Even with the dizzying amount of digital marketing channels available, email is still a powerful marketing tool for B2C brands.
It’s cheap and scalable, and it can help you develop strong relationships with customers that last.
Naturally, you have a variety of goals you’re trying to achieve with email marketing, but how do you get your emails to generate those all-important clicks?
Here are 6 features you need to meet in your B2C email sends.
Tighten up your copy
As a marketer, you know that your customers receive countless marketing emails every day. A long, rambling email about your new product makeover is the last thing they’ll want to read on their commute to work.
Instead, keep it concise. Cut any unnecessary copy and get to the point. But that doesn’t mean you need to strip your entire email back to its bare bones; you’ll just need to deliver your message in a way that’s engaging without being excessive.
The success of this lies in asking yourself: Who are you talking to? Who is your customer? This is crucial in B2C marketing. Your relationships with your customers should be human and personal.
If you want your B2C emails to resonate with your audience, you need to understand the way they speak as individuals. What slang do they use? What cultural references? Once you understand this, you’ll understand how to communicate with your recipients.
Good design goes a long way
If a customer steps into an extremely untidy store, then they’re probably not likely to make a purchase. The same applies to your subscribers. A poorly designed email can repel readers, losing interest and traffic for your brand.
Most email automation tools come with easy-to-use designers that let you create clean, professional-looking emails at the click of a button. They often come with preset templates too, so you can fire off a slick campaign quickly and easily.
As a general rule, less is more. A sleek and minimalist design offers a clean, easily understandable email that encourages your recipients to engage and, ultimately, click through.
Segmentation means clicks
While your copy, CTA, and content are all important features of a marketing email, if they’re not targeted to the right audience, then they still need work before they’re usable emails. That’s where segmentation comes in.
Segmented email lists are crucial for increasing click-throughs by appealing to customers based on individual character traits. There are a number of factors that you can take into account when you’re creating your email campaigns:
■ Location
■ Age
■ Gender
■ Interests (e.g., magazines, online publications, activities, etc.)
■ Past interactions and behavior with your business
A tailored campaign is always more successful than one that casts a wide, indiscriminate net. And, by segmenting your recipient lists, you can personalize your emails, too. Including even simple personal details (such as a first name) in the subject line can help increase your click-throughs by an average of 26%.
Craft bold, eye-catching CTAs
If it’s click-throughs you want from your email marketing, then you’ll absolutely need a strong call to action (CTA). A CTA is basically you telling your customer what you want from them, whether it’s visiting a product landing page or entry to a competition or giveaway.
A strong CTA is bold and eye-catching — it stands out in a B2C email. The reader should be naturally drawn to it, so aim for vibrant, contrasting colors.
It should also be placed in a logical position.
Consider where your email sits in your online infrastructure
Your email marketing doesn’t sit in a bubble. It’s a conduit through which your customers reach your website, online store, product pages, signup pages, and so on.
Of course, your post-email elements aren’t strictly features of a B2C email, but encouraging click-throughs is as much about past interactions with your brand as it is about email elements.
Successful interactions build good relations between your brand and your audience. They foster positive habits that encourage your audience to click through on later emails, especially if they’re part of a drip campaign.
Consequently, your landing page and surrounding elements on your website should be designed to keep visitors informed and on-site.
Building a landing page that matches the tone, style, and value of your emails will increase the value of your click-throughs by delivering value and keeping visitors on the page. If you promise a discount code in your email, for instance, you should deliver a discount code on your landing page. This should all be matched in the same branded style as your emails to build trust and keep visitors on your site.
Similarly, your customers are going to have questions, especially if they’re new prospects. You want your leads to stay informed and in your funnel, and creating your own knowledge base that’s wide and comprehensive is a good idea. Here, you can resolve any queries on site to keep your audience engaged and in your sales funnel.
Video is your holy grail
It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that video is valuable right now, and the data is there to support it; including videos in your email can increase click-throughs by up to 300%. With statistics like that, it’s clear that video is a vital feature for click-throughs.
The great thing about video is that it can fulfill a range of purposes. Testimonials, brand storytelling, interviews — all these and more can help to engage your audience with your B2C email marketing message.
The key to creating a good video is to keep it brief, no more than two minutes. And remember to mention in your subject line that there’s a video inside. This can increase open rates by 19%, and boost click-through rates by a staggering 65%.
That doesn’t mean you need to fill every single email with dozens and dozens of videos to see results. Less is more, so use them considerately (especially as part of a drip campaign—think about what stage of your sales funnel works best with a slick video).
Wrap up
Creating an email marketing strategy that sees high conversions is easily attainable if you put the work in. Time spent amending and adjusting your B2C email marketing isn’t wasted time; if it gets click-throughs, it’s worth the investment.
Remember to continually test and tweak your campaigns to get the most out of them, and check your metrics regularly to see how they’re performing. A successful email campaign isn’t created overnight. Give it time and effort, and consistently implement the tips above, and you’ll enjoy more click-throughs as a result.