Creating a marketing email sounds relatively easy; craft an email, edit and proofread, make a nice layout with images, and press send. Although this would be the perfect way to explain it to a child, the reality is that creating a good marketing email involves a lot more than just typing sentences and editing them to create a coherent final draft.

If your perfectly crafted email focuses on the wrong things or is written for the wrong audience, your click-through rate will plummet. One of the most frustrating experiences for marketers is seeing a low click rate for a piece of writing that you spent hours perfecting.

Marketing emails are all about simplicity and speaking the same language as the recipient. Clarity should never be sacrificed for entertainment - keep it to the point and make sure the reader gets what they expect.

Let’s look at a few tips you can implement in your next marketing email to help boost your click-through rate.

Get your subject line right

The subject title is important. It ultimately influences whether the recipient opens or deletes it. Although we shouldn’t judge an email by its subject, just like we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the reality is that our inbox is inundated with marketing emails, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to get through them all. So, what do we do? We read the subject and make a quick decision to open or delete.

Creative, catchy titles are an excellent way to improve your open rate. However, using actionable language will have more impact. Verbs such as reserve, join or buy all tell the reader what action needs to be performed, therefore removing ambiguity on what is expected from them.

Sometimes no action verb is required; simply informing the reader on something is enough. If you’re actively looking for people to attend your three-day conference, just remind them that the event is happening Don’t forget our live conference coming up! Although no action is being ordered, the information is clear, and the recipient can expect that the rest of the email will be discussing the upcoming conference. 

Personalize your content

People still enjoy the whole personalized experience to feel that the message they are receiving was created with their needs in mind. While addressing your clients by name is still appreciated, you need to pump up the experience a little more. This is where your CRM segmentation tool comes in handy.

Make sure your email is relevant to your market. If you are launching a new product that will ease the pain points of your clientele of web developers, then including sales representatives or marketing managers in your send-off might not be the best way to offer a personalized experience. Your marketing client might forward your email to their web developer, but you lose that initial connection with the original recipient.

However, suppose your product included integrated solutions that would benefit developers, sales reps, and marketers. In that case, you could logically divide your email into three parts and focus on each benefit for each client’s needs. However, sending three separate emails, each with a strong focus on its own features and services, would be even better when it comes to personalization.

Personalizing your marketing emails also includes acknowledging your clients’ business model and recognizing their capacities as a company. This means keeping in mind the budget each client is willing to spend. If you offer basic, premium, and executive monthly plans for your services, trying to sell your high-priced executive plan to a small startup might not be the best option to increase your ROI in the long term. Keep their needs and limits in mind at all times.

Focus on the recipient

Focus on the reader by using second-person pronouns such as “you” and “yours” rather than using “we” and “I”. Don’t provide your reader with too much information about yourself and your company, unless you are certain this information will help them take appropriate action.

People are less interested in self-promotion and more interested in finding out how your products and services can be helpful to them. Subscribers want the focus to be on them - not on your company.

Benefits overrule features

Further to the point above, make sure that the benefits are clear for the reader. You already know why your product or service is wonderful, but your reader might not, and it is your job to communicate this to them.

Sending a marketing email promoting a limited-time 50% discount on one of your products might seem like a good idea, but unless you’re stating the value this product will bring and what pain points it will eliminate, your audience will not see a reason to redeem an offer with no clear benefits for them.

Be specific with your Call-to-Action

Marketing 101 - always have a clear CTA! Have you ever clicked on a social media post and realized there was no link back to the story or promotion mentioned? Or have you ever clicked on a perfectly crafted email only to discover that the URL brings you back to a dead 404 page? Although an erratum email usually follows shortly after, the damage is already done, and your brand can lose out on potential clicks, especially from clients who were already lukewarm about clicking your email.

Make sure your call to action is clear and visible for everyone and is optimized for every device. 

A few tips to remember:

• Clear Design - Your CTA needs to stand out from the rest of your content. If possible, keep your CTA at least a few shades different than your company colors.
• Good Copy - State what action you want the reader to perform. Whether to Learn More, Sign-up or Buy Now, be clear in what they should expect to do on the next page.
• Keep reminding the reader - not everyone makes it to the end of your amazing content. Some people skim; others simply read the headlines, so make sure you have a prominent CTA throughout your email. Some people might already be looking for more information after the first paragraph, so guide them right away - don’t let them wait until the end.
• HTML and Plain-Text - don’t simply rely on images to lead your reader to act. Some devices won’t load HTML, and the visually impaired might rely on plain text, which means your CTA should be clearly defined for both HTML and Plain-Text users.

Keep your audience in mind when crafting your email, and realize that their time is valuable, and most are willing to listen to you if they know that you understand them. So, if your writing skills are razor-sharp, yet you struggle to see significant ROI, then step back and look at your audience to know if you are carefully identifying their struggles and strengths.

The truth about email marketing is that no matter how informative your content is, some people just won’t read it. Often, this is because people receive too many emails and don’t have the time to go through everything. But you can be proud of the confidence your subscribers have put in you by opting into your mailing list. By using best practices, you will slowly establish that trust between your brand and your customers.