Your last email campaign didn’t quite get the clicks you’d hoped for? It may be time to learn from the businesses that are making email marketing seem easy…
We know that features like personalized images and countdown timers DO work. They add a crucial ‘edge’ to email campaigns, raising engagement and conversion rates.
Aberdeen reported that personalised email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14 percent and conversions by 10 percent.
And testing like this from Conversion XL has confirmed that countdown timers help to create the urgency that can translate to triple the conversion rate. But visualising how to use these (and other) features in your emails can be challenging for some business owners.
You don’t have to re-invent the wheel with this; the most successful email marketers are already using these features to great effect.
Below we’ve highlighted a few emails from clients who are killing it: engaging frequently with their databases with emails that:
- Get read: always the first hurdle to overcome;
- Engage the reader; and
- Inspire the desired action
Below are five examples. Each has a short commentary about the design features that are working so well for them. Hopefully, you’ll gather a few ideas to incorporate into your next campaign and start improving results …
Jessica London
Personalisation is perhaps the key word in email marketing as we move towards 2018.
If you want somebody’s attention you call out their name. There is simply no place any longer for impersonal, scattergun approaches to email marketing campaigns.
Address people by their first name and it appears personal, friendly, and immediately engages the reader.
In this example from Jessica London, not only is it “Hi Lori” but Lori’s reward points total is displayed in the top right. So there are two personal touches to the email even before any message is conveyed. This is precisely the right approach.
Note also the hand-written style of the email text—it is styled like a personal letter rather than a mass-produced email.
This can work alongside the other personal touches and clear calls to action to engage and inspire the desired action in readers.
Play around with font styles and try adding image personalisation from NiftyImages to your next email campaign. See the difference it makes to your conversion rates.
StarzPlay found their own unique way of personalising emails for each subscriber. The book in the second main graphic from the top contains the name of the subscriber and a message aimed at getting them to watch one of their horror shows.
We’ve already seen the power of personalising a message—but it can be done in ever more creative ways.
How about your emails? Try tailoring the personalisation of your next campaign with eye-catching graphics that your target audience can relate to.
Really Good Emails
In this newsletter-style email from Really Good Emails, what really stands out?
It’s the live stock price for Adobe Systems, isn’t it! Right at the top of the email, in your face, and changing in real time as you read.
That eye-catching feature is provided by us. So, if you want to demonstrate a live statistic like a stock price, temperature, donation fund amount, survey results, exchange rate, or anything else, NiftyImages provides the API to do that.
Also note the chatty and friendly tone used in the email. Rather than being full of industry-jargon, the email addresses the audience in clear, understandable language that throws in a little humour too.
Stock-market news can be rather tiresome. The newsletter could be dry. But it’s not.
From the off, the email is engaging, making it more likely that readers will venture down the page to other items that require action.
Now—how could you use a live statistic to engage readers in your next email campaign?
Annie Selke
This email is all about the power of the countdown timer.
Few things beat the visual demonstration of time ticking away to encourage an action. If the offer is well-pitched to the target audience, people won’t want to miss out. Introducing the urgency in this way promotes instant action.
This simple but effective tool supplements the well-established strategy of introducing a time limit for offers; this element of ‘scarcity’ (of time) plays on the fear factor of missing out.
It creates a similar effect to the “only five left” marketing strategy – where scarcity is the product or service itself rather than time.
Note how Annie Selke creates continuity and flow by using a background image with the timer: it stands out but not to the detriment of the branding or design of the rest of the email.
Note also how the email uses other language to hammer home the point of scarcity: “Final Offer” and “Last Chance”, as well as the introduction of a code to suggest exclusivity.
The whole email is designed to encourage an action and it’s easy to see how click through rates could be sky-high with this one.
How could you build a countdown timer into your next campaign?
Samsung
Finally, the Samsung email above is another example of the use of a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency.
The timer is right at the top with the message “Last Chance to Switch” to encourage the action; then, just to ram the point home, the next line is “Hurry—there’s not long left to switch!”
The point is compelling and if these emails are well-targeted at people who want to upgrade their phones, it’s easy to see how they could be very successful.
Whether you want to promote this type of sale, a special event, or a webinar, consider the power of countdown timers to spur action.
They can also be used in abandoned shopping cart emails, customer alerts for upcoming charges, order shipping or package delivery dates, and trial expiration emails, for instance.
Remember that they are available in over 40 languages and highly customisable. You can select a date and the time/time zone when the countdown expires, as well as easily uploading your own customized TTF fonts to use.
So—are you now bursting with ideas for the next email campaign?
You should be able to take away at least one idea that can help improve the results from the next round of emails to your database.