How to Get People to Open and Read Your Marketing Email

Email remains one of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to market your business. It is said that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can get $36 in return. That’s a huge return on investment but you can’t just send any email.

It needs to be carefully crafted to first persuade people to open it and then to take action when they do. Let’s take a look at how you can create a brilliant marketing email.

What are you promoting? Why? For Who?

In order to write a promotional email that converts, you need to know the answer to these questions. For example, if you have a sale for skateboards and you send the email to a 70-year-old man, he will be very unlikely to open the email, let alone look at the offer.

You need to be clear about what you are promoting and the reason behind it. This could be to increase customer engagement, increase sales for a specific product to just generate website traffic.

There are many different marketing methods from handing out business cards and leaflets to paid advertising and email. With each one, you need to know your target market to make it as effective as possible. Once you have a clear understanding of your desired audience, you can shape the email to match this.

Structuring Your Email

Your email needs to have a catchy subject, create a positive relationship, and have an absorbing main body. Here we break it down into more detail.

Catchy Heading

• A time offer, so that they feel the urgency to order it within the deadline. 
• Use power words in the heading, like, ‘Free’, ‘Sale’, ‘Limited offer’, ‘Reward’ etc.  These words will push the customer to look at the value given in the email. 
• Focus on the value that you are offering to the client. It would be better if the exact amount, like ‘half off’, 20% sale, etc. are used in the heading to make the offer clear.

Create a Positive Relationship

It is important for your subscribers to feel like they are important. It can be done in a few ways,

• Sending them a personal email when they subscribe. Telling them the purpose behind the email and making them feel valued.
• Use your personal name rather than your position in the company. You can also do this by adding a business card to your emails. It will foster goodwill with the customer when they will see that they have a way of directly contacting you when they have an issue.
• You can create a loyalty scheme for those who have been long-term subscribers of your mailing list.

Main Body of the Email

Once you’ve enticed them with a catchy title, you need to keep them interested. If the email is filled with a long block of text, they are very much likely to close the email and delete it. Here’s how to keep their attention.

• Keep your email short and concise and don’t use long sentences
• Use bullet points and headings to highlight important information
• Use images and graphics to keep it interesting
• The font should be of readable size and style
• The writing should be conversational and not come across as condescending
• The end should always have a call-to-action

Final Thoughts

Promotional email is a concrete way to get your customers to remember your company and the opportunities that are being offered. They are more likely to click on your email if it seems personal, has a subject that is relatable to them, and adds value. Make sure to keep them engaged, give them all the information about the offer in clean concise words, and has a call to action.