Maria Rose
Email is the most dominant form of business communication with employees often spending hours every day using it. It’s therefore important that you are making the right impression to gain attention and captivate customers. Making your message stand out for the right reasons is essential.
First, a quick recap over the top ten email basics – these should provide a strong foundation for any email that you send, whether it is a regular contact message or part of a larger mail out.
- Be professional and understandable – politeness is a given but also make sure not to use unnecessary abbreviations.
- Introduce yourself usefully – you wouldn’t talk to somebody new without first saying hi but bear in mind what is relevant to the topic at hand.
- Use obvious subject headings to indicate content and purpose – for frequently used topics perhaps agree on abbreviation headings, such as ‘AR’ for “Action Required”.
- Send on a need to know basis – use ‘cc’ and ‘bcc’ appropriately and don’t ‘reply all’ unless everyone really needs to know.
- Emails aren’t private – refrain from discussing confidential or potentially embarrassing information: never put in an email something that you wouldn’t put on a postcard.
- Use friendly formatting – don’t SHOUT or get too excited with exclamation marks! Always spellcheck and use a standard font face.
- Don’t overdo emoticons – in fact there’s a good argument for avoiding them all together: if you feel the need to better express yourself, you probably need to take another look at your words.
- Be contactable – have an up to date and useful signature.
- Beware of sending large attachments – if this is absolutely necessary first check that the recipient has room in their inbox and also the best time of day to send it.
- Don’t hide behind an email – remember, your tone can’t be heard in an email and likewise neither can theirs; try to keep phrasing neutral and give the benefit of the doubt.
So we’ve covered the basic standards required for everyday emails. But what if you’ve got a larger email campaign? There has to be more than this required to really grab a customer’s attention?
1. Make it to the inbox – don’t be labelled as spam
An obvious statement but without this your email is pointless; therefore make sure you adhere to the 2003 CAN-SPAM act. In short, this means that you must make sure your email is accurate and honest, has a text version available, includes a postal address and contains a way to unsubscribe, which is implemented within ten days. It is also a good idea to setup a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) in order to verify the sending server.
However, even after making sure that all of this is in place do make sure that you perform testing as a final check!
2. Establish the goal and set a call to action
The same as any business action, know why you are sending the email and what you hope to gain from it. Likewise, make sure that this is obvious to the reader. This means ensuring that all of the necessary information is there and that messaging is clear. Make sure key facts are highlighted but not overwhelming for the reader and that the call to action (for example, acknowledging receipt, providing information or clicking on a link) is obvious.
3. Make a good first impression and don’t rely on images
When sending emails that require HTML elements, remember that many readers will have images switched off by default. Therefore don’t solely rely on text within an image to make your point. Make sure that the image alt attribute can be read and that it displays an accurate description of the image it represents.
With a wide variety of email clients in common use, make sure that there is a prominent link to view a web based version of the email. Similarly, provide a text version of the email, not only to help get past spam filters, but also to aid viewing on mobile devices.
4. Be personal and personable
Make the reader feel special and not simply part of a long mailing list – personalising an email is a great way to create a connection. Likewise, adding pleasantries such as “Have a lovely weekend!” makes the reader feel like they have been contacted by a human, rather than a marketing machine. However, make sure to tread a careful line and not to be over familiar. Too much assumed friendliness can be a turnoff and an email cluttered with marketing jargon, however well intended, is unlikely to be well received.
Remember that personalisation goes further than simply adding the recipient’s name. For example, you could suggest products that the reader may be interested in based on their previous buying habits, similar to how Amazon does. Or you could send different emails to people who frequently or rarely open your emails to either reward or incentivise.
5. Analyse your emails
After going to the effort of sending an email, you want to make sure that it has had the desired effect. Was it opened? Were any links clicked? Was it marked as junk? Analysing the response to your emails will go a long way to improving the success of future mail outs, as well as the integrity of your mailing list.
A good way to test changes to your emails is to perform a split test, where you send a different version to two different groups of recipients.
Are there any other top tips that you recommend for captivating your customers through the power of email?
Shaz Manelli
