: you want to make your subject line exciting
enough to get people’s attention, but still be able to deliver what
you’ve promised in the body of the email. -
Educate
This is where you educate your readers and teach them exactly what you need to in order to warm them up or educate them on the product or topic.
Remember here that educating isn’t just getting them to understand the product.
You’re also warming them up to the idea of it first, and providing them with solid information about why they need it in their lives.
Email marketing is special, because it is one of the best ways to get warm traffic through your digital doors. With our formula for the perfect email, you’re teaching your subscribers information to warm them up and turn them from cold or warm prospects into red hot ones.
You can do this in a number of ways, by creating content like:
- How to do X
- What X does
- Why you should do X
The Middle Finger Project keeps emails short, but they include a piece of educational information.
Here’s how you can do that:
- Keep things short – people don’t have time to read really long emails. Keep yours to the point and your subscribers will love you for it.
- Engage with questions – have a conversation with your subscribers and ask them questions. It’s nice to feel like we’re valued and our opinions matter, right?
- Add a personal touch – people are subscribed to your list because they want to hear from you. And, as humans, we crave connections on a personal level, so throw in a few humorous stories about your life or a key lesson you have learned for good measure.
- Write in second person – the word you is one of the most persuasive words in the English language, so get using it!
-
Edify
This is your call-to-action, or the thing that makes your subscribers click through to your site or product page.
Think of it as a part of the sales process.
For sales people, the goal is very simple – to get prospects to buy.
With your emails, you want to do the same thing, but get them to click or take a specific action.
This is the moment your email has been building up to.
It’s the reason you’ve crafted 10+ subject lines, experimented with different variations, and put together a piece of writing that could win awards for its educational content.
By not including an eye-catching, powerful call-to-action, you’re falling at the last hurdle.
To put it bluntly, it would have been a waste of time writing the email.
As a marketing tactic, the end goal of email marketing isn’t to get people to open your email and read it.
The goal is to get them to take the next step after that, whether that’s clicking through to a product page or signing up for a free trial.
Without this step, you’ve created a campaign that has a vital part missing so, if you’re thinking about skipping this step of the process, don’t!
Emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%.
These numbers are hard to ignore, right?
So how can you make sure your call-to-action is getting all the attention it deserves?
- Use first-person phrasing: using wording like “start my free trial” can increase click-through rates by 90%.
- Use anchor text rather than a flashy button: by doing this, you can increase conversion rates by 121%.
- If you do go the button route, adding an arrow to your icon can increase clicks by up to 26%.
Bringing Together the 3 E’s of Email Marketing
This three-step proven process brings together the three most important parts of an email – the subject line, the body of the email, and the call-to-action at the end.
Together, they are a powerful trio that turn warm prospects into hot ones by leading subscribers down a specific path.
The first step is getting them to open the email with a fun subject line that piques curiosity and promises something amazing.
The second step is creating the meat of an email that’s both educational and personal
And the final step is encouraging subscribers to click through to a sales page, a blog post, or somewhere else that gives them more information about your product or gives them the opportunity to hit buy.
If you want to generate more sales, get higher email open rates, and build stronger connections with your subscribers, creating the perfect email is the answer!
Source
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