Image credit: Pexels Emails are nothing new, but their role in the business world is more important than ever. In this digital age, it’s vital to include email marketing in your overall marketing strategy. Not only will this help to promote your products or service and generate leads, but it also helps to build a community of loyal customers around your brand. Writing great emails is something that every brand wants to do, but not everyone achieves it. Luckily, we’ve got you covered. From writing authentic content to covering the technical basics, we explore 8 ways you can write great emails people will love to receive.
Get the length right
First thing first: send emails that are the right length that people will love to receive. No one wants a long-winded, rambling message that takes half an hour to digest. Depending on your niche, it may be more effective for you to send out shorter emails (perhaps highlighting a single event, offer or new product) more often, or to send longer newsletter-style emails less frequently. Many email platforms offer A/B testing, which will allow you to test different options including the length of the emails you send out. You can send out two versions of the same email to a small percentage of your subscriber list, see which is more successful, and then send the winner out to your whole list. This is great for optimizing your email campaigns to ensure that they perform as well as possible.
Allow your brand’s tone of voice to shine
Email is a great tool for building and showing off your brand voice. Your brand voice is how you express your business’s personality and core values in its purest form. You need to engage with your customers and motivate them into identifying with your brand and buying your products. Align your email communications with brand imaging and tone-of-voice guidelines. This is a good way to ensure that your brand value and uniqueness is conveyed to your customers. Launching a product isn’t enough these days. It’s important to build an identity around your brand that is unique and attractive to consumers. This in turn will create a strong platform for any future products to thrive upon
Build a community
Once your business has established its voice and brand identity, your customers will start to identify with your values. This helps to build a sense of community around your brand, as like-minded customers form relationships with you and each other. Writing great emails plays a big part in growing and reflecting this sense of community. There are a few different ways to make the most of this via email. You can highlight existing success stories within your community, and connecting your customers through their experiences. This is great for putting the spotlight on product reviews and testimonials. Sending out emails with exclusive deals or information will also make your customers feel appreciated and kept in the loop. (It’s sort of like they’re all invited to a private after-party hosted by you). You can also proactively reach out to your customers and encourage people to get in touch with you via your email. This encourages customers to form a relationship with you based on communication and trust. It’s good to include all of these styles in your emails, and you can even merge them all by creating monthly newsletters. You can use email marketing software to create epic templates for your next email campaign.This will help to build your brand community, increase engagement and show recipients that they are valued as an individual.
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Make use of strong images
Another important basic to cover is your use of images and other media in your emails. Including strong imagery and design is often a successful part of creating great emails that people will love to receive. Plus, it’s a brilliant way to portray your authenticity and brand voice. But it’s just as important not to use too many images in emails. This could result slow loading (which leads to customer frustration) or in a huge email file people won’t be able to open. Similarly, relying too heavily on these images for the design of the email is not a good move — it can detract from your content and dilute your main message. Again make the most of A/B testing to work out how many, and what kind of images work best for your business. This could be anything from photographs, illustrations, infographics, videos or even gifs.
Research your competitors’ strategies
You can also look to your competitors to see what kind of emails other businesses are already sending out. You can even look to the rest of your mailbox to get a sense of what makes a great email, irrelevant of the market. Some of these might be awesome and really inspire you to include similar elements in your own emails. Look at all of the elements we have covered above when analyzing emails from your competitors — from tone of voice to length. You might also find that some of your competitors’ emails might be terrible, which can help you to avoid making the same mistakes. There could also be potential you spot in emails from other niches which you could apply to your own market — perhaps ahead of your competitors. You can also find attractive content on various social media channels too — check out our post on this for more information.
Check your links
Just when you think you’re getting ready to send, make sure you check your links. It sounds obvious, but have a look at your own personal mailbox and you’ll be able to see that people are still making these mistakes every day. Take advantage of the tools built into popular email platforms which allow you to test-send emails, and check links. Ensure that you have the right tracking in place within your links too. Email offers valuable data and insight which you can use to improve your mailings, giving your subscribers more of what they love most.
Offer an exit
Finally, make sure your subscribers know they have an exit if they want it. Not only might it be a legal requirement in your jurisdiction, but it’s also important for people to know they can unsubscribe at any time. Not only does this show them the practical option is there, but it also highlights that your business takes privacy seriously. Make sure your emails include a link to your business’s privacy policy, and a clear unsubscribe link works. With the 2018 updates of the General Data Protection Regulations in Europe, and daily cyber-attacks on customer data around the world, it’s important to be serious about this. By including the right sort of content in your emails – showing authenticity and your true brand voice – you’re halfway there to writing great emails people will love to receive. Combine this with covering the basics, including length, media and links, and you’re on the path to a successful email strategy. This is a guest post by Victoria Greene: 
Victoria Greene is an ecommerce marketing expert and freelance writer who loves helping small businesses grow and succeed. You can read more of her work and get all the latest news on ecommerce and marketing at her blog, Victoria Ecommerce.
