Daniela McVicker — May 18, 2019 — May 18, 2019
Whether you are an independent blogger, an eCommerce store representative or a marketing expert, a chance is that email marketing matters to your cause. According to reports, the average RoI of email marketing investments currently sits at 3800%.
This is a staggering number considering the sheer number of email users on the global scale. It also means that you should pay close attention to how you write your emails in order to be recognized as a trustworthy provider of products and services.
However, with so many online businesses, retail stores and independent salespeople, how can you even begin to compete? Let’s take a look at several tried and tested steps which will help your email content stay out of the dreaded spam folder and be seen for what it is.
Benefits of Email Marketing
Streamlined Audience Targeting
Email marketing stands out from the crowd of advertisement methods due to its very nature. Depending on the email list you work with, you can segment your audience into different groups according to their needs and profiles.
Studies have predicted that the number of email users will grow to up to 4.3 billion by the year 2022. This goes to show that email isn’t dying by any means and more and more people will become available to you as potential customers.
For example, makeup products won’t go well with men and the same can be said for the gentler gender and shaving products. This will not only help you avoid the spam folder even better but also market different products to different customers according to what they may or may not like.
Seamless Tracking & Analytics
Imagine publishing a visual content piece on social media. Anything from testimonial to product marketing will do. This photo cannot be tracked for its engagement, reach or the effect it had on the end-customer apart from some rudimentary interactive metrics.
Email marketing can provide your content creators with more robust tracking data through platforms such as MailChimp. Combined with a writing tool such as TopEssayWriting, this can prove to be the decisive tactic in terms of landing your email in the inbox folder rather than the alternative.
Comparatively Cost Effective
Email marketing is a very cheap and accessible way to promote your brand on the web. Compared to paid the paid advertisement on social media, influencer collaboration and product placement found in the traditional advertisement, email marketing is very affordable. This means that anyone can use it and make the most of what it has to offer even if they operate on a shoestring budget.
How to Avoid the Spam Folder
1. Subject Lines Matter
Now that we have a clearer understanding of why email marketing should matter to you, let’s take a look at how to avoid the pit of despair known as the spam folder. Notice how numerous emails that usually end up in the spam (or junk) folder start with very direct, often capitalized titles with no subtlety or professionalism to them. For comparison, let’s take a look at two examples of email titles:
- “Jewelry on sale this holiday season, come by and say hi”
- “DON’T SKIP OUT ON OUR EXCLUSIVE PRODUCT OFFER ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!!!”
Using your everyday logic while reading these two titles, you would be hard-pressed to choose the second one and open the email it contains. Email users get bombarded with spam on a daily basis and following the pattern of these (low quality or outright) fake brands won’t help your cause. In order to amend for that, you should pay close attention to the title of your emails, especially if you mass-send them to an email list comprised of different types of people.
2. Open with the Hook
Email marketing is different than video advertisement, even though people spend roughly the same time digesting both types of content. It’s extremely important to tell your readers what the email is about as soon as they open the mail.
Don’t wait until paragraph two or three to reveal why you contacted them, how you came about their contact information or what it is that you have on offer. Hook the reader from the first line and continue the dialogue from there once they are intrigued enough to keep reading. Failing to do so won’t help you stay in your readers’ or email algorithms’ good graces when it comes to staying in the inbox folder.
3. Short-Form Writing
Due to the hectic nature of today’s daily routines, people have grown fond of short content. This is further amplified by social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter where status updates are bite-sized and quick to read.
Whether for good or bad, this habit has translated into email and people aren’t going to read long-form content no matter how good it might look. This is especially true if you use cold email and contact someone for the first time without breaking the proverbial ice.
If you don’t know how to write short content yourself, you can always refer to online editing services reviews for some help on the cutting room floor. This will help you focus on informative writing and avoid unnecessary fluff which does nothing for your point other than inflating the said promotional email.
4. Write Casual, Act Professional
It’s very easy to spot stilted writing in email content. Most of the typical spam found in inboxes can be identified by very iffy English writing. This is usually the result of machine translation and services such as Google Translate being used to translate the text for international audiences.
Make sure that your writing matches the casual tone of voice you might use with an old acquaintance or someone you are comfortable talking with. This will give the reader an idea of what you are going for and make sure that they give your email a second glance.
Avoid robotic, monotone writing style no matter what you sell or promote. This type of writing should be kept for corporate correspondences and official statements, not for email marketing which should appeal to a wider audience.
5. Be Transparent
Whether you want them to or not, your readers will quickly pick up on what you are trying to do with your email. It’s important to establish a trusty precedent with your writing, especially if you want to lead your reader into the conversion funnel.
Present your offer plainly and avoid wordplay which might give the reader an impression of receiving something for “free” or “exclusively”. Plainly stated, transparent sales pitches are bound to receive a warm welcome. If nothing else, they will help you avoid the spam folder in a wide arc along the way.
6. Include Social Proof
What often works wonders in email marketing (and digital content in general) is numbers. Social proof provides the reader with a necessary “proof” that someone else already purchased a product or a service and is content with what they received.
Social proof can come in a variety of ways, whether in the email itself or as an outbound link towards a study or data chart you comprised. This type of numeric proof will help you avoid looking like a brand that came out of nowhere with intriguing offers of high-quality products but nothing to back that up.
7. Proper Grammar and Formatting
Perhaps the most important item on the list is your ability to proofread your email before sending it to your list. A single spelling error spells disaster (pun intended) for your current campaign no matter how good your offer may look on paper.
As we’ve mentioned previously, many spam emails come with spotty writing attached to them, which is why it’s necessary to avoid this association as best as you can. Read your email out loud, format it properly into paragraphs and bullet points, but most importantly – spellcheck it before hitting the “Send” button.
8. Calls to Action & Links
Sending email marketing content without CTAs is a wasted effort because readers will likely remain passive if not explicitly asked to perform a task based on what they just read. The reason for including CTAs and links in the same item on the list is because they are then intertwined with one another.
Your calls to action can include links, and the links you attach can have calls to action in the URLs themselves. However, it’s important to strike the perfect balance between the volume of external links in your email and the most important outbound link which leads to your product or service page.
Make sure that your CTA comes at the end of the email, preferably accompanied by a link which will help the reader continue their customer’s journey and convert into a purchaser.
Ongoing Marketing
It’s easy to be overwhelmed with the number of factors that go into email marketing and not ending up in the spam folder. However, once you find the formula that works for your brand and its target audience, it’s good practice to stick to what works.
Experiment with email writing until you find the system that works well for you before settling into a routine. After all, email delivery is only a tip of the iceberg in terms of customer engagement – the real sales pitch starts once the mail is open and read fully.
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