If you need help with CTA samples you can test, language models like ChatGPT or Google’s Bard can be your best new copywriting tools. But you still need to prime the pump with a well-written prompt that recognizes the values of a good CTA.

If you don’t structure your request effectively, you’ll end up with variations on “Submit” and “Click here.” You’ll still be at square one.

Case in point: I asked ChatGPT to give me 10 email calls to action, each with five words or fewer, for a Mother’s Day campaign using an appeal to emotion. I’ll spare you the results, except to say each one included “Click here.”

The journey to effective CTAs

Developing a better CTA begins with understanding what a call to action means and why the quest to create a good one often falls short.

A call to action is like a subject line. There’s an art to writing one that persuades your readers to do what you want them to do. And, just as with subject lines, they often end up being one of the last jobs on a campaign creation to-do list, with little thought or creativity left over for creating a stand-out request.

An effective call to action tells your customers what will happen when they click. That’s one reason why “click here” is a terrible CTA.

Yes, you want them to click. But we don’t have to tell them to do it anymore. They’ve already figured that out. “Click here” focuses on the process of clicking, not the outcome or the benefit.

So instead of stating the obvious, you tell them what will happen when they click and, subtly or not so subtly, how they will benefit by clicking.

Remember that your email message is just the first step to a conversion. Its goal is to persuade customers to visit your website, where the conversion happens. That’s why the call to action is so important. It’s not the only marketing copy in the message, but it’s the nerve center where the action happens.

Dig deeper: The art of natural funneling: How to lead your readers without forced CTAs

4 rules for better calls to action

1. Focus on the relevant next step

This tells customers what will happen when they click on your website and hints why they should take that next step. “Download the whitepaper” is better than “Click here,” but only marginally so. What will they learn when they get your whitepaper? “Streamline your operations” might resonate more with time-pressed customers.

Ditto for “Read more” or “Learn more,” which are popular CTAs for publishers and content marketers who send newsletters with snippets of articles that lead to the full version on the website.

They aren’t awful but they don’t deliver that “oomph” that nudges a casual reader into action. Look for ways to incite your reader’s desire to read more.

2. Experiment with different content styles

Can a CTA be too long? Too short? The point is to write a punchy, attention-getting CTA in a brand-appropriate voice that tells the customer the next step to take on the journey to conversion while subtly conveying why they should do it.

That’s why it’s okay to go off-script sometimes. Call on what you know about your customers to help you write an effective one. 

Consider these two suggestions:

Use sequential CTAs. Who says you can have only one CTA per email message? You can use one action-directed CTA and one benefit-focused one. Or have one CTA flow into the next. This takes the load off a single CTA and allows you to be even more persuasive without making readers read more.

Surround the CTA with an explanatory copy or supporting statements. This can amplify your CTA if your template or button style limits you to a set number of characters or words. Your copy could ask a question, and your CTA could answer it. 

Email on Acid had a nice take on this example in a recent newsletter. The recap to a featured blog post reads, “OK, so your email landing in the Gmail Promotions tab. But is it really that bad?” The CTA below says, “Let’s find out.”

One traditional rule of thumb with a CTA is that it should complete this sentence: “I want to … ” That still applies, although you’ll have to experiment a little to ensure it doesn’t sound forced or artificial.

Should your CTA include a verb? Yes, but this is another copywriting rule that isn’t absolute. The verb can be understood. Or you could skip it if you can replace it with a clever alternative.

3. Be careful what you ask for

Email CTAs differ from those you use on your website because email is a push channel. You can push the messages to your customers without waiting for them to find you. But that also means they might be at the top of the purchase funnel and not as ready to buy as they might be if they came to your website through search.

Email is usually the start of your journey. It plants the seeds or creates or amplifies a desire. That’s why you have to be careful not to put a big ask, like “Buy now,” in your email. Customers who need to read the fine print, search all your available options, and compare prices among different vendors before committing will likely be put off by that.

Give your customer something to anticipate, such as “Discover your best new style.” This invites action and offers a benefit and is front-loaded with a verb — those sexy action words which capture our attention.

You can switch to a variant of “Buy now” after your customers click on your landing page. They’ve self-qualified themselves as prospects, so they’re already farther down the purchase funnel. After reading your well-written product education, asking outright for a commitment makes more sense.

4. Talk to a person, not an audience

The best CTAs sound like you are asking a friend for a favor. Would you hand someone a book and say, “Learn more?”

This is extra important if you are working in B2B, where the “B” in B2B often stands for “boring.” In B2C email, it’s easy to picture the customers we’re talking to. B2B emails, where the human connection can feel more tenuous, often sound more “institution to institution.”

But you’re not emailing a company. You’re speaking to people who requested your email and have needs or challenges you can help with. Speak to them with a CTA that can motivate them. Even if they aren’t the decision-makers, they likely are influencers.

CTA examples to learn from 

Who Gives A Crap: ‘Where can I buy TP?’

That’s the actual name of a consumer brand which supplies bamboo toilet paper and consistently wins the CTA game. Their emails are a joy to read — well designed, completely serious and yet enjoyable insouciant about the wonders of proper loo roll. They take carefully considered licenses with the rules about CTAs. This one is much more interesting than “Find a store.”

Chipotle: ‘Order and earn’ 

The Chipotle brand of quick-serve restaurants uses email to drive online ordering, build engagement with brand storytelling, and promote its rewards program. This CTA on an email promoting a new product accomplishes two goals — telling customers to order and reminding them they will earn a reward if they do.

McDonald’s UK: ‘Sign up and get more,’ ‘Grab it on our app,’ ‘Unlock on our app’

Many of McDonald’s UK’s emails promote their mobile app. This set of sequential emails comes from an email campaign asking non-users to download, install and order on the app. The first CTA focuses on the benefits, while the follow-up CTAs show customers their rewards when they use the app.

Pitch: ‘Start with this template’

I love this CTA because it’s a textbook example of how to ask your customer to take the next step while also explaining the benefit of that next step. This B2B brand leads into the CTA with copy extolling the benefits: the templates are free, have a minimalist design, and help the user “craft the perfect pitch faster than ever.” The CTA is the logical next step.

eMarketer: ‘Read more about Apple’s hold on the market’

eMarketer’s newsletters rely on CTA buttons labeled “Read more” and “Download now” as much as other publications, but occasionally they switch it up with a text link that gives you a reason to click, like this one. This style can give you extra engagement options if you can’t shake the “Read more / Learn more” format.

Sequential CTAs

When my team and I are working on email campaigns for our clients or publishing our twice-monthly newsletter for email marketers, we spend lots of time working on the calls to action.

Our newsletter is a bit of a laboratory for us because we are focused on building our brand along with persuading our readers to read the full versions of the news stories we’ve chosen to keep them up to date on the latest email marketing news and trends. We often use sequential CTAs to nudge readers into clicking, express our brand voice and add interest.

For one newsletter that went out shortly before Christmas, we used a series of three CTAs, each of which was relevant to the article recap that went with it but, when taken in together, added a playful holiday touch:

• “Making a list” — About a list of email experts to follow
• “Checking it twice” — About trend predictions
• “Arose such a clatter” — About an article by fellow MarTech contributor Ryan Phelan that talks about “earth-shattering kabooms.”

Yes, they break the call-to-action rules I mentioned before. But in context, they make sense. 

Testing CTAs: Use a holistic approach

Your CTA should work in concert with all of the elements of your email message to deliver the greatest impact and persuade your customers to click. That’s another reason why “Shop now” or “Read more” are less effective. They cost you an opportunity to amplify your message, even if it’s subtle.

Your email platform likely includes a simple A/B split testing platform or module that pits one element against another. That might give you some insight, but you’ll learn more if you test two campaign variations. For example, one could focus on cost savings and the other on urgency. Your CTA should change to reflect the campaign focus.

The post Beyond ‘click here:’ 4 rules for better email CTAs appeared first on MarTech.

Up to 91% of consumers are changing their shopping habits in response to bleak economic news, according to a new SheerID study. Furthermore, 76% of UK and 70% of U.S. consumers don’t expect their countries’ economies to improve over the next year.

As marketers, we know what this means. When times get tough, marketing budgets get cut. We also know businesses that keep investing in email marketing are better off when the economy improves. How do you make that happen with less money and fewer team members?

I can answer that question with six tips. They combine quick wins for short-term gains with longer-term strategic revisions designed to work now during economic uncertainty and later when times improve.

Besides my own recommendations, I also asked five other email experts for their best advice for recession-proof email marketing.

1. Go for quick wins to get more from your marketing now

Getting started can be the hardest part. These four approaches make your email marketing program more effective, build stronger customer relationships, and use your resources more wisely.

Do an email audit to uncover gaps and reveal opportunities

This is almost always my first step with clients because it can show you where you can act quickly using your current resources.

Create or update your strategic plan

Whether you have a spreadsheet full of strategy or a bare outline, having a plan can help you allocate time and energy more efficiently. If you don’t have one, come up with one, even if it’s just for the present quarter.

Establish or upgrade an email testing plan

An email testing plan will help you learn more about your customers and measure your email effectiveness. Go beyond subject lines and button colors.

Test one campaign-level approach against another, such as emotion versus urgency or value. This will give you deeper insights you can apply beyond your next campaign.

Get more email into your customers’ inboxes

How long has it been since you looked at a post-campaign delivery report? You might discover you’re blocked or restricted at a key ISP. Call a deliverability expert to help you break through a logjam and get seen by more customers.

2. Fine-tune your marketing program to show customers you know who they are

Think back to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and how your company shifted gears to reach customers. It’s an appropriate comparison, Adam Purslow of TheLoyaltyCo told me. 

“Similar to what we saw during COVID-19, people have less disposable income,” he says. “The key is to push on with engagement and speaking to customers and being aware that people aren’t going to spend as much. If people are going out to eat only once a year or so now, being the restaurant people go to becomes more important.”

Email retains its advantage over search, social and web marketing because we can message our customers at tactical times. We can gently nudge customers so they can act when their wallet allows. That’s why we need to be in their inboxes regularly with great deals and relevant content.

But we must continue with empathy and a customer-centric focus on our recipients. We are grappling with meeting KPIs, but that thinking is more about the brand and less about customers. When you help customers achieve their goals, they will help you achieve yours. 

Dig deeper: Authentic storytelling: 5 rules for the new frontier of marketing

3. Protect your profit margin by targeting the right customers

“Use segmentation and targeting to find the people who might have lapsed but are more likely to re-visit before customers who are slightly warmer,” Purslow says. “You have to be careful with your targets and not blanket them with money. Keep monitoring your uptake and reporting.” 

Scott Cohen of SmileDirectClub says the email channel has a target on its back “because we’re [perceived as] cheap. We are also the channel to nurture and market to the purchase cycle, which gets longer. We have to balance that longer cycle against immediate returns.”

According to Tom Ricards of Bloomreach, we must also be aware that customer segments are fluid. “Understanding the customers is absolutely everything,” he says. “We need to be able to respond to changing segments in real time.”

4. Gather more customer and transactional data and listen to what they’re telling you

As I mentioned in my previous MarTech article (3 ways data can steer you wrong — and how to glean better insights), we need more than data. We need the insights we get from the data we have.

As email strategist Jennifer Hoth told me, “Now is a great time to gather first-party and zero-party data to understand why they’re buying and to get to know them better, to go beyond just the transactional data to know them personally. 

“We need to understand who they are, what their world is like now, what’s keeping them engaged, and to be sure with your data that you’re sending relevant communications.”

5. Don’t let fear hold you back

In my 24 years of doing email audits, I have found that most marketers leave money on the table because they aren’t sending emails often enough. That’s because of fear of deliverability issues. 

I’m not saying, “Forget the fear and blast your list!” You have to be smart and work out the best frequency or cadence for your product or service and audience. Don’t refrain from sending out of fear because you could make things harder for yourself.

You might even have more leeway with frequency than you realize, says fractional CMO Skip Fidura. “You know every email you send out. Your recipients don’t know every email they receive. You might feel as if you’re sending out a lot, but it might not feel like that to your recipients.”

An email program that relies on an unending stream of “buy this now” emails will be even less effective if your customers have cut back on spending, no matter how many incentives you tack on. This is the time to put your data and insights to work for more personalized and personal emails.

“A client of ours sent out a small amount of highly personalized emails,” Purslow says. “Deliverability and open rates were great because the emails made subscribers feel like we were talking to them. As long as you’re clever with personalization, deliverability will not be an issue.”

6. Keep testing and learning

“It’s very important to know your audience and to always be testing,” Hoth says. “[Your audience] is always changing, especially in times like these. I appreciate being able to do A/B testing and to find out what tone works best with customers is genius, and it doesn’t cost what it would take to install a new technology.”

I’m just as passionate about testing, especially beyond campaign-level factors like subject lines. In both tough times and prosperity, it can pinpoint what moves your customers to act and whether your strategies and tactics effectively achieve your objectives. 

Dig deeper: 7 common problems that derail A/B/n email testing success

What these tips have in common

Yes, they do take time, and you might not have that luxury if you’re under more pressure to meet your goals. 

But these six tactics also force you to learn more about your customers: whether they’re stressed, looking for bargains, buying regularly or less often, or even disengaging. This gives you the knowledge to email more effectively now without shifting gears when prosperity returns for your customers. 

Email is the only tool you can adjust on the fly like this for quick results. Invest some of your precious time now to understand what’s happening and where you can adjust for short-term gains and long-term success.

The post 6 tactics to create recession-proof email marketing appeared first on MarTech.

It’s essential to know how to identify the right data, so your insights accurately guide your decision-making. In this article, I’ll tackle three ways data misuse can harm our marketing efforts and how a holistic testing methodology can help glean better insights. 

At the heart of significant marketing trends is data

Look at the trends that have occupied marketers’ attention over the last three years: 

• 2021: The rise of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature, which masked user activity data. Marketers panicked at the thought of losing open rates. 
• 2022: Zero-party and first-party data, which people suddenly realized they needed to offset the pending loss of third-party cookie information.
• 2023: The rise of ChatGPT and other AI-driven (meaning data-driven) natural language processing models.

Whether it involves losing access to data, needing to find new sources of data, or giving it the power to make decisions for us, data is at the heart of these trends.

Data has technological and philosophical definitions. It can be information a computer can use for processing or, as Google defines, “things known or assumed as facts, making the basis of reasoning or calculation” (emphasis mine).

That “or assumed” part is where we can go wrong with data. People always say, “The numbers don’t lie.” Data might not lie, but it also might not mean what you think. 

Dig deeper: Why we care about data-driven marketing

The good side of data

I might tell you things you already know about data, but hear me out. We rely on data daily, both in the obvious things and the non-obvious (to borrow a term from Rohit Bhargava).

For email marketers, the obvious includes marketing data we use when creating and structuring campaigns, choosing audiences, measuring success and taking the next steps. This is why email marketing is so useful. It generates data we can apply throughout the entire marketing ecosphere.

Then, there’s the non-obvious value. Our email data can inform other marketing channels and even go beyond the marketing team to support customer service, business operations and more throughout the company. 

Our campaigns are like an ongoing source of market research. Because the people we email are our prospective and existing customers, we’re tapping into, tracking and measuring our customer base daily.

On top of all that, today’s marketing technology makes it easy to gather data. We find data everywhere we turn — in our ESPs, automation platforms, CRMs, ecommerce engines. Numbers are flying past us so fast we can’t catch them all. 

But that’s my point. We don’t need all the numbers coming at us. We need to know what the right numbers are and what they mean — which is where we often go wrong. 

Dig deeper: Why we care about email marketing: A marketer’s guide

‘Insights, insights, insights’ not ‘data, data, data’

As my good friend Chad S. White, author of “Email Marketing Rules,” perfectly put it:

“You talk about ‘data-data-data.’ I’m not a fan of data. Nobody really wants data. What they really want are insights and analytics are how you find the insights that are hiding in your data.

Data will steer you wrong a lot. You need to make sure you’re bringing your knowledge about your customers, your knowledge about your business and analyze that data to squeeze out all the crap and be left with the stuff that’s gold.

There’s a lot of misdirection in the data. So insights, insights, insights. That’s what we want.”

– Chad S. White during a keynote speech at the ANA-Email Evolution Conference in Washington, DC.

You can collect all the data you want, but you also must sort the necessary data from the extraneous, the relevant from the irrelevant and the real from the fake to learn what it really means. 

We collect data not to fill up data silos, lakes and warehouses but to use it to understand our customers and measure how well our marketing programs work. Everything else we do as marketers hinges on those efforts. 

Thus, it can be damaging when we collect bad data or look for meanings data isn’t empowered to give because, as White says, it steers us wrong. The wrong data is just as bad as no data — maybe worse because it can give you a false sense of security and achievement. 

If you use email data to inform your brand’s understanding of your audience and drive decision-making beyond the marketing department, imagine the chaos if you base your insights on faulty analytics.

When good data goes bad: 3 scenarios to watch out for

Let me correct myself: data doesn’t go bad. It’s how we use and interpret it that creates problems. When you misuse your data — deliberately or accidentally — you can take your team and even your company down a long, wrong path. It’s easy to do, especially if you’re trying to optimize your email program by testing various parts and not just operating on instinct.

I can’t count how often clients started out with good testing intentions and veered off the path because the tests were set up incorrectly or because the team came to the wrong conclusions. Here are three scenarios where data can steer you wrong A/B testing.

1. Optimizing for the wrong success metric

Email is famous for being so easy to measure. All too often, the metric we choose doesn’t capture the true success or failure of our campaigns. But let’s not be too hard on email. Marketers in all channels, from social media to influencer marketing, make the same mistake.

The open rate is the obvious culprit. This metric solves one problem that plagues digital and traditional marketers alike — knowing whether someone actually viewed our campaigns or just scrolled past it, turned the page, tossed out the catalog or got up for a snack during the commercial. No wonder we leaped on sizable open rates as a measure of success.

But those big open rates often don’t translate into the metrics that matter, such as campaign revenue, orders, basket sizes, repurchases and other campaign-related numbers. If you use an intriguing subject line to optimize for a higher open rate, lots of people might open that email out of curiosity and then not go on to click. So you get an extraordinary open rate, but your campaign failed.

Many marketers panicked when Apple’s MPP feature launched in 2021 because it masked email activity data, like opens, times and locations. They worried that they would lose a key performance metric. It was a timely reminder for the rest of us that the open rate doesn’t always correspond to our campaign goals. 

However, the MPP work-around many suggested — to focus on the click rate — is only slightly better advice. Clicks are more tangible proof of customer interest than opens. But they can be gamed, too, and they don’t always correlate with conversions.

2. Changing direction based on one-off testing

This error goes hand in hand with optimizing for the wrong success metric. It happens when you run a single A/B test on a single feature, like a subject line, call to action, offer, image, body copy or time of day.

These tests are easy to do. Many ESPs let you set them up with just a few clicks. You might even get results that look clear-cut and unassailable. 

“Subject line A got a 54% open rate and a 25% click rate. Subject line B got a 24% open rate and a 12% click rate. Subject line A is the winner! Let’s do all of our subject lines like subject line A from now on!”

This assumes two facts the data doesn’t give you:

• A got more opens than B, and it also converted better.
• Your audience will always respond better to subject lines like A. 

A single A/B test gives you results only for that campaign, at that time, with that audience. But your audience is constantly changing. The people who opened and clicked on your so-called winning version this time might not be the ones who see your next campaign. Or they’ll see it but not respond the same way.

Changing your email approach based on a single test can lead to disaster. You need to keep testing and testing different components and making sure your success metrics reflect your campaign goals. 

If you want people to see your message, an open or click rate can work. But if you want them to purchase, register, upgrade, download, create an account or do some other business-related action, then you must keep testing to see what works over time. 

Dig deeper: How testing can give your email marketing a conversions boost

3. Relying on ad hoc testing instead of scientific methods

“Ad hoc” is a fancy term for “guesswork.” You’re essentially throwing things against the wall to see what sticks — testing a single component instead of taking a hypothesis-driven, holistic approach that considers all aspects of a campaign.

When you test on the fly, you open yourself up to the problems people encounter when they test a single component and then change direction based on that data. Again, the data isn’t wrong, but the conclusions you draw based on that data could be.

Scientific testing using a hypothesis is more likely to deliver meaningful data because it gives you a framework for deriving workable insights. Test duration is one example. All too often, many decisions are made too early in A/B testing. Let’s say your email platform’s A/B test feature lets you send Version A to one sample audience made up of 10% of your list and Version B to another 10% of your list, wait a couple of hours and send the winner to the remaining 80%. 

This method might give useful results if you test for opens or clicks. But when conversions are what matters, it doesn’t work. A 50/50 test is more suitable for calculating success based on conversion. It allows you to wait three days to a week before declaring the winner and stating the conclusion. 

Meaningful metrics such as conversions don’t always happen in the first 2 hours, and optimizing for those quick results may mean optimizing for the wrong result. The 50/50 test also gives you a greater sample size, thus also making the test more robust.

Combining scientific methods with holistic testing methodology gives you a broader understanding of your audience and what motivates them. Read more about testing problems and my holistic testing approach in this MarTech column, “7 common problems that derail A/B/n email testing success.”

Is your data telling you the right story? Try this litmus test

New clients often are skeptical when I point out (diplomatically, of course!) that their campaign performance or testing data don’t support the conclusions they’ve drawn from it. Why doesn’t the email make money even though they get great open or click rates?

If you’re wondering the same thing, my litmus test can reveal what happens when you use the wrong metrics to declare success or failure.

Create three lists:

• The top 10 campaigns with the highest open rate.
• The top 10 campaigns with the highest click rate.
• The top 10 campaigns with the highest conversions or other campaign goals.

Assuming your conversion calculation isn’t tied to your open rate but based on emails delivered, you should see little overlap among the three sets of campaigns. Now, look at the campaigns in each category. What do your top-converting campaigns look like compared to the ones that got the most opens or clicks? 

Did you use longer subject lines that acted like inbox sorters, appealing to your most motivated customers? Did the message content use longer or shorter copy, specific or general calls to action? Did one kind of campaign, like a flash sale, convert better than a new-collections campaign?

When you study the data this way, with your eyes on the results that matter instead of the data that’s easiest to collect, you’ll be able to achieve White’s goal to “analyze that data to squeeze out all the crap and be left with the stuff that’s gold.”

The post 3 ways data can steer you wrong — and how to glean better insights appeared first on MarTech.

Lovable brands embrace customers even when they aren’t in the mood or the market to buy. In dozens of ways, these brands show they appreciate shoppers for more than their lifetime customer value.

You can probably guess where I’m going with all of this lovey-dovey chat. A stellar brand experience is essential for creating a long-term relationship that delivers value for you and your customers. But you might not realize how email can drive that relationship.

Customers might sign up for your email program for discounts and special offers, but that shouldn’t stop you from finding all kinds of ways to show your appreciation through email while still keeping your eyes on your own goals.

Maybe you think a well-designed sales email that renders well across multiple platforms, has an engaging balance of copy and images, working links and attractive offers is the best gift you could give your subscribers. But you can package that message in many different ways that also speak to customers in different situations.

Bring the love with these 4 personalized emails

As an email obsessive, I’ve assembled a noteworthy collection of emails I love that has also helped me feel more attached to the brands that sent them. That means I’m more likely to choose them when I need the kind of products they sell. 

This illustrates my concept that successful email marketing is actually helpful marketing. When we help customers achieve their goals, they will in turn help us achieve ours. And that is a pretty good basis for a loving relationship.

These emails have two other advantages that serve your own needs, too:

• They use first-party data: All four call on customer data that you collect directly from your customers and then display in a way that shows your customer how you use their data to send better emails. 

• You can automate each email: Each message is a great example of using email technology to send messages that deliver value for customers but also point back to your own goals. They aren’t “set and forget,” however. You will need to keep an eye on the design, timing and data integrations to ensure they are firing correctly, with the right data, and not triggering bounces or spam complaints.

1. Back-in-stock notification

A back-in-stock notification request is a strong signal intent signal. So, customers who take the time to ask for one deserve an attractive email that reminds them when that product becomes available, right? 

This email exemplifies the basic concept of customer service. Here’s the email Cult Beauty sent to entice me back.

Subject line: Items on your wishlist are in stock

What this email gets right

The subject line tells me right away that I’m getting this email because of something I did, so I know it’s super-relevant. The message itself gets right to the point and doesn’t make me wonder what I added to my wishlist so long ago. 

What it could improve 

It’s a bit generic. I love the headline on the inside copy: “Look Who’s Back” because it creates a little excitement and intrigue. It could make a great subject line, but I would want to test it before changing it.

2. Birthday greeting

Only 31% of retail email marketers send birthday greetings according to the Litmus 2021 State of Email report. So there’s a big opportunity to reach out to customers on their special day.

Ask your design team to come up with a clever design and attach an offer, as Holistic’s client, Pandora does with its birthday email below, or even share a special freebie if your budget allows it.  

Subject line: Happy Birthday, Kath

What this email gets right

I love the deep personalization in the “Unique Gifts” section, which appears below the barcode in the original email. It reflects my initial, my star sign and other November birthday ideas.

This makes the suggested products more relevant than a cross-selling or upselling list based on past purchases.

What it could improve

Well, I wouldn’t say no to a Pandora freebie instead of a discount. But aside from that, this email is pretty great as it is.

3. User summary email

The two emails I shared above are for retail ecommerce brands. This email for the writing service Grammarly has a different goal: to keep me using the service regularly. 

I love tracking these numbers, partly because I’m all about metrics but also because I like to compare myself to other Grammarly users. 

Plus, seeing that number at the very bottom — how many words I wrote in the previous week — helps me keep track of my productivity and motivates me to keep working. 

Subject line: Just for you: this week’s stats + serious savings

What this email gets right

I love all those numbers, but I especially love the visualizations that give them meaning and context. The design organizes the data into easily comprehensible, digestible categories. With one glance I can see how I performed against my previous work and how other Grammarly users stack up in comparison. 

The weekly streak data and the number of words processed since I started using the service three years ago remind me how much I value and use the service even though it’s free without being told that in so many words.

Where it could improve

Again, this email is pretty great just as it is. What do you think?

4. Purchase anniversary

In the wrong hands, an email like this could elicit a big “So what?” from the customer. Do consumers really care how long they’ve been buying from a brand? 

Like the Grammarly mail above, this email is a subtle reminder that I have purchased in the past and an equally subtle invitation to buy again, even without a specific offer attached. 

If you want to increase frequency gradually, this would be a good message to test for its effectiveness in creating incremental sales between campaigns. 

Subject line: It’s Your Nike Anniversary

What this email gets right

It reframes the message to focus on the benefits of being a Nike customer instead of tacking on the usual discount or incentive. 

The email’s goal is to entice me back to the site to poke around and maybe find something worth buying, such as personalized shoes. 

But it’s not all about persuading me to buy — it also points me toward free services like guided runs and workout programs. 

What it could improve

This is the only email in the group that has no personalization. If you know it’s my anniversary, could you tell me how long I’ve been a customer? 

Also, I’d be curious to know if this email would get more clicks if it switched the personal services copy (“Stay on Top”) with the “Nikes by You” copy. 

Is a pair of personalized Nikes more appealing than better workouts? It would be worth testing.

Which email would help you achieve a goal?

As love-generating as these emails could be, none of them would replace a regular revenue-based email campaign. But that’s not what they’re designed to do. 

Each one of these emails tells your customers, “We care about you even when you aren’t buying from us.” Each can give you a valid reason to be in your customers’ inboxes between campaigns. 

They might bring in a little extra revenue, but their main goal is to show the love. Which one could you try? 

The post 4 emails that customers will love — and help them love you appeared first on MarTech.

This ties into one of my goals for my MarTech columns in 2023 — sharing strategies and tactics to help you find more opportunities already lurking in your email database and using your email marketing resources more efficiently. 

Using psychology to address your ecommerce customers’ motivational drivers will be one of those approaches. I’ve built many email campaigns around psychologist Robert Cialdini’s seven principles of persuasion:

• Social proof
• Reciprocity
• Authority
• Liking
• Commitment and consistency
• Scarcity and loss aversion
• Unity

We talk a lot about social proof (seeking assurance or guidance from others that we’re making the right decision), reciprocity (getting value in exchange for giving value) and authority (seeking expert advice). 

Loss aversion, in which we act to avoid losing out on something important, doesn’t get as much attention, but it can be remarkably helpful when used appropriately and with the right audience. 

Dig deeper: 4 cognitive biases and psychological drivers for influencing behavior

What loss aversion can — and can’t — do for you and your customers

We don’t focus as much on loss aversion when structuring email campaigns. In part, that’s because we’re trained to focus on motivating customers to act by showing them the benefits of action — what’s in it for them — instead of the costs of not acting. 

What loss aversion can do

It appeals to a basic human need to avoid pain — here, losing out on something important. A study by psychologist Daniel Kahneman has shown that the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. That’s why avoiding loss can be a potent motivating force. 

It’s a cognitive bias many of us share. We respond better to sticks (“Act now before you miss out”) instead of carrots (“Act now and get these great benefits”).

What loss aversion can’t do

A better way to frame this is to talk about what loss aversion isn’t. It’s not a tool you should use to try to manipulate your customers into doing something they don’t want to do or acting against their interests. 

That just creates disgruntled customers, who likely will regret their purchases — something that can rub off on their experience with your brand and affect your customer lifetime value.

Loss aversion works best when you use it to help your customers avoid a negative outcome, such as:

• Paying more because of a price increase.
• Losing a beneficial feature.
• Missing out on products your data tells you they purchase regularly. 

Loss aversion, urgency and scarcity

These three concepts often get treated as if they are the same. They aren’t, although they often work together in email campaigns (as shown in the Leesa example below). 

Urgency is strictly time-based but there may not be a loss involved. 

Scarcity drives demand for items that are selling out quickly or are a limited offer, like:

• Low-priced airfares or cruise cabins.
• Limited-edition products.
• Or anything that can’t be replenished after it’s gone. 

Loss aversion reminds customers of exactly what they could lose by not acting on time. Tactics like revealing new higher prices for airfare or a subscription service can be more effective than a campaign whose central message is “Our sale ends tonight.” 

What are the specific consequences of not acting? That’s a loss aversion mention.

Having said all that, is loss aversion just a fancy word for FOMO (fear of missing out)? Not quite, because FOMO also includes the social pressure of knowing others will benefit by buying or signing up for an experience. 

You can speak to your customers’ fear of loss by giving them options to conquer it. See my advice below for campaigns that address loss avoidance.

Dig deeper: How marketers can use cognitive biases to influence customer decisions

Test before you invest

This is a crucial point. Unless your brand appeals only to a homogenous set of customers, you can expect to have a customer base made up of people with diverse values and motivators. It might tilt more toward price-sensitive shoppers rather than impulse buyers or social-proof-seekers. Or it could represent the entire spectrum of Cialdini’s seven persuasion principles. 

If you’re unsure, set up a series of A/B test campaigns to help you understand what motivates your customers to act. Not just to open and click on emails but to buy, upgrade, join your community or engage with everything you offer.

This kind of testing will involve more than just testing one subject line or call to action against another. You should adopt a holistic approach, which considers everything from the inbox view (from name, subject line, preheader, send time) to the offer, email copy, images and design. 

This reduces the need to test individual elements because you are testing the campaign as a whole. You just have to make sure each element works together to support the persuasion principle you’re testing, which is defined within your hypothesis.

A sample hypothesis: Loss aversion vs. benefit-led copy

All good testing begins with a hypothesis, which is your statement of what you predict your test will reveal. Here’s one I have used in several campaigns where we were trying to uncover our customers’ primary motivation:

• “Loss aversion copy is a stronger motivator for conversions than a benefit-led copy because people hate losing out more than they enjoy benefitting.”

3 tactics to use loss aversion

Even if you find your customers do act more to avoid loss than to gain benefits, you should use loss aversion sparingly and only under certain conditions. Otherwise, a steady diet of “Don’t miss out/Act now or lose” messages will drain your campaigns of motivational potency. 

Your customers who respond to loss aversion best might also come to suspect you’re not being totally honest with them if you continually hammer home an “Act now or miss out” message. 

You can appeal to these customers by helping them find ways to avoid a loss. These three campaigns get that point across without saying, “Don’t miss out.”

• Jump the queue: Let them pre-order limited quantities or popular merchandise.
• Try before you buy: Loss-averse people don’t want to risk spending money on something that could cause pain. Instead of pushing them to buy, reassure them that they’ll spend their money wisely on your products.
• Discount the risk: A discount, rebate or coupon can induce a cautious person to take a chance on a potentially risky product. Use this approach conservatively, and test it against another loss-aversion tactic like pre-ordering, because it can reduce your profit margin.

Loss-aversion email examples

1. VIP ordering 

Subject line: Don’t miss out, Pre-Order the Ariel Bag!

What it does right

It gives customers the chance to get their orders in on a signature brand product before it goes on general sale. The email impels action by giving customers a deadline to order, letting them know when the product will ship.

What it could improve

Add copy that reminds customers why merchandise like this usually sells out or specifies what the “popular demand” was. Did it sell out previously? Is it a limited-run production?

2. Loss + scarcity + urgency

Subject line: 2 days till price increases take effect

What it does right

This campaign combines everything a loss-aversion message should have:

• Loss: Hesitating means paying more for popular products.
• Scarcity: Price-sensitive customers could have fewer choices of affordable products.
• Urgency: The subject line and email copy emphasize the price-change deadline.

The email also takes a bold approach by expressing the message in the text without a strong hero message. It wraps a transparent explanation for the price increase (a sensitive topic in inflation-ridden 2022) in a statement of company values and customer appreciation.

What it could improve

The copy and tone are spot-on but will customers read the details without an image to capture their attention? I don’t know the answer to that, but on the day after they sent this email, Leesa sent a final price-increase reminder that used a short copy and a strong hero image.

3. Beat the price increase

Subject line: Reminder: Join Today To Avoid Ellie Price Increases

What it does right

This is a classic loss-aversion email for subscription services, but it works for other ecommerce models as well. It reminds buyers about what they receive now, what they will lose by not acting and how soon they need to decide. It’s also clear why the service is changing. 

What it could improve

Stronger visual imagery, such as examples of previous subscription boxes, could help customers understand better what they can expect and what they could lose by canceling.

4. Loss aversion with a side of scarcity

Subject line: Sold out in the UK and going fast in AUS – Advent Calendars 2022

What it gets right

This campaign illustrates how scarcity and FOMO can be key elements in a loss-aversion campaign. The copy lets customers know what others have done already and frames the benefits of acting quickly by letting customers know what else they can get by acting quickly. Plus, the call to action is simple and direct.

What it could improve

If the Advent calendars are really selling as quickly as the email claims, how about giving me a deadline to act? 

Next steps

As I mentioned earlier, a loss-aversion campaign requires special handling and a unique understanding of your customer segments to know when to use it (and when not to use it). 

A customer who doesn’t care much about buying hot new products or isn’t price-motivated probably won’t jump on an email that plays on FOMO or avoiding price increases.

That’s why testing is so crucial. It will help you discover what motivates different segments of your customer base so you can structure campaigns that speak to those motivations. You can layer personalization data on top of these campaigns to make them even more relevant. 

If you need more help setting up a testing program, see my earlier article, 7 common problems that derail A/B/n email testing success.

Campaigns like this take time and effort to set up correctly, but the payoff is huge — customers who help you build your business because you took the time to understand and speak to them appropriately.

The post Why and how to use loss aversion in email marketing (plus 4 examples) appeared first on MarTech.

By now, you likely have either locked down all of your holiday campaigns or set up a promotion schedule. But there’s one thing you might have overlooked — converting your streams of holiday shopping abandoners into customers. 

An email automation targeting browsers who don’t buy can be an effective tool to bring busy shoppers back for a second look and another chance to persuade them to purchase.

A recent test for my agency’s client, Cannadips, found the right approach based on our key success metric: placed orders. (Keep reading to discover how.)

Holiday shopping is expected to increase this year

Even though many shoppers are heading back into stores this year, analysts expect online browsing and buying will remain robust. A McKinsey study found 55% of U.S. consumers are excited about the holiday, and 40% are ready to spend, either on themselves or others. But 43% of consumers are poised to switch retailers to get better prices.

All those signs point to increased web traffic during the holidays. A browse-abandonment program can help you convert more of them either to purchase or to take some other action, such as viewing other products or joining your loyalty program. 

What a browse-abandonment email does — and what it doesn’t do

Browse-abandonment emails can be a little controversial. My MarTech colleague Ryan Phelan is not a fan because they can run amok if they’re designed poorly or launched indiscriminately. 

I agree that simply hitting a webpage and bouncing away quickly doesn’t signal enough intent to justify triggering a browse reminder. That’s why you must create strict rules that govern when to launch these emails, which could include these:

• Time on site 
• Time on page
• Repeat visitors
• Number of pages viewed
• Visits to landing pages tied to email or social campaigns 
• Where visitors go after they leave a product page

Naturally, not everyone who comes to your site will purchase, especially if they’re first-time visitors. But a browse-abandonment trigger can be a helpful reminder for shoppers who visit specific pages several times, spend time on a particular product page or spend time on key webpages beyond your product.

Another consideration: Browse abandonment is an activity that’s farther away from a conversion than its cousin, the cart-abandonment email. Browsing isn’t as strong an intent signal as placing items in a basket. 

Hence, a browse reminder has a different goal: to bring back your customers for a second look. It could lead to sales (or whatever conversion you want), but that’s a beneficial side effect. 

So, the way you structure your browse-abandonment email — everything from design to content and copy to triggers — should be different from the way you appeal to your cart-abandoners. For example, “Shop now” is a better driver than “Buy now.”

Dig deeper: Why we care about email marketing: A marketer’s guide

Browse-abandonment in action with Cannadips

Our client wanted to use browse abandonment to recover more potential lost sales. As part of our creative process, we opted to go beyond A/B testing on basics like subject lines, images and incentives. Instead, we based our testing hypothesis on a holistic approach that uses language and emotions to persuade a browser to act.

Overt versus covert

Most browse reminders use overt persuasion to nudge shoppers back to the site, starting with subject lines like “Check us out again” and message copy that explicitly asks the customer to visit the page again. 

We hypothesized that an overt message would generate more placed orders but wanted to see how a covert approach would fare, one that focused on product benefits without an overt offer. 

So, we designed one email that adopted the direct approach and a second that looked more like a business-as-usual product introduction campaign but included a dynamic content module targeted toward browse-abandoners and featuring the products they had viewed.

Test results

The covert abandonment email scored slightly higher opens and clicks, with a 75% open rate and a 12% click rate. However, we didn’t base success on those metrics. Instead, we measured which version led to more orders — a result that maps back directly to our objective for browse-abandonment emails.

What did we find? The overt message — the stand-alone reminder email (below) generated a 4% order placement rate, a statistically significant 90% uplift over the 2.1% for the covert messaging. Had we not followed that goal-oriented metric, we might have chosen the wrong version as our winner.

Sender: Cannadips 

Subject line: Hey Everett, don’t jet yet

Notes about our email

We used forward-positioning copy to encourage positive action about the browsed products, mentioned the browsed product in the copy and also cross-suggested similar products.

Links to user reviews could build social proof and give hesitant shoppers another opportunity to click and read what others said.

3 more browse-abandonment email examples

My email swipe file has now swelled to thousands of email examples, dating back to 2005 and including several hundred browse reminders. So I don’t have to look too far to find inspirational examples. 

Here are three recent emails I received in response to browse sessions, what I like about each one and how each one could improve.

Sender: Cheeky Wipes

Subject line: Has something Cheeky caught your eye?

What works

Another one of our clients, Cheeky takes an indirect approach in the subject line instead of commanding me to come back and buy. I’m not usually an emoji fan, but the heart-eyes smiley-face is spot-on for this brand’s audience. 

Cheeky leads the content with a customer review and a link to customer service, besides linking to other reviews and highlighting its Trustpilot rating. That’s helpful for a brand that sells personal-care products to first-time customers who might be a little hesitant at first.

What to improve

Um … Nothing. What do you think?

Sender: Stila Cosmetics

Subject line: We Caught You Peeking

What works

The “perfect product” copy uses the same tactic we used in our Cannadips browse reminder — it uses positive copy to shape customers’ thinking that they chose the right product and then reinforces that content with another positive CTA: “Ready to Turn Heads? Shop Now.”

What to improve

Because browsers aren’t as committed as cart-abandoners, they might be turned off by copy that purports to catch them at some furtive activity. The long-eyes emoji lightens the mood, but I might want to test the “perfect product” copy in the subject line as well.

Sender: DSW

Subject line: Justin, We saw you looking

What works

I love the conversational copy tone and the CTA that avoids the usual “Shop Now” copy for “Make Them Yours.” Another clever yet subtle device: the gold ring around the shopping bag, which signals what the email is all about (not search, not favoriting, but buying). Finally, I appreciate the benefit reminder for the brand’s loyalty program. Nudges like these can persuade customers to go back to your site, even if they don’t end up buying the products in your email.

What to improve

The subject brings out the 5-year-old in me: “I didn’t do it!” Give me a reason to open the email and then return to the site. 

5 tips for an effective browse-abandonment program

1. Give customers reasons to click besides browsing 

Browse reminders are highly targeted and relevant, but they might also remind your customers about something they don’t care much about. 

Find ways to persuade them to click on your site even if they aren’t wild about the product you’re promoting. 

Talk about your loyalty program, present related products or use a dynamic content module to promote other sales and timely events.

2. Have strict rules for triggering emails

Don’t annoy your customers with unexpected emails for something they might have viewed for a second or two or by accident. If you’re a frequent emailer, browse reminders can also be an unwelcome addition to the daily flow.

Set up rules that consider a customer’s time on a page or time on site, repeat visits, time since last purchase, product value and anything else that will generate the most useful reminders. 

I once received a browse-abandonment reminder after I went to a website’s privacy page without visiting either the home page or a product page. Don’t do that. 

3. Test thoroughly before launch and test regularly after that

My mini case study for Cannadips in this article gives you some pointers for what to test beyond the basics. Here are some ideas:

• Overt versus covert messaging, as we did with Cannadips. Consider adding an abandonment module to your promotional emails that you can populate with browsed products for what will look like a bit of content serendipity.
• Incentive versus no incentive.
• Single email versus two or three emails. 
• Percentage discount, monetary discount (dollars/pounds off), purchase with purchase, etc. 
• Content: Helpful content (links to FAQs, reviews, customer service, buying tips) versus “buy now”

4. Vary the content in an email series

If you go the multiple-email route, give each email a single purpose and align everything from copy to CTA to that purpose.

Ruggable sends an astonishing 6-email series to browse abandoners. Still, each message has a different focus — from product benefits to purchase incentives and social proof, along with a rotating lineup of cross-sell products. 

5. Personalize as much as you can

But not necessarily the subject line. It can be a little startling if your browse abandonment email is the first one your browser receives from you.

Use your subject line to explain why your customer should open the email, like this one from One Kings Lane: “Don’t miss out on these favorite items — and your discount!”

Inside the email, however, add as much content as you can think to remind customers about what they browsed and why they should come back:

• Product photo.
• Details.
• Price.
• Availability.
• Benefits.
• Link to the customer’s account.
• Links to FAQs.
• Customer service.
• Customer reviews.
• Your user community.
• Anything else that will build trust and encourage a return visit.

Start thinking now for next year

At this point in the year, you might want to get the whole season over before you start thinking about adding another email automation or upgrading what you already send. 

After all, browse abandonment isn’t just for Christmas. It can help you stay top of mind for customers all year long and recover more sales that could have gone to your competition.

They can drive incremental sales and revenue now, leading to repeat purchases, greater loyalty and more engaged customers in the long run.

The post 5 tips for an effective holiday browse-abandonment program appeared first on MarTech.

Judging by the results of a quick study I conducted over the last few weeks, retail email marketers give the unsubscribe process far less attention than it deserves.

Because of that, they miss opportunities to retain customers within the brand sphere, even if they no longer want to receive emails. 

But, I also found many areas where brands can turn the negative of an unsubscribe into a positive event. Also, the unsubscribe process is generally better than it was when I conducted a larger study on unsubscribe practices in 2016. 

Dig deeper: Why we care about email marketing: A marketer’s guide

Overview: 5 insights from brand unsubscribe journeys

I wanted to learn whether ecommerce email marketers are managing the unsubscribe better today. In general, I found some improvements but also discovered some brands still use old tricks like burying the link in the footer and camouflaging it in a low-contrast font. 

Here are my top discoveries from my review of 12 ecommerce brands, six based in the UK and six in the U.S. I’ll present detailed findings further down in this post.

• UK brands offer a smoother process than U.S. brands, but marketers on both sides of the pond can improve their out-opt process to give customers a better experience.
• The one-click unsubscribe is more prevalent among UK brands but some brands make the process less transparent.
• U.S. brands put unsubscribers through more steps but gave subscribers more options.
• Most brands still play hide-and-seek with the email unsub link.
• Brands can do much more to keep customers connected without also making the unsubscribe more cumbersome. 

Before revealing my detailed findings, I’ll share my views on unsubscribing and why it matters.

Marketers neglect the unsubscribe

Gathering in more subscribers does more for the company than letting them go. For many brands, the opt-out link is there in the email because a law requires a working unsubscribe in every email. 

But the laws don’t mandate where the link goes or the language around it or even how to present it. That’s one area where many marketers tend to play a little fast and loose with the legal requirements. 

Dig deeper: 8 major email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them

The unsubscribe matters in the customer experience 

The unsubscribe process is part of the customer journey with your brand. A painless unsubscribe is just as important as a warm welcome. It can even help you retain customers, even if they move away from your email.

Don’t forget the deliverability angle, either. In most email clients today, the “report spam” button is right up front. For a lot of email users, that’s the opt-out choice. The result: Major dings on your sender reputation and faster trips to the spam folder.

And now for my findings!

1. UK brands give subscribers a faster process than U.S. brands, but… 

…marketers in both countries can improve their out-opt processes to create better customer experiences

Among the six UK brands I reviewed, none required more than two clicks to complete the unsubscribe. They also pulled in my email address. The process for the six U.S. brands took more work — three or four clicks — and most didn’t load my address on the website.

But even with those extra clicks, I can see improvement in the unsub process since 2016. In that study, one brand made me fill out seven (seven!) form fields to complete the unsubscribe. Overall, the unsub process is far more mobile-friendly today than it was five years ago.

How to improve

The UK brands speed their subscribers through the unsub process faster than the U.S. brands, but this efficiency comes at a price: fewer opportunities to learn why their subscribers are opting out or to give them a chance to stay in touch. 

An immediate confirmation like this one from the Cotswold Company does not reflect the brand’s warm and welcoming brand or voice.

Maybe I didn’t want to unsubscribe — maybe I wanted to update my email address. But I didn’t get that option in the unsub journey.

U.S. brands have more time with their departing subscribers but risk losing them by asking for too many clicks or data.

At a minimum, the subscriber’s email address should load automatically on the website’s unsub page. This is better for mobile users and takes one more speed bump out of the journey.

This opt-out form for Big Lots (U.S.) is typical:

Updating your database to pass the email address through to the unsub page might take some doing.

But 10 minutes could be all you need to replace the user-unfriendly language on your confirmation page and add a link back to your website for customers who might still want to shop.

2. The one-click unsubscribe is more prevalent among UK brands but some brands make the process less transparent

Three of the six UK brands use a one-click unsubscribe, in which clicking the email unsub link launches an unsub confirmation on the brand’s website.

As I mentioned previously, with a single click on the email link, I didn’t have to fill in my email address and then hit “enter” or “submit.” The result: A simple confirmation page like this one from Great Value Vacations:

The other three brands required two clicks: one on the email unsub link, and then a second on the website to confirm my intention.  

This efficient process likely stems from tighter regulations about email data management in GDPR (a holdover from pre-Brexit days) or the UK’s own email laws.

However, it doesn’t protect against accidental unsubscribes or curious subscribers who are looking for reassurance that they can unsubscribe easily as and when they want to.

Another sticking point: confusing directions. PoundShop’s unsub page asked me for a reason why I was unsubscribing, but when I clicked the blue “Unsubscribe from all marketing emails” button, I saw this confirmation page:

How to improve

A one-click unsubscribe is a win for your database and deliverability teams and for subscribers who just want off your list. But it costs your marketing teams (social, web and mobile, not just email) plenty in customer engagement. 

You can avoid accidental unsubscribes by breaking up the links in your email footer or converting your text link to a button. This way, someone who wants to click on an FAQ or contact information is less likely to tap the unsubscribe link by mistake.

Make your unsubscribe journey more intuitive. How long has it been since you jogged through your own process?

Do it on your next work break. Look for conflicting or confusing instructions. Better yet, have someone who isn’t an email professional test it. 

Dig deeper: Opting out: A guide to letting go of email subscribers the right way

3. U.S. brands put unsubscribers through more steps but gave subscribers more options

Me, unsubscribing from a Costco email: 

Scroll, scroll, scroll to find the link in the email footer, only to discover Gmail has clipped the email because it’s too long. Click to view full email.

Scroll to the email footer to find the unsub link. Click.

Review my options to change frequency or unsubscribe. Click. Go to the “Update My Preferences” button. Click.

Total clicks: Four.

That’s a lot of clicks, especially on mobile. But the other U.S. unsub journeys I reviewed are just as click-heavy, even when their links don’t get cut off on a clipped email. 

On the plus side, U.S brands also put more effort into communicating at all those points on the journey. Unlike the bare-bones email confirmations from UK brands, the U.S. brands gave me many opportunities to change my mind or fix a mistake. 

These brands sometimes felt like persistent ex-boyfriends who couldn’t accept that I was done with them. But at least I didn’t feel as if the brand had slammed the door in my face just because I didn’t want its emails anymore.

How to improve

Look for ways to take even one click out of your process, but still provide the options. Each click on the journey is a potential failure point, and each failure point is a potential spam complaint. One way, again, is to load the unsub page with the subscriber’s email address and offer a blank if the address somehow isn’t the one they want to use.

4. Most brands play hide-and-seek with the email unsub link

My experience trying to track down an elusive email unsub link was not confined to Costco’s email. Eleven of the 12 brands put the unsubscribe link only in the email footer, often in a section that didn’t show up if the email client clipped the message for length.

Burying the link wasn’t the only problem. Links in tiny font sizes, font colors that blend in with colored backgrounds and other design tricks are just stalling tactics. They don’t work — at least not the way you think they will. Subscribers will take the path of least resistance to get off a list, and that path usually is the spam complaint button.

How to improve

If your emails are prone to getting clipped, test whether an unsub link higher in the email gets more clicks. No U.S. brands in the study used this tactic, but I saw it in an email from UK-based Asda:

Be careful not to let your unsub link get pulled into your preheader unless you also have deliverability problems resulting from high spam complaints. The link could go in the next tier of copy below your logo, for example. It’s definitely something to test.

Also, if you must post the unsub link in your footer, make it eye-catching. Superdrug (UK) uses a bright pink unsub link, which is great. (“Click this link” isn’t a great substitute for “Unsubscribe here,” though.)

5. Brands can do much more to keep customers connected without also making the unsubscribe more click-heavy

Goodbye doesn’t have to mean “get lost.” 

Opting out is as much a part of your customer’s email journey with your brand as opting in and deserves just as much care and attention. A negative experience with unsubscribing can even cost you a customer.

Here are five ways to make your unsubscribe process more user-friendly while also giving you data you can use to learn about your unsubbers:

Remove as many speed bumps in the process as you can without cutting yourself off from important data or giving your subscribers a chance to stay connected. This process starts in the email with an easily found and clearly labeled unsub link or button. 

Add personalization and branding to every page in the unsubscribe journey. Personalization on an attractive page makes the whole process feel more friendly. Revisit your unsubscribe pages often to make sure they reflect your latest templates and logos. 

Upgrade the language so it reflects both your brand voice and what your subscribers want to do. Use your marketing smarts to frame the content. The copy should never sound as if a robot wrote it. “Submit query” throws cold water on what might normally be a fun brand experience. 

This Target opt-out page shows how to incorporate brand voice, which is casual, optimistic, even a little playful. And while I just advised against monkeying around with alternate terms for “unsubscribe,” I like how Target framed its unsub request as “I need to take a break.”

This opt-out page from DSW (US) is more in-your-face:

Always give your subscribers something to click on your opt-out or confirmation page. Keep the unsubscribe field prominent but add a list of your other email offerings, links to your social media sites or your mobile app, a link to their customer account or a link to your homepage. 

People who opt out of email aren’t necessarily turning their backs on your brand, but if you don’t give them options to stay connected, you’re turning your back on them. 

Don’t forget the most important step in the process — make sure it works! This starts with the unsub link in your email and goes all the way through to make sure the unsub or preference-change request is honored in your database. This should be a standard step in any email audit, especially if you change ESPs. 

Unsubscribing and holiday email

Ideally, you’ll bring in loads of new subscribers during the holidays. But that also can mean more unsubscribes.

Some customers who opt in just to get an incentive or buy a gift for someone won’t be interested in staying around and might not be invested enough in your brand or email to take the extra steps needed to unsubscribe.

Instead of having them go inactive or click the report spam button, send them on your unsubscribe journey to find other lists of yours that might be more appropriate, choose a different frequency, or connect with you on social media, in a mobile app or direct mail.

Dig deeper: The best unsubscribe email is the one you don’t send

Always make it a fond farewell

As rocky as the unsubscribe process can be, it’s one of the ways email differentiates itself from other marketing channels.

How many times do you find yourself watching the same obnoxious TV commercials and wishing you could opt out of some brands? Has anyone ever successfully opted out of unwanted direct mail?

A reliable unsubscribe process also puts email marketers ahead of the game in this age of privacy laws and gives people the right to remove their personal information from a company’s database. Years of training have helped us break some bad unsubscribe habits.

The greatest lesson I hope you take away from my findings here is that the unsubscribe process is an essential part of your customer’s experience with your brand. Get it wrong, and you could lose a customer. Get it right, and you might lose a subscriber but retain a buyer. That’s a win! 

The post 5 ways to tune up your unsubscribe process before the holidays appeared first on MarTech.

So you say your marketing team never had to send an “Oops!” email? Don’t be too smug. Maybe your turn just hasn’t come yet. 

Conventional email wisdom says every marketer will have a medium-to-epic fail sometimes. A campaign goes out with broken links or images, the wrong offer or an expired code. Or you send it to the wrong segment or the wrong list, such as your global suppression list. 

Sometimes an entire automated program can fail. My MarTech colleague Ryan Phelan revealed what happens when abandoned-browse emails go rogue in 3 ways to avoid email automation breakdowns.

I don’t believe errors are inevitable, but that’s a topic for another post. What’s more important is following up that error with the right message.

Why you need an apology email strategy

A good apology email can maintain customer trust in your brand and bring them back to convert. A bad one can cost you a customer — or many, depending on how significant the error is.

Dig deeper: 8 major email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them

7 characteristics of an effective apology email 

A good apology email has these characteristics:

• Goes out ASAP after you discover the error.
• Apologizes for the mistake.
• Explains clearly and succinctly what went wrong.
• Corrects the error and offers reassurances if needed.
• Uses your brand’s email template, up-to-date branding elements and a copy style that matches your brand voice and character.
• Gives customers a reason to click no matter what the original error was.
• Acknowledges the error in the subject line so customers understand what happened.

If the error is serious enough, you might need to include a customer-service contact. 

A few words about subject lines

Let’s eliminate “Oops!” “Oops!” looks friendly and unthreatening and implies the damage from the earlier campaign wasn’t that bad. But “Oops” won’t mollify customers who clicked into a 404 page, discovered at checkout that your promo code didn’t work or previously unsubscribed from your email program.

Plus, as you’ll see below in my list of email examples, you don’t need it if you have the right subject line.

Another thought: Many apology emails in my collection mention the error only in the subject line and then run the email as is. This minimal approach can look a little sketchy, especially if you don’t explain what the problem was, how you fixed it and what customers can expect. 

Trust can be lost as you might end up looking as if you’re just faking the injury, which customers don’t like. Transparency is key.

You need not create a whole new email (see the Mud Pie example below to discover how a simple copy tweak here and there might suffice). But if the original email goes out unchanged, it can look as if you’re just trying to push another campaign through.

7 apology emails to emulate

Like most email marketers, I have a personal swipe file of brand emails, including a collection of apology emails that run the gamut from cringe-inducing to impressive. I didn’t have to look too far to find examples worth sharing.

For each email example, I’ll explain what it gets right and what else it could have done to add value or persuade customers to click or click again.

1. Vision Direct UK

• Subject line: Oops! We’re turtle-y sorry
• Preheader: FREE LED Mirror is ready – grab yours now.
• Email URL 

What’s good: This is one of my favorite apology emails. It hits all the right notes:

• The subject line has a clever pun, repeated in the message header, that acknowledges the failure and apologizes. 
• It explains why customers couldn’t use the previous promo code without going into needless detail.
• It extends the offer deadline as a make-good.
• The apology copy runs under the call to action so customers can’t miss it.
• It adds another CTA button at the top for customers who don’t care about the apology.
• Who can resist a turtle admiring itself in the mirror that the email promotes? So it’s turtle-y — I mean, totally — relevant. 

What else could it do? The “Oops.” With that clever subject line, you don’t need it.

2. Mudpie

• Subject line: Oops, we forgot to check our list twice…
• Preheader: 3 months until Christmas, are you ready?
• Email URL 

What’s good: We can imagine the panic that Mud Pie’s email team must have felt when someone pointed out that they launched their holiday email campaigns a month early. But the team recovered quickly by correcting the copy and adding a brief but empathy-seeking explanation to the top image. A few things to highlight:

• The email launched around 9 a.m. ET and the apology email went out later that day. 
• It added a brief but brand-appropriate copy explaining the error to the original template. This gave customers who might have missed the original email plenty of things to click on, including the time-saving checklist.

What to work on: Was the Christmas Shop ready for customers? Or did the links crash or drop the customers off at Mud Pie’s homepage? The apology doesn’t make that clear. So I couldn’t help wondering if it was real or a publicity stunt. 

Plus, “Oops” again.  Not needed given the subject line.

3. Ace Hotel

• Subject line: Oops! A code that works.
• Email URL

What’s good: Sometimes short and sweet is the way to go for an apology email, and it works here for Ace Hotel New York, a trend-setting hotel in midtown Manhattan.

• It uses some plain but elegant language to explain what went wrong.
• It restates the offer to remind customers what they’ll get and then goes right to the call to action.

What to work on: “Oops.” Still not needed with this subject line.

4. Just Eat

• Subject line: Oops, we sent you the wrong offer
• Email URL 

What’s good: This brand wins for a quick turnaround. Its apology email arrived in time for customers to be able to use the Tuesday-oriented promo. It also apologizes for the earlier email, which might not have worked for customers trying to claim it.

What to work on: Instead of stating the obvious (“Oops”), I’ll give you another reason not to use it. Sometimes “oops” comes out as “opps.” If you are under pressure to launch your make-good email, a typo like that could slip through, and it just would look sloppy.

5. Thinkific

• Subject line: Oops: This is embarrassing…
• Email URL 

What’s good: Yes, this is a lot to read. Given that an email intended for a specific audience went out to the list at large, and people might have freaked out over the potential cost, you might need that extra effort to rebuild trust and protect your brand’s authority.

• This email comes from a person, not just a brand. As a fellow email marketer, I applaud her bravery! This way the email reads more like a personal letter.
• She explains what went wrong — it appears to be a segmentation snafu.
• The make-good offer is clear: the same discount as the targeted segment
• She restates the company and course values.
• Directions are clear about how to redeem the offer because it has no CTA button.

What to work on: Besides dropping the “Oops,” the email comes close to resembling a last-minute pitch to nonresponders from the previous campaign. Maybe a little less content about the courses?

6. Secret Escapes

• Subject line: Oops, that last email might have been hard to read
• Email URL

What’s good: This travel brand sent its original campaign out with a subject line, preheader and intro copy in Norwegian and then followed up with this apology. 

• The apology acknowledges that non-Norwegian recipients might have been baffled by what was written. I liked that they used (and translated) a Norwegian phrase to apologize. Language aficionados might even have appreciated the Norwegian mini-lesson.
• Secret Escapes emails use a combination of business objectives and personalization using AI. As I have lived in the UK, it’s not unusual that the copy in this personalized email would promote mainly UK holidays. So, seeing the intro copy written in Norwegian was certainly not standard for me :-). But it’s a good reminder that mistakes can happen even in an advanced email program. 

What to work on: A little typo in the apology copy distracted me a bit from the otherwise well-written copy. No matter how pushed your team is to get the apology email out, always proofread and check links. Plus, “Oops.” Still not needed.

Dig deeper: How bad data can spoil good personalization

7. Marine Layer

• Subject line: Oops… let the games start.
• Preheader: We caught a little heat.
• Email URL 

What’s good: Could this be one of the best apology emails ever sent by an ecommerce company?

• It’s funny. Marine Layer’s email team totally owns up to their error and both corrects it and pokes fun at the hypervigilant Olympics brand protectors. 
• Love the artwork! It probably took somebody a minute, if that, to scribble this, but it captures the mood and tweaks the classic Olympics logo at the same time.
• The CTA copy works, too. Technically, this message isn’t so much an apology email as a “please don’t sue us for copyright infringement” email. But cheers for keeping the chuckles going all the way through the email.

What to work on: Look at the subject line. What am I thinking here?

One final thought: Test to discover which format works for you

Each apology email in my list takes a different approach. I hope you found a couple that could inspire you to update yours. But before you copy a design into your own template, ask yourself:

• Does it fit with your brand?
• Is it appropriate?
• Does it give customers a reason to click and to keep trusting your brand?
• Could you put it together quickly in a crisis? Or would you have to lean on your email developer for a fast turnaround?

Testing an apology email seems a little bizarre. How can you test for something you can’t anticipate? Consider creating a standby apology template to act as your control and then create a variation of it when you have to send an apology email to learn what prompts more action — not just opens but clicks and conversions, too. 

Divide your distribution list in half. Send your control to one segment and your variable to the other, then compare the results. What you learn could help you the next time (if there is one!) you have to apologize for an email gone wrong. 

The post How to create an effective apology email: 7 examples appeared first on MarTech.

But each email had a personalization failure that shows this transition from promotional to customer-focused email marketing still has a long way to go. 

These failures don’t spell the death of this nascent trend and won’t make me abandon the brands that sent the messages. But it’s clear that we as marketers need to make fundamental changes in how we manage data and automations to achieve the potential that helpful marketing offers.

Don’t miss Kath Pay discussing effective email marketing at MarTech: Registration is free

3 emails, 3 problems

Email 1: Cardly

What I love about this email. Cardly sends “handwritten” greeting cards wherever and whenever you need them sent. The copy in this reminder email is spot-on for brand voice and helpful information — warm, personable and persuasive rather than promotional. (See my previous MarTech article, “Does your email copy persuade or sell?“, to learn why this is so important.) 

What to fix. Cardly is nudging me to schedule a birthday card for my mum, Joy, whose birthday is September 3. So far so good. But — ahem — she’ll be a little more than “1” year old! I don’t quite know how the system calculated that because I didn’t provide her age, so perhaps that’s a default number. This error isn’t serious enough to cause doubt — although that’s not the case with the next email.

Email 2: easyJet

What I love about this email. This preflight email has a wealth of detail and reminders, all of which answer questions, confirm expectations, and help passengers avoid unpleasant surprises at the airport. It’s easy to view on a laptop or mobile, and all the flight information is correct.

What to fix. The email’s salutation and passenger information are wrong. It should reflect my partner’s name as he is the passenger. Instead, it pulled the account holder’s name — in this case, mine — into the field instead of the passenger’s name. 

You can see why this would be unsettling! Is the ticket in the wrong name? Will this passenger run into problems when they try to check in for the flight? With all the chaos that accompanied summer travel this year, you can see why even one incorrect field can create panic.

Email 3: ClearScore

What I love about this email. I love account-summary emails like this because they let me review my past year of business with the brand, and it acts as a helpful nudge for me to check out my credit score — something I might not do unless I had a specific reason. 

The email gives customers several relevant reasons to click on the email and visit the brand’s website. Emails like this can also generate more engagement-boosting opens and clicks, and more first-party data from subsequent website visits.

What to fix. The opening email thanks me for having been a ClearScore customer for a year. But I’ve actually been a credit-report customer for much longer. As with the Cardly example, this mistake isn’t enough to turn me off the brand or wonder if it were a phishing or spear phishing attempt. If I had to guess, I would say that the brand launched this email automation only recently and had only 12 months of data to call on.

Helpful marketing gone wrong

All three emails are excellent examples of helpful marketing because they are geared to specific points in the customer journey with the brand, deliver important information and sell indirectly. 

But they all failed in a way because they pulled the wrong data or incorrectly interpreted the data they did have. This indicates the corresponding email program wasn’t thought through far enough or updated recently to account for all the data variables programs like these can present.

You might say this is helpful marketing gone wrong, where a good email can poison your email relationship with your clients because it’s driven by bad data.

Why helpful marketing matters

I developed this idea of marketing that goes beyond promotional or informational marketing because I believe that email is uniquely suited to do more than sell. 

Helpful marketing is a “win-win” proposition because it benefits both your customers and your brand. When you help your customers achieve their objectives, they will help you achieve yours. That is, they’ll turn to us more often when they need our products and services because they know they’ll succeed.

This concept got a big boost in the early days of the pandemic, when brands sought new ways to stay connected with customers who were stressed, anxious, locked down and looking for answers.

Truly helpful marketing runs on two key engines: data and automation. Data provides the personalization that creates a truly unique and relevant message, whether it’s a purchase confirmation, troubleshooting message or appointment reminder. Automation allows marketers to achieve this relevance at scale for every email address in their databases.

Your email content is the face of helpful marketing. However, you need to do back-end work to ensure your automations pull the correct data. As these three email examples show, we’re not quite there yet!

How to use helpful marketing in email

Helpful marketing is a key driver of a good customer experience with your email program. It recognizes that “Buy now” is not always the right message to send. 

To make your emails more helpful, start with this question: “How do my emails help my customers achieve their own goals and objectives and be successful in the parts of their lives that my products or services touch?” 

The question is simple, but the answers, and the engineering work required to create those helpful emails, might be complex. 

Elements in your email help your customers achieve their goals, such as local store locations and hours, a localized map, “how to buy” advice and the like. Your messages can also help customers buy more successfully from you, increasing the chance that they will select the products that will work best for them. This increases satisfaction and means fewer products returned or services canceled. 

A lot is at stake, both for revenue and customer loyalty. That’s why getting the personalization right in an automated email is absolutely essential.

Audit your automations for accuracy

Whether you call it helpful marketing, customer-experience marketing, lifecycle or journey marketing or something else, you should take time at least once a year to audit every automation to make sure it’s pulling the correct data.

Also, consider all of the data variables that go along with personalization. The easyJet example highlights the perils of capturing the wrong name, but it’s a situation that any retail or ecommerce brand faces when one person buys a product for someone else.

Check to be sure your email fields are tied to the right data. To increase accuracy, you might need to add an additional data field or two as part of the transaction process.

Helpful marketing pays off

That’s probably what you’re thinking: Is all this work worth the effort? Yes, it absolutely is. In research my company did with Liveclicker, we found that customers were more likely to open and read emails that scored higher on helpfulness. 

Further, 70% of marketers who used the advanced personalization that is part of helpful marketing saw their campaigns earn an average of 200% ROI, according to a 2020 study by KoMarketing.

If nothing else, your email audit will help you spot and correct data failures and automations that run amok — and that by itself can help you improve your email program. Time well spent!

Everything you need to know about email marketing deliverability that your customers want and that inboxes won’t block. Get MarTech’s Email Marketing Periodic Table.

Click here to check it out!

The post How bad data can spoil good personalization appeared first on MarTech.

Your first thought might be to add an automation platform, invest in new email designs, maybe even switch ESPs. But all of those cost time and money, and they don’t necessarily address the real reason your emails don’t drive the results you need.

What could make the difference? Better email copy.

Specifically, email copy that recognizes your email subscribers require unique tactics to persuade them to click to your website and convert.   

This topic doesn’t come up much in debates over whether AI-fueled copybots will replace human copywriters. The problem is not just about having your copy reflect the data you have on each customer or creating near-1:1 emails. 

Email copywriting is about persuasion, not selling

It’s knowing that you must help your email subscribers understand why they should take that one extra step and click from the email to your landing page. 

So far, this might seem like Email 101. You learned all this years ago when you got your first email job, right? But from everything I have seen over the years, from working with clients to observing what other brands are doing, I don’t think we talk enough about the unique needs of email copywriting.

Good email copy isn’t lyrical praises for your product or witty commentary. To make the difference stand out even more clearly, think about your email campaign’s purpose: to persuade the subscriber to click through your website.

Your email’s job is not to convert your customer (AMP for Email and other attempts at in-email conversion aside). The conversion happens on your website. Your email is the transition to the website and must give readers a reason to click. That’s where persuasion steps up.

Email copy is different from web copy

Email is a push channel, while your website is a pull channel.  Each channel has unique characteristics to address in your copy. 

Intent. People who click to your website from a search result or by typing your site URL are likely hunting for something specific. Their intent is strong.

Your email readers, on the other hand, might have a passive interest in your brand but need to shift into active curiosity in order to click. 

Even an email that’s strictly an announcement should try to persuade your subscriber to click through to engage on your website because that will generate a few more data crumbs you can track to understand your customers better.

Personalization. Web content by nature is more generic. You might be able to personalize a few areas if you have cookie data or if your customer logs in, but the deeper your customers move into your site, the less personalized the copy.

With email copy, you can call on your email data to personalize every email you send, not just to refer to past activity but also to use predictive modeling, which you can use to add content that matches what you think your customer will do next.

Nurturing. Website copy generally focuses on a single touchpoint – what the customer is looking at or doing at that one moment in time. Even if the website recognizes a returning customer with a personalized greeting, the content will reflect only that previous touchpoint.

Email copy, on the other hand, can be part of a continuing journey that reflects past activity and can lead your customer into taking the next step.

Dig deeper: Using search and email to recognize customer intent

Why don’t brands get it?

Effective email copywriting seems like such a simple thing to do, but I’ve yet to see many brands truly master the art and science that go into effective copywriting for email. Instead, they often just repurpose their website copy in an email message.

We used to see this attitude in email designs, where the email message looked just like a page from the website. We’re finally getting past that bad practice to understand that email design is crucial to conversion. 

That might be because people assume email design, coding and development have to be learned, but anybody who writes can produce email copy. Not true!

Most digital marketing teams I’ve worked with don’t have dedicated email copywriters. Even brands that send five email campaigns or more a week – something that should warrant at least one email-only copywriter – generally don’t invest in email-specific copywriting.

As the saying goes, even a mediocre email program will make money for your company. But you could make so much more – you could build even stronger customer relationships – just by investing a little more in your email program.

I’m not saying that skilled web copywriters can’t switch gears. Rather, the problem is that they might not understand the differences, like those I listed in the previous section. 

Another reason persuasion matters. Shoppers who arrive at your website from search are further down the funnel from your email readers. Your emails have to do the heavy persuasion work so that your customers are ready to convert, or at least much closer to converting, by the time they reach your landing page. 

Someone who isn’t trained in email copywriting won’t understand that crucial distinction, and that’s the point at which you lose potential conversions. It’s a key tipping point that gets much less attention than it deserves.

Does persuasive writing pay off?

It can, although not with campaigns that use the same ho-hum I see every day in my own inbox, like these:  

• Minimal copy to support big images
• Copy that’s all about the brand, not about my wants, needs, passions or motivations
• The same CTA from one email to another, from one brand to another.
• Generic copy that doesn’t recognize my history with the brand or where I am in my journey with that brand

Every once in a while, I find an email that begins with an irresistible subject line and pays it off with intriguing copy that sparks my interest. It’s not about dropping my first name into the copy or running a list of product recommendations. 

Here’s an example.

Team Cheeky for the win: CheekyWipes excels at the kind of persuasive copywriting that compels clicks. The UK-based brand of re-usable cloth personal-care products sends emails that are generally longer than most ecommerce email messages but are designed to appeal to a wide variety of shoppers.

This email is typical of their work: A big promotional campaign captures attention right off the bat with a promo code and free-shipping incentive. That could be enough to send regular shoppers right to the site. Quick bursts of benefit-focused copy follow for customers who need more information.

Persuasive copywriting with a strong customer-centric focus is one of the foundations of Helpful Marketing (also Customer Experience Email Marketing). This marketing approach balances customer and company goals for an “everybody wins” result. The other two tenets of Helpful Marketing are helpfulness and personalization.

A study my company did with Liveclicker several years ago (download the report) discovered email campaigns that incorporated Helpful Marketing scored significantly higher reader engagement than generic or brand-centric campaigns.  

Steps to take

1. Audit your email copy. 

Review both from recent campaigns and whatever you use to persuade customers to opt in to your email program. Do you give readers compelling reasons to click through or does your copy come off as being indifferent to their reactions?

2. Invest in an ecommerce copywriter who understands email.

You don’t have to find someone who writes only for email. But your writer should understand that web and email require different writing muscles and know how to work with the idiosyncrasies of the email structure. 

Ideally, this writer should be able to bridge the gap – to know how to persuade your bystanders to click and, once they hit your landing page, how to switch gears and move in for conversion.

3. Revise your copy to become more customer-centric.

As part of your email audit, count the number of times “we” appears in the copy and how often “you” shows up. The more “we” copy you have, the more brand-centric your copy is. 

Does your copy focus on the features of a product, like the feel of a new fabric or the options on a discounted dishwasher? Or does it discuss the benefits of that fabric (more comfort, longer wear) or dishwasher (cleaner dishes, quieter operation)?

Your website can get away with brand-centric copy, but your emails can’t.

4. Make your writing more persuasive.

Persuasive writing is not the same as high-pressure sales tactics. It’s not the email version of a carnival barker, used-car sales pitch or late-night TV infomercial.

Rather, persuasive writing is an informed conversation that lets customers know how they will benefit from clicking to your website and checking out your offer. It uses psychology and empathy to show how your brand or product can help your customers solve problems or meet needs. 

Besides switching from “we” to “you,” persuasive copy also uses a conversational tone that also reflects your brand voice. Personalizing copy is important, too, but it goes beyond merging in preference or transactional data. 

Consider adding a module of dynamic content and populating it with one copy block for new customers, then using automation to swap it out with copy targeted to repeat customers or never-buyers. 

5. Revise your call to actions.

Remember when I said your email customers are further back from a conversion decision than search users? That’s why “buy now” is usually too aggressive for a call to action. 

That doesn’t mean you have to rely on a low-energy substitution like “Learn more.” Look for alternatives that don’t force your email readers into feeling as if they have to commit just by clicking your CTA. The calls to action in the CheekyWipes email above are stellar in that respect.

The exception: nurture emails. If your email is at the end of a drip or nurture series, and you have run the gamut of informational messages, or your customers have run out of time to consider your offer, go ahead and nudge them into action with a more aggressive CTA.

Resources for copywriting help. These are some of the excellent resources you can call on for advice, self-directed courses and more as you explore all the avenues to sharpen up your email copywriting: 

• Copyhackers
• MarketingProfs
• Very Good Copy
• Copyblogger

Good writing helps everyone

Yes, everybody writes, as copywriting guru Ann Handley’s famous book title implies. But not everybody can write well for email. Strong persuasive writing that puts customers first and sends more of them to your website will give you more chances to convert them. It’s worth investing your time and energy!

The post Does your email copy persuade or sell? appeared first on MarTech.