For many businesses, email marketing falls flat because they treat it as an afterthought, using it more like a soapbox, rather than a means to effectively communicate with your audience or potential new clients/customers. There is a lot happening on screens, especially the internet, and as more devices connect to he internet, more noise is going to rise in volume and your message will likely be drowned out. Rather than screaming in the middle of Times Square at anyone who might stop to listen (they won’t, and they’ll think you’re wasting their time), you need to capture their attention right from the start with a killer subject line.
However, even an email with an eye-catching and attention-grabbing subject line won’t convert a reader if the body copy and overall message are bland and uninspired. It kind of goes like this:
Good subject line, bad message – Opened and them promptly deleted. The user may mark you as spam and write you off entirely.
Bad subject line, good message – It doesn’t matter if your message or offer inside is incredible, if you’ve got a bad subject line, that message is getting trashed.
Bad subject line, bad message – Clearly the worst possible outcome, this will get deleted every time and the user won’t have any faith in your communications going forward.
It’s easy to see why you need to put a little attention into your email marketing strategy to build confidence with your base and potential new customers. If you want to convert anyone to take any form of action, you need to speak directly to them.
So let’s say you’ve got a great subject line and a great message, but you don’t know who to target or how to target them. Well, bad news: that great message went to an uninterested reader and will feel like one of a million on a mailing list and may unsubscribe to avoid any future spam.
You really need to craft your messages carefully and target the right readers to avoid having your emails, and the hard work that went into writing and designing them, ending up in the digital trash bin.
So finally, let’s say you’ve worked hard to design an incredible email, made a snappy subject line, and created the perfect content within to excite your readers. Then what? Plenty of emails get deleted because there is no call to action (realistically, you should have a couple peppered throughout the message so that it gets drilled into the readers head and they have no option but to click and find out more about your product or service).
To review, the 4 basic steps to a solid email marketing campaign are:
- Engaging subject lines
- Compelling body copy
- Niche targeting
- And a direct call to action.
Here’s the bad news: even if you follow those 4 steps, your email may still get deleted. Why?
There are plenty of little things you need to do beyond basic copy/design in an email. Our Los Angeles marketing agency knows all of those little things, and more, to make your email marketing campaign a success.
Here’s one more little secret we’ll share: add alt text to your images.
If you want to boost your email marketing metrics, contact our offices to find out how we can do it for you.