Bira’s ecommerce partner EKM share its secrets to developing more emotive email marketing campaigns to help drive sales.

If you’re looking to take your email marketing campaigns to the next level and want to drive more engagement and action from your audience, then we’re going to be talking about a few different ways you can achieve this.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools you have in your arsenal. Emails are 40% more successful at conversions than Facebook or Twitter, according to research.

If you’re not already making the most of your email marketing then you really need to be thinking about how to utilise it to grow your business and drive actions from your customers and subscribers.

How to drive action from your emails

Email marketing is definitely something that you learn and craft over time and experience to create really good content. If you think about your own emails, what kind of emails do you open? Are they relevant? Is the subject line intriguing?

And what kind of emails do you delete straight away? Those with spammy looking subject lines? Irrelevant to you? Uninterested in what that sender has to say? There are a lot of reasons why people don’t open emails so, in order to drive action from your email subscribers, there are a few things you need to do and learn.

Set objectives

For each email that you’re thinking about creating, you need to, first of all, think about the objective of the email. Is it to promote a new product or sale, offer discounts, or to encourage customers to check out the items left in their cart?

You need to know exactly what you’re trying to achieve with the email before you even start thinking about what you’re going to include in the content. Once you’ve narrowed this down, you can then start developing the context and content part of the email. But first, we need to look at the different types of language you can use to help you improve your emails.

Piquing your reader’s interest starts with the subject line. 35% of readers open the email based solely on the subject line alone which is why, as the first thing you see your subject line needs to be able to pique enough interest for the reader to open the email – this is the first barrier.

The subject line you use will depend on the type of email you’re creating for example is the email a pain-point email or a FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) email? There are some good examples out there that can give you some inspiration but here are a few based on pain-point emails, retargeting emails and FOMO emails.

FOMO

  • “Uh-oh, your prescription is expiring”
  • “You’re missing out on points.”
  • “[URGENT] You’ve got ONE DAY to watch this…”
  • “Your 7-figure plan goes bye-bye at midnight…”
  • “[WEEKEND ONLY] Get this NOW before it’s gone…”
  • “Mary, Earn double points today only”
  • “Tonight only: A denim lover’s dream”

All these examples have some element of urgency i.e. if they don’t take action they’ll miss out on something and the use of personalisation helps to make further impact upon the reader.

Retargeting

  • “Hey, forget something? Here’s 20% off”
  • “The price dropped for something in your cart”
  • “Mary, your Envira account is on hold!”
  • “I’m deleting your Envira account”
  • “Offering you my personal email”
  • “Did you miss out on some of these new features?”
  • “Good news: Your Pin’s price dropped”
  • “ We are not gonna give up on you!”

Pain Points

  • “Feed your guests without breaking the bank”
  • “Where do all these toys go?”
  • “Get more kitchen space with these easy fixes”
  • “Stop wasting money on ink”
  • “Your beauty issues, solved”
  • “Since we can’t all win the lottery…”
  • “How to survive your next overnight flight”
  • “Wanted: Cute and affordable fashions”

So once you’ve crafted the perfect subject line, and your reader has opened the email, how do you get them to read it and take action?

Emotive language

First we’re going to be looking at emotive language and how it can be used in several ways to achieve the desired effect on your readers. This can vary from anticipation and excitement to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), a sense of belonging and connection to curiosity. The words you use will have an impact on the actions that your readers take which is why it’s so important to understand emotive language and how to use it effectively.

Personalisation is your first step to breaking through that first barrier as it helps you reader to feel like whatever you are saying is specifically for them. All of the time taken to write, create and send the email was just for that reader. Of course it isn’t, but personalisation helps you soften the start of the conversation.

Identifying your customers’ problems, issues and difficulties will help you further appeal to their emotions. Your email should address these issues and offer helpful ways to solve them,and take the pressure off of your customers’ pain points. You also want to keep in mind you never want to bring up pain points if you don’t have a solution for them that is simple, and easily accessible to the customer.

Persuasive language

Whilst emotive language is great at building a connection with your readers, it doesn’t quite get the job done on it’s own – this is where persuasive language comes in.

But before we can start using persuasive language we need to get their attention, build interest and desire and encourage action, otherwise known as AIDA. These are the key elements you need within the content of your email to encourage and persuade your readers to not only engage with the content of the email but also to take action.

Attention

The attention is gained through the subject line as we mentioned earlier. It piques their interest and baits them into opening the email to find out more.

Interest

The interest is all about the first few lines of content within your email. You got their attention now you need to build their interest in what you have to say. The content will again depend heavily on the purpose of the email.

Desire

The desire is created by fulfilling a need that the reader has. A great example of fulfilling a need is offering a limited time discount for a customer’s abandoned cart. This may encourage them to complete checkout rather than forgetting about the items.

CTA (Call to Action)

Finally, your call to action is the final piece of the puzzle. Place this once or twice throughout your email depending on it’s length so your reader doesn’t have to scroll to the bottom if they’re ready to take action and ensure that it’s short and sweet.

Examples include:

  • Sign up here
  • Get your FREE item now
  • Get started
  • Learn more

With the right balance of emotive and passive language coupled with correct targeting, your email engagement rate will rise and the ROI on your email campaigns will increase too.

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