According to the latest figures from Experian, December has proved to be the biggest online Christmas ever in the UK. As you get back to your desk after a few days off, I’m sure you will have a priority list of things to do in January on your digital and email marketing campaigns. One thing that should be a high priority for email marketers is a thorough review of last year’s performance and an email design MOT. Here are ten best practice email techniques we uncovered from eye tracking studies last year that can help you squeeze extra clicks out of your email programme.
1. Make a good first impression
Recipients open your emails for a myriad of different reasons. Make sure that your opening screen caters for them all. Crucially, offer good navigation links for ‘purposeful’ openers, who already have something in mind, and use good content to ‘open the conversation’ with those in a browsing mode.
2. Design in diagonals
It’s not an immutable law, but the most successful emails we have studied use diagonals and design devices to create ‘pathways’ drawing in the email reader. Browsers will follow visual cues through an email, giving you the best chance of creating the opportunity for a sale.
3. Improve your digital signposting
Are you simply mirroring your website navigation on your emails? If so, you’re missing clicks. Use email navigation to support the themes and content of your email, and introduce extra navigation elements to offer your email openers ‘shortcuts’ to the content that they want to see. The more relevant your digital signposts, the better the chance of a click.
4. Use multiple calls to action
Make sure that your emails feature a strong call to action at every ‘point of purchase’ throughout the email. The daily deal sites do this well. Good use of language helps to encourage recipients – ‘go to deal’, ‘see the whole range’, ‘find out more’. Above all, make clickable elements look clickable!
5. Content is king
It’s a maxim that’s as true for emails as it is for websites. While emails don’t have to compete for search engine rankings, good content is just as important in competing for attention in crowded inboxes. Your email should be aiming to maximise digital footfall to your online store – you can drive more footfall with good added value content. Videos, polls, advice and humour can all help create the ‘environment for the sale’.
6. Copy creates conversion
There are two things that make copy effective on an email – what you say and where you say it. Use snippets of relevant copy near your products to convert interest into action, and you will find that you are sending people to your website with their wallets and purses out, ready to buy.
7. Digital salesmanship
Great salesmanship in a digital environment occurs when every aspect of a product – image, price, benefits, savings – are brought together in an integrated whole. Emails are transient, often viewed for only a few seconds. You have to accommodate the ‘soundbyte’ environment in product presentation – email is the digital equivalent of the elevator conversation. Present all the relevant product information in a form that is easy to scan, digest and act on.
8. Use graphics to create pathways
The most successful emails we have studied sustain attention to the very foot, by using graphics and layout to create visual pathways and direct attention. Email is a marketing channel like no other in its dependence on scrolling to sustain attention. Use graphics to sustain engagement and provide visual directional cues.
9. Sweat the space
If your email was a store, you would exploit every square foot to maximise sales. Apply the same thinking to your pixels. Could you gain incremental clicks from some extra ‘shortcut’ navigation? Are there phrases in the copy that you could convert to hyperlinks? Remember, your email openers have a hundred different reasons for their interest – how many can pull through your digital doors today?
10. Attractors and substantiators
And finally, consider the synergy between attractors (most often images or a graphic) and substantiators (product benefits, copy, savings). Eye contact is a great attractor – a big saving is a powerful substantiator. Ensure you achieve a balance of these elements to drive more response from your emails.
If you found this set of New Year Resolutions thought-provoking, you can see dozens of illustrated examples of these techniques in action in our white paper, Ten Inbox Secrets. Good luck with your email programmes in 2013!