One of the hardest things to do as a business-owner is make your company stand out from your competitors. The same logic applies to marketing—especially email marketing. In the digital age, when companies send an unfathomable number of emails every day, your own email can easily get lost in the shuffle. To find out how you can fix this problem, check out this list of tips for making your email marketing stand out.
Craft Your Subject Lines
When people check their emails, they’re often met with a bewildering array of subject lines to filter through. If they haven’t cleaned out their inboxes in a while—which seems to be the reality for most people—they’ll have to sort through a jumble of unrelated messages. However, subject lines that grab the reader’s attention and make them want to read more will stand out in a crowded field.
A good subject line for an email is one that is succinct yet informative. Before the reader ever opens your email, the subject line should have already told them what to expect. Try to condense the substance of your message into ten words or fewer when you’re trying to create a catchy subject line.
Include a Call-to-Action
Many companies make the mistake of sending informational or promotional emails to clients without soliciting any interaction from them. Inviting your customers to take action isn’t intrusive—in fact, taking advantage of your engagement is a terrific method to get customers to value your email outreach.
Your calls-to-action don’t have to be complicated to be effective. Even if you’re only informing clients about available appointment times, giving them the chance to sign up via email provides them with the opportunity to secure slots while their curiosity is piqued. Likewise, if you’re sending an email to customers about unpaid debts, include a link that allows them to pay right away.
Format Your Emails Efficiently
Effective email subject lines and body content go a long way toward increasing your emails’ quality. Your emails must also be formatted correctly if you want people to actually read them. Formatting refers to the layout and organization of the text and images in your emails. Inexperienced email marketers frequently make the blunder of creating lengthy paragraphs. Readers become fatigued when they’re forced to read long passages of material without any breaks. Keeping paragraphs under 100 words makes them easier to read and more aesthetically pleasing.
In general, you should also keep emails to 750 words or less. This is probably the most important tip for making your email marketing stand out. If your client opens an email and it’s a 1,000-word-long block of text, they probably won’t want to read it.