Recipe for a Compelling Email Marketing Strategy

As the market is saturated in brand-heavy, sales-y emails with flashy “click here” requests – how can companies stand out and attract attention with their email marketing strategies?

Be Genuine

Marketing strategy is built on understanding the consumer and knowing how the target audience processes information. People see an average of 100,000 digital words each day and 92 percent prefer comprehension by way of storytelling. When brands lay out facts, consumers are 22 times more likely to recall it if the content was presented as a story. To be noticed in a cluttered inbox, compelling storytelling might just give a brand that competitive edge.

Be Visual

To make an email resonate with your audience, it must first and foremost be authentic. Authenticity is represented both in the written form and visually; you may have an authentic story, but if the visual representation doesn’t resonate or align with the copy, you could lose engagement. On average, people understand images 60,000 times faster than words. Incorporating the right images with the written word allows brands to effectively enhance stories.

Be Straightforward

Email subject lines can make or break your open and click rates – and ultimately be a deciding factor in earning your audience’s trust and brand loyalty. To avoid the dreaded “click bait” effect (those tricky and ambiguous subject lines that have nothing to do with what the email contains), email subject lines should be clear and consistent with the content of your email.

This is especially relevant as internet service providers are getting more savvy on identifying certain emails as spam because of their subject lines and lackluster delivery rates. When in doubt, err on the side of clear versus clever.

Be Resourceful!
Email marketing is a great avenue to repurpose existing content rather than starting from scratch. Did you notice an uptick in blog post views on your website last month? Or a trend in which posts are seeing the most engagement? Consider turning a single blog post into a drip marketing campaign; by stretching your content out across multiple emails with specific goals for each (E.g., education, engagement, action), companies can vastly improve the success of their email delivery.

Be Nurturing of your Email Lists
Tracking the behavior of your email lists provides valuable information on your subscribers’ interests that can then help you deliver more personalized campaigns. Did you get more email bounce backs from people at a single company? It could mean they have a new firewall in place or changed their companywide email address protocol. Checking your bounces and unsubscribes are just as important as the open and click rates – maybe your next buying customer didn’t actually mean to hit that unsubscribe button!

Black Twig implemented a storytelling strategy for Wellington Environmental, a specialized environmental services firm. “[Black Twig] took to storytelling that was targeted to each segment of our customer base. They blasted the stories (and still do) via email campaigns that produce exceptional open rates and sometimes twice the national average,” said Thom Wellington, President of Wellington Environmental. “This strategy saved us money and made prospects call and customers realize new service offerings were available.”

The Black Twig team knows the importance of a good story and how to write it too! If your company is looking to revamp its email marketing, and needs someone to tell your one-of-a-kind story, call us at 314-536-8906.