Email Marketing Deep Dive

Copywriting: crafting emails and sequences that convert

Email sequences are an integral part of your data-driven marketing arsenal. You can use them to:

• Educate your target audience on your product’s benefits. 
• Make your prospects feel good about and engage with your brand. 
• Persuade them to take action.

But you won’t get any results unless you perfect your copy.

If your sequences are poorly written, boring or fail to communicate the necessary information, your prospects won’t be interested in what you’re selling.

Or worse...

They’ll mark you as spam.

Here’s a list of our top tips for crafting the ultimate marketing email:

1. Segment your lists

Emily said:

“Always segment your list. If you think about it, segmenting your list helps you not only send emails to people who WANT to get them. It also helps you send emails to people you DON’T want to get them.” 

Why?

1. It allows you to send more relevant content.
2. It ensures you don’t send too many emails (ruining your domain reputation).
3. It progresses your prospects down the funnel.
4. It helps you achieve more response rates, leading to increased revenue.

Meaning: you’ll gain a better understanding of who you’re targeting and how to better personalise your emails for them.

Emily said:

“If you have several funnels or automations happening, you can exclude those people from your regularly scheduled emails. That way, you’re not sending competing messages.”

By using segmented lists, you’ll likely see an increase in open, click, read and response rates.

She added:

“It just makes sense that response rates would be better if you consider who you DO and DO NOT want to get an email message.”

2. Keep it short

Keeping your emails between 50 and 125 words can increase your response rates by 50%!

Short emails work best because your prospects can skim and see what you have to say without needing to scroll down. This helps them to remember your words and engage with you when they have a spare moment.

We know it’s tough, but it’s worth it!

Plus, condensing what you have to say ensures that every line of copy serves a purpose.

So keep things brief!

Include all the juicy, important information at the start of your email and make sure you have a strong hook to reel the reader in.

3. Check your tone

No one wants to read something that makes them feel bad, so it’s best to keep your marketing emails positive, upbeat and friendly - it can increase your response rate by up to 22%!

But whatever you do, don’t make your emails boring.

In B2B marketing, we tend to go with the safest option so as not to upset anyone instead of having a little fun.

An email that makes a prospect laugh can help mitigate any negative sentiment when you land in an inbox unannounced. It also helps build your brand identity.

So if your email annoys some people, but makes others laugh, it’s engaging.

And engaging is always better than boring.

Our rules for tone and humour are:

1. Keep the copy short, punchy and to the point.
2. Use conversational language - write like people talk!
3. Avoid too many colours, GIFs and images - they can overwhelm the reader.
4. Adopt a theme for your email and build your copy around it. Emphasise the value of your product or promotion.

4. Make it personal

Your buyers will respond best to emails that come across as if they’ve been written just for them.

Start by choosing a conversational tone and make the email ALL about them.

To do this, stick to words and phrases like you, your team, your business etc., rather than I, we, our, us.

Then, use merge fields. Don’t overdo it, though!

A prospect who sees an email stuffed with their name and company name will likely be turned off. Two to three personalised elements per email is usually enough.

And, if you’re thinking about where your prospect is in their buying journey, the rest will come naturally.

Emily said:

“I think about personalisation in email as it relates to the customer journey. If you’re thinking about where your subscriber is in their buying stage, sending emails targeted to that stage IS personalisation.” 

But, at the end of the day, it all comes down to your marketing data.

If you’re utilising data-driven marketing correctly, you’ll gain a lot of info on your prospects to better personalise your emails. 

Emily made a great point about this:

“The main rule of thumb of getting this right is making sure your data is clean. If you don’t have clean, well-organised B2B data, you’ll send emails to the wrong people. That’s when it’s a misfire.”

5. Add value

Emily said:

“Nobody wants to hear someone talk about themselves 100% of the time. That’s how basic relationships work.” 

“If you think about your audience as people you want to build relationships with, then it’s easy to come up with valuable content.”

Thousands of marketing emails are sent to prospects daily. You have to stand out.

You don’t want to be seen as just popping into their inbox and asking them to buy something.

So, if all your emails are sales-focused, there’s a possibility your audience will become unresponsive.

Provide them with value-add emails regularly, using an 80/20 split between value and sales emails.

Remember to offer them ungated content, a case study where you’ve helped a company in a similar situation solve their challenges, a link to an interesting blog, coupons, an invite to a webinar or a freebie.

By offering them value, you’re building a trustworthy relationship with your prospect. This can lead to referrals and brand awareness, not to mention a lifelong customer.

6. Include a CTA

Remember back when we discussed the basics of email marketing?

We mentioned establishing your marketing goals for each campaign.

Your call to action will be your little push to get your prospect to move towards fulfilling those goals.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but many businesses taking their first steps into email marketing fail to realise how effective a proper call-to-action can be. So don’t be afraid to make it stand out.

And, according to HubSpot, personalised CTAs convert 202% better than generic versions.

So have a little fun with your CTA, but make sure the action you want your prospect to take is clear.

Emily said:

“Keep it simple and be clear about what it is they’re going to do after they click. Tell people what the next step is going to be for them. Whether or not that is, Watch, View, Read, Sign Up or Get.” 

Cognism’s top 3 rules for CTAs:

1. If you offer something for free (e.g. trial, scoping), mention it in your CTA.
2. If your offer is time-sensitive, tell them. Create some urgency!
3. Make your CTA very clear. Don’t have more than one CTA in an email.

7. Well-thought-out subject lines

You’re probably wondering why we left the subject line till last. Truth is, we write our subject lines last.

Why?

If you wait until you’ve written your email, you’ll get a better idea of the email’s tone and theme. Then, you can adapt your subject line to match them.

Not only this, but you might have written something clever or insightful that would make a great subject line.

Your subject line is one of the most important factors when it comes to your email.

After all, 47% of emails are opened because of the subject line. And 69% are marked as spam just because of it!

So it’s vital to think long and hard about what you use for yours.

It could be the reason your email is opened, read, marked as spam or immediately ignored.

For instance, if it’s too long, comes across as spammy or is just plain old boring, your open rates will decrease.

When it comes to B2B marketing, your subject lines need to stay under 60 characters. This ensures that your message isn’t cut off. It also creates more intrigue for your prospect.

Our advice is to A/B test some short creative subject lines against some ambiguous one-word subject lines.

Cognism Top Tip:

Struggling to craft a compelling email?

Think about the best email you ever received. What made it stick in your mind and why did you enjoy it?

Now, take inspiration from that and roll with it!

Save your favourite external marketing emails in a separate folder in your inbox. Then, return to them whenever you’re at a loss for words.

8. Do A/B Test!

Now that you’ve segmented your lists, it will be easier for you to A/B test your various ideas. This is where you can see what works for your prospects and what doesn’t.

Emily said:

“A/B testing is a fun exercise that can give you invaluable insights into your email subscribers. But you have to do it intentionally or you’ll draw the wrong conclusions about your audience.”

If you’re looking to improve conversion rates, then A/B testing is for you. However, it can take some time to perfect, as Emily explained:

“If you have the resources (mainly time and talent), then A/B testing is great.” 

“But you need to know what your goals and outcomes are and make sure you’re paying attention to the metrics that get you where you want to go.”

You can test a number of things:

• Calls to action.
• Subject lines.
• Layouts.
• Images.
• Links.
• Offers.

But where to start?

If not many people are opening your emails, start with your subject line.

Test the largest portion of your segmented list with names chosen at random. Monitor the results and metrics, such as open rates and clicks. After a while, you’ll have a better understanding of what works for your audience and what doesn’t.

Plus it’s a great tactic for new campaigns. It gives you the opportunity to test different approaches before you spend your entire budget on something that might not give you the results you’re after.