Mike ParryA good design has high conversion rates and is easy to use. It meets business goals while it is pleasing for people who receive it. Creating content that can facilitate a good design can be difficult though. Here is a list of marketing tips that will allow you to create great content that will make it easy to design for, but more importantly get you those conversions. Here is a great article that details how a company improved conversions by matching email strategy with mobile strategy and also how improved design and design practices like mobile optimisation improved their conversion rate.
Offers aren’t everything
Strong offers are obviously important but if that is all you’re saying users will get bored and eventually tune out. Good looking emails get more conversions, so make the offer look good as well as sound good.
- Lead with a strong graphical image
- Grab people’s attention
- Hide common marketing terms or phrases in an image
- Make the offer clear and understandable
Strong graphical lead image. Matches the brand
Explain why this is a good offer
20% off is not new and has no context to anyone. In other words personalizing the offer or enticing the customer with something free makes the main offer more attractive.
- We thought you’d like this because you have shopped with us before
- Previous customers who bought ‘X’ also purchased ‘Y’
- Only our existing customers are getting 20% off
Limited time offer
Give something away before closing the deal
A bit of generosity goes a long way. Get the customer into your selling space with something free first. Solely relying on the offer is risky, if you can get customers onto your site you have many more opportunities to sell to them.
- Get a free ‘X’ when you buy ‘Y’
- Sign up for ‘X’ and get a free ‘Y’
- As a regular customer we thought you might like a free trial of Premium service ‘X’
Giveaway freebie
Make it easy
It’s a common mistake to litter a design with buttons, phone numbers and other types of calls to action. Make it easy for readers to see what to do and where to do it. Ask yourself if it is necessary to include the address, phone number and email all together? Isn’t an email button sufficient? Just add the address in the footer.
- Avoid duplicating content
- Keep the design clean and copy concise
- Make sections clear and obvious of purpose
- Use space to separate sections
Let your customers sell for you
No one likes to hear someone boast. It sounds fake and people are less trusting of it. Instead include a section of customer stories or recommendations. Testimonials speak volumes.
Repeat your main call to action
Duplicate content is always a bad idea but repeating your main call to action doesn’t have to be duplication. One link can easily sit in the main banner, another can be text links in the main body copy, followed by a button at the end.
Find a visual style and stick to it
Finding a strong visual style not only makes your brand more recognizable but also allows your users to navigate any communication you might send to them.
- Make button styles uniform
- Differentiate between text and text links
- Layout images in a consistent fashion
- Keep spacing uniform
- Make sure there is a strong typographical hierarchy
Use what you know
Data segmentation and targeting is easy to do and greatly improves results. Up sell to active data and try and re-engage users who are lapsing. Sending everyone the same message is lazy and doesn’t get you high conversions.
- Send new offers or similar offers to active data
- Send re-engagement offers or free offers to lapsing data
- Use customer recommendations
Personalised content based on customer data
An email is just a message
Your email design and marketing strategy have to back each other up. Emails that direct users to offer pages should feel and look like the offer pages. Directing users to tips or tutorials? Make sure those tutorials are new and up to date. The branding, tone and message should be consistent throughout to create trust and an enjoyable user journey.
- Carefully construct the user journey
- Engage users instead of just selling to them
- Make sure the tone of the copy is consistent in the email and on the site
- Try and make the whole process seamless
- Avoid very long user journeys
- Get to the point
Hold onto your users
Losing users is natural but them leaving could help you gain great insight into what you might be doing wrong, how to fix it and possibly even persuade them not to leave.
- Ask them to leave feedback if they want
- Ask them if they’d like to stay subscribed
- Allow users to set mailing frequency and update their details
- Keep unsubscribe pages branded
- Keep them incredibly easy to use and always make a total unsubscribe quick and very obvious
- Avoid using multiple success or failure pages, these can be include on the main unsubscribe page
Asking for feedback is important
Be credible
People prefer to shop with brands they know and trust and putting a face on a business really helps create that feeling of trust. A contact us section can be a great place to include this type of information on a site or in an email.
- Tell people where you’re based
- Who owns your business
- Do you need a store locator
- Made in the UK
- Registered with National society of widget makers
- iso9000 business
- Accredited trader
In short if your content is concise, user focused and well organised it should be easy for you to help your email designer, help you.
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