Aren’t you glad that EOFY (End of Financial Year) is over?

If emails were water during the last two weeks of June, we’d all have drowned. Your inbox was likely crammed with emails from brands you forgot even existed (or bought from.) It’s quite likely you sent about 80% of them to the trash folder - but what about those 20% that made you click on them?

According to Campaign Monitor, the average open rate for an email in 2021 was 21.5% with a click-through rate of about 2.3%. That means for every 1,000 people you send your email to, 215 will open it and 23 people will click the link you intend them to after opening. Ouch.

Of course, these metrics are skewed by modern email clients such as Outlook, Mail for Mac, and Thunderbird (the OG) blocking certain trackers. But the results are reliable enough for 81% of small to medium businesses in the US to rely upon electronic direct mail (EDM) as their primary customer acquisition channel.

So what is email marketing, and how do you write emails that are more effective?

What is Email Marketing?

Though it may seem too obvious to even mention, email marketing is marketing your business via email. (Shocker, I know.) However, some marketing strategies around email may vary. Just because a prospective customer has signed up to an email list does not mean they are a guaranteed future customer.

Email marketing may directly sell a product or service; provide information about a product or service to convince the reader to buy in the future; or use other systems to dynamically target emails pulled from other metrics - say, a customer your website analytics has identified as browsing for Size 11 sneakers could fire off an automated email when Size 11 sneakers are on sale.

It could also be purely informational, like a newsletter. Newsletters often presents audiences with new blog posts or video updates on a topic of interest (with some cheeky product placements in the bottom half of the newsletter.)

Email marketing isn’t just one way: it also asks for feedback and opinions from customers to improve their services further. This is called “direct response” marketing and is geared toward eliciting a reply from the reader.

Email marketing is also part of your overall communications strategy. Brand stuff up from time to time and using your email list as part of crisis communications is a tried and tested strategy to allay fears, concerns, and righteous customer anger.

With all that said, is there a secret sauce to getting high open rates and click rates? There is, and you’ll read about it in the next paragraph.

Verbs Power Writing, Ergo, Emails Too

One aspect of writing that’s drilled out of writers who decide to (shudder) enter academia, is the use of verbs to power writing. Verbs or action words are the engine that makes a beefy muscle car blur past, belch smoke, and screech to a halt. That’s just one example among many.

Journalist and author Constance Hale in her brilliant Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch which all about the humble yet mighty verb, says that using active verbs make all the difference, no matter which medium or audience you choose. If you want someone to do something, you have to outright ask them.

That’s where the rather mythopoetic “Call To Action” comes from - 99% of the time, it’s some kind of active verb willing you to click here, download now, contact me. This works equally well as subject lines and inside the body copy of your eDM.

AI can also write these for you - if you’re careful. I’ve come to realise AI is not a replacement for a skill, just an augmentation of skills you already have.

If you’re creative, you can write CTAs without verbs. This might appear as a “pattern interrupt” - something that is so out-of-left field it stops you in your tracks. (Like seeing a baby when you’re upset and calming down - more on that in a future blog post.)

This may come in the form as “Have you seen this yet?” or “You won’t want to miss out on this.” In fact, I do it all the time. By doing it, I often beat the open rates for my industry (20.9%).

Those funny little strings at the end of the email bring us to our next point - email marketing is meant to be personal.

As Personal As a Letter and Television, [FIRST NAME HERE]

The essence of good email marketing is to make it seem personal, as if you’re only writing to that one recipient. Just like a good story, it requires a bit of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader; but all good writing should do that anyway (in my opinion.)

Being personal means using a more conversational style and friendlier tone than usual.

Segmentation is one way of targeting people on a more personal level, separating people by common interest, demographic similarity, geolocation, past open rate, retargeting, and other metrics. Capturing their first name and using it to address them directly (again, guilty as charged) can also be a game-changer when it comes to gaining higher open rates.

This is also backed up by research from Hubspot, who found that the most effective strategies for email marketing campaigns are subscriber segmentation (78%), message personalisation (72%), and email automation campaigns (71%).

Automation can also be personal, even if it is just an AI spitting out strings according to an algorithm. Many successful brands might use automation in dealing with customer queries, elevating it to a human if the user can’t find a ready solution the first time around. You’ve probably dealt with it before without even knowing.

Much like good pop songs, good email copy always addresses the reader in the second-personal pronoun - you. “You’re going to love this” or “You could be basking in the Ibizan sun this Winter, [NAME]!” That’s because emails are about pleasing one reader - or at least, they want to appear as such.

Great Artists Steal

If I was going to sit here and say I come up with absolutely everything myself, I would be lying. So I won’t.

If you are stuck for inspiration, there’s no shortage of it on the web. I subscribe to a newsletter all about great examples of email marketing called Really Good Emails. It not only covers copy, but design, video, and other aspects to tweak your email marketing.

Of course, when you are stealing, make it your own. Don’t just crib someone else’s homework and put your name on it. Authenticity is king no matter what industry you’re in - so make sure you’re putting your own unique spin on things. It could very well enhance your email marketing game.

With all that said, you can sign up for my newsletter below!