Email Marketing has proven to be one of the strongest forms of generating customer engagement and driving sales to a business through its database. Whilst using email marketing in itself is a powerful tool, its vital to ensure its structure sets you up for success. Having a strong email marketing template allows readers to feel drawn to the complete package of your email: the content, the copy, the branding and the calls to action, allowing for more effective engagement. Take a read through our 6 steps to Structuring your Email Marketing Template for more Effective Engagement.
Branding & Design
Branding and design is like a first impression that plays a critical role in email marketing. It not only ensures that your email is opened and read, but also prompts readers to take further action by clicking on links. By maintaining a consistent branding and design approach throughout your email template, you can create a cohesive brand story that resonates with your audience across all channels. This includes using the same logos, fonts, writing style, images, colours, and tone throughout your content. By having a strong and cohesive look across all your campaigns, you can establish a long-term relationship with your loyal readers and attract new ones who recognize your brand across different media outlets. Strong branding throughout your campaign will continue to be associated with long-time readers and allow new viewers to recognise your brand in all its media outlets.
Relevant Content
Creating an effective email campaign requires relevant and aligned content that is easy for viewers to understand and motivates them towards your desired action, such as buying a product, booking your services or following you on social media. To achieve this, it’s important to have a solid structure to your email template that starts with an introduction outlining your offerings and highlights the topics you will cover. You should ensure that all visual and written content aligns with the overall message of the email. This includes using photos, videos, and promotional content or ads that are relevant to the topic. By following this approach, your email will remain concise, well-structured, and engaging, which will help you achieve the desired results from your campaign.
Concise Copy
Effective engagement is the cornerstone of any successful campaign, and the writing or ‘copy’ plays a crucial role in achieving it. Your email’s written content must be structured effectively so that readers can connect with the message and be motivated to take action. Using language that is exciting and enticing is key to achieving this. By incorporating your brand identity and telling your story throughout the copy, your audience is more likely to relate to it and take the desired action. It is essential to be concise while providing relevant information and directing the reader to a source where they can carry out a call to action—for example, encouraging them to “celebrate the last of summer with us,” detailing your summer specials and calling them to come and try for themselves by booking a table via the link below. With some pizzazz and articulation, important messages can be conveyed effectively to ensure your audience is engaged and invested. At CLS, we are experts in crafting words that work. If you want to develop copy and content for your upcoming campaign, book a call with Chrissy to explore how we can help you get started.
Call to Action
The term “Call to Action” refers to the action or task you want your audience to perform while going through your campaign. After you have written your content about your upcoming events, offers or general business information, the calls to action play a crucial role in persuading your email readers to become your customers. Calls to action can be as simple as ‘Book Now’, ‘View our Menu’, ‘Click here for more’ or ‘Contact us’, and they are used to guide your audience to a specific location where they can make a purchase. These phrases can be included in your written content or added to your campaign through buttons and hyperlinked photos. It is essential to ensure that these calls to action are structured throughout your email and remain relevant to the general tone and topic of the content.
Accessibility
Ensuring that your campaign is accessible is a crucial step towards effective engagement with your audience. Making all the necessary information easy to access, including links for fulfilling your call to action, is essential. You can make your campaign more accessible by creating a template with easy-to-read fonts, clear and large images, and ensuring that all links are easily accessible. You can use buttons to make your calls to action more prominent, and these can be set up in your template and reused for each campaign. Placing these buttons throughout the campaign where they relate to the written content, makes the email flow better and prompts viewers to take immediate action. This avoids the need for viewers to leave the email and search for information on a separate browser. By having a well-structured template that is easy to navigate, viewers are more likely to take action, leading to better engagement and increased follow-through.
Tools and Automation
So how does one create these well-structured email templates? Well, the key is to use the right tools. Different EDM (Electronic Direct Mail) tools are available that allow you to personalise your campaign templates and include all the necessary branding and information to create effective engagement with your customers. At CLS, we use our own in-house automation system called Creative Little Soul-utions, which enables you to input your database and build not only email campaigns but also SMS campaigns that are tailored to your business needs.
By using Soul-utions, you can create templates and track your analytics and engagement rates to see the power of email marketing in building your small business customer base and overall reach. The best part is that templates and campaigns can be created well in advance and then automated and scheduled to gain the best traction possible at the perfect day and time for maximum engagement.
If you’re interested in learning more about Soul-utions and how to build effective email marketing templates, please contact us today. For more information on the importance and benefits of email marketing, take a read of Chrissy’s new Ebook ‘Email Marketing Essentials for Small Businesses’.