Email marketing can play a huge role in the success of your digital marketing strategy. This is why working on your email marketing strategy to make it the best it can be is crucial for achieving the best response from your emails.
This is true for all types of emails, but especially for promotional ones. These are the bread and butter of your email marketing as they directly influence your conversion and sales rates. To create the best promotional emails that will drive user action, use the following five tips.
What Are Promotional Emails?
Before getting into the details, it's first worth understanding what promotional emails are and what you would need them for. To put it simply, promotional emails are the ones you send out to your mailing list to promote a particular product or service, announce sales, offer free or exclusive content, and so on.
Promotional emails can be created for a variety of purposes, so you can expect them to come in different formats, including:
- Welcome offers for new subscribers
- New arrivals and limited-time offers
- Product and service launches
- Flash sales and discounts
- Exclusive deals or personalized offers
- Seasonal or holiday promotions
- Contests and giveaways
- Free resources and content
- Other special deals (e.g. referral programs)
Promotional emails can help you increase email engagement, boost your sales, and grow customer loyalty. However, used incorrectly, they could become annoying to your subscribers and could drive customers away from your brand. This is exactly why you must know how to find the right balance with such emails and start getting the most out of them.
1. Prepare Before Writing
Prior to sitting down to write the emails themselves, you will first need to do a fair amount of preparation and research so that you have a clear idea of what you want and how you can achieve it. Here are some things you should keep in mind:
- What You Are Promoting and Why:
As mentioned earlier, promotional emails could be virtually used for anything and everything. This is why it is so important to understand early on what you are promoting and why you are doing it.
Your promotional email can't be aiming for several things at the same time because that will only confuse your audience and will work against you. Instead, choose an objective and work towards it. For example, you have a new product, and you want to announce its launch.
- Who Your Target Audience Is
Once you know what you are promoting and why, you will need to think about your target audience. Keep in mind that you might be sending out the email only to a segment of your entire mailing list which is why you should work this out beforehand.
For instance, if you want to encourage passive subscribers to engage with your email, you will have to target them specifically instead of sending out the email to everyone.
- Which Resources You Possess
Depending on your budget and resources, you will be able to pull off certain tactics with your promotional emails.
Assess which resources you possess and make a plan that you will be able to realize by using these resources. If your budget is tight, don't go for something too complicated. Instead, do something simple but do it well.
- How You Want to Deliver Information
Lastly, you should decide how you want to deliver information in your promotional email. This is closely related to the resources you possess. For example, if you want to use a video in your email, you will need to have the right equipment for creating this video.
Think about your objectives and your target audience – these can help you further narrow down your choices and decide which type of content you want to use.
2. Always Offer Value
Now you have a plan that you can follow, and you are ready to start writing your promotional email. Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind while creating your email is to always offer value to your audience. You want them to see how they can benefit from the product and/or service you are offering (or whatever your promotion is – e.g. flash sale). They have a problem that you are here to solve.
One huge mistake you can make is focusing too much on the promotion itself. Sure, it's called a promotional email. However, that doesn't mean that your entire email should read as if you are desperately trying to sell, sell, sell… Describe the details of the offer. Then, add a link to the landing page or any other relevant page that will guide the readers to the action you want them to perform.
3. Make It Personal
To continue on the topic of wording your promotional emails right, it's a good idea to make your emails personal. It's not just about personalizing the email by offering your subscriber an exclusive deal based on their past purchases. It's also about the way you deliver information about the offer in this promotional email.
For example, instead of writing the email from the point of view of your brand, write it from the view of a representative of your brand. This will humanize your brand and the email itself. In addition to that, use the subject line and your own address to show that this is a person from your company sending this email. At the end of the email, you can even add a personal signature.
4. Focus on the Details
Speaking of the subject line, it's one of the many details in your promotional email that you should focus on. By working on these details, you will create a better email overall that will help you get through to the different segments of your target audience. Here are some elements you should take a closer look at:
- Subject Line: Use the subject line to show that the email comes from a representative of your brand. Additionally, use it to introduce your promotion and catch the attention of your subscribers to make them open the email and read it.
- Preheader Text: Much like the subject line, the preheader text can help you make more subscribers open your email. It’s the text that appears right after the subject line before the recipient has opened your email.
- Email Header: Once the person opens your email, the header is the first thing they will see. Customize it and make your header stand out by branding it. This way, the first thing your audience sees will be your brand name and logo.
- Footer: Add important links to the footer. For instance, the unsubscribe button usually goes here.
5. Work on Visual Appeal
Last but not least, work on the visual appeal of your promotional emails. Use relevant images, infographics, videos, etc. Obviously, you will want to have your email design fit with your brand image and your website design. However, you should also think about the text.
Don't use a single block of text for such emails. Instead, break it up into paragraphs and use lists and quotes where necessary. Place a call to action at the end – or at the beginning as long as you can make it stand out and maybe even include it as a link.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, crafting the most effective promotional emails could take some time and a fair amount of effort, but it will ultimately be worth it. After all, promotional emails are an integral part of your email marketing, so you should definitely invest in their improvement. Follow the tips from this article and you will perfect your promotional emails.