When customer make their buying decisions, it often involves both their logical and emotional brain. What many people don't know, perhaps, is that it involves more emotion than logic. Several studies prove that we only apply logic when we seek to justify how we spend money, especially when we've bowed to our wants already. So human emotion is a potent tool and the major determinant in the customer decision-making process.
So, if you want more people to buy your product, you must learn to appeal to their emotions rather than their logic. That's how customers make their purchasing decisions. Of course, people tend to research the product and compare competitors during the process, but once these fundamentals are in place, emotions are left to influence their decision.
Everyone feels the sudden rush of emotion when they are about to make a purchasing decision. When we make statements like: "I love this wristwatch", that's our emotion talking and nudging us towards making the purchasing decision. The trigger for this is usually something shiny and new that we see, and we make an almost impulsive decision to buy it. While it is possible to involve rational thinking during this process, it doesn't help close the deal.
The way emotions drive our decisions is evident and reflected in the language we speak. It can be so intense that we use it to express pain the same way we express love.
As we go further in this article, we will discuss why emotions are good drivers of purchasing decisions and why they are effective in email marketing, but first, let's start with the buyer's journey.
The buyer's journey is mainly about emotions.
There's a much stronger link between our feelings and our purchases than we like to admit because we choose to believe that all our decisions are well-thought and come after the facts have been adequately evaluated.
However, in reality, there's a strong emotional tendency in making purchasing decisions, and these emotions guide us through the entire buyer's journey. When deciding whether to buy a product, our brain is not only thinking about the figures and facts surrounding the funds. It is also considering other things such as how we feel about the product, and the memories that it invokes, etc. All of these inputs are processed alongside the cost. In the end, you’ll find that the price is one of the least significant things that the brain processes.
Using emotions to complete sales
For instance, if you're buying a new car, the fastest way a dealer can get you to seal the deal is to get you behind the wheels and allow you to test drive as soon as possible. The moment you do this and experience the emotion from being behind the vehicle's wheel, then you would be 80% through buying that vehicle. That's how strong emotions are. The car may be a perfect fit for you and have all the requirements you need, but what seals the deal is the test drive because of its experience and emotion.
This is the strategy you must adopt when dealing with your customers and ensuring that they make the purchasing decision. Images are also powerful enough to inspire memories and aspirations, so you must litter them throughout the customer journey to continue capitalizing on their emotions. So, your email copies must include meaningful and interactive images. This ensures you:
1. Create a bond
You're creating a bond with them by invoking emotions, whether future aspiration or nostalgic recollection. This bond will kick start relationships with them to see them invest in your brand.
2. Plant a subconscious need
By sending in beautiful imagery and product messages, you will be stimulating a peripheral vision that helps create a relationship between the target audience and the product. As the relationship grows, they tend to want the product more. The more they want it, the more they feel they need it. In the end, you would have planted a need in them without them realizing it, and they start to think about the possibility of owning the product.
3. Develop brand recognition
When your target audience becomes more aware of your brand, brand recognition becomes easy as a breeze. One reason you're able to identify a brand's ad without its logo is that they have invested enough in your awareness that you already know what it feels like with the brand. You must also continue to reinvest and reinforce your brand identity with your prospects to improve your brand recognition.
Why do emotions drive our decision-making?
Emotions are very persuasive and drive many of our decisions in life without us realizing them in many cases. Here are some reasons it's so effective:
Pain helps to fast-track the brain.
Strong emotions help to drive rapid and intensive responses. So when the brain perceives a threat, it works in binary rather than weighing different options for survival. You either run or stay and fight. Whatever choice you make, you get hormone boosts to carry it out.
This is the genesis of time-limited offers and why they remain effective to date. As the brain sees the time countdown, it considers a threat and becomes scared of missing out on the offer. This forces the brain to act quickly in making the purchasing decision.
It's a cognitive shortcut
The brain is making billions of calculations every second. So it has so much input, which makes it impossible to consider all the factors necessary for making a decision. This is why most cognition, such as purchasing decisions, are handled in the subconscious mind, which happens through several cognitive shortcuts. Here the decision is driven by emotions and biases because the information is based on perceived importance and connections to other bits of information.
How to boost email conversions with emotions
Decisions are made to avoid setbacks and achieve objectives. So everyone is looking to avoid pain and get pleasure instead. So you can capitalize on people's emotion by:
- Using audience segmentation to create personalization
- Matching content style to the emotions being conveyed.
- Taking the audience through the memory lane.
- Immersing the audience in an experience.
Conclusion
Emotions are very powerful decision drivers, and if you’re able to leverage your target audience’s emotions in your email marketing, you will be able to make more sales.