This guide outlines the best approaches for email marketing templates that will engage your audience and clients.
Email marketing is one of the most efficient ways to reach your audience. In almost all cases, you know that those on your mailing lists have had some sort of interaction with your brand already. They’re ready to be engaged and the perfect candidates to become true brand advocates. That’s just one of the many reasons why email marketing is a vital part of any digital marketing mix.
Email is also a personal form of communication. With the rise of smartwatches and notifications on all devices, your email will become – at the very least – a small part of that person’s day. That’s why it’s so important to get your email marketing templates right. Even small changes can make big differences to the success of your campaign.
How to develop effective email marketing templates
It’s important to make your email marketing templates as eye-catching as possible to grab your customer’s attention. To get you started, you might want to consider using some of these easy-to-start ideas for email marketing templates:
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Say hello with a well-timed welcome email.
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Offer great deals and promote flash sales. These might even be exclusive discounts.
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Ensure purchase completion by sending cart reminders so potential sales aren’t left abandoned.
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Send a weekly newsletter with the latest information about your brand and what it’s doing for your community.
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Tell your customers what other people think with testimonials, case studies and product reviews.
Everyone loves a happy hello. Giving a friendly wave to the people we meet is part of what makes us human. And there’s no reason why your email marketing templates can’t be the same. That’s why you should showcase the human side of your company.
Any good email marketing journey should start with a welcome email that draws your customer in. It needs to have an eye-catching subject line that really gets to the heart of why that customer chose to interact with your brand in the first place.
An effective welcome email can kick off a long running customer relationship. Your ecommerce email marketing campaigns should begin with a welcome email before moving onto further emails tailored to your customer’s behavior.
Much like out in the real world, the best hellos are personal and meaningful. So make sure your welcome email marketing templates are timely and references your customer and their wants and desires. It should also give them just the right amount of information about you and how they can benefit from being part of your community. Ultimately, it should quickly explain what makes your business exciting and unique.
Email marketing is a great way to show off your product range, but a list of products isn’t going to excite your customer. Instead, use your email marketing templates as a way to deliver offers to your connected customers before anyone else. People love getting a great deal. They love it even more if it feels like a ‘win’ and they’ve managed to get a bargain not everyone knows about. Exclusivity is everything.
For these email marketing templates, try including bold images of products and bright eye-catching graphics. The products should speak for themselves, while key figures like the amount people can save should be easily found in the email.
It’s also important to think creatively about your sales. Yes, you probably will have some sort of sale around Black Friday. But don’t let traditional shopping-centric holidays hold you back. Think outside the box by offering flash sales based on topics trending on social media or the latest popular Netflix show. Email marketing traffic soars during sales like Black Friday. Find your own clear plan of attack and your email campaigns could find more success.
Everyone can get a little bit forgetful from time to time, and everyone is prone to dithering over whether or not they’re making the right purchase. These are the two of the main reasons why products get abandoned in carts and purchases aren’t completed. On average, 81% of shopping carts are abandoned before purchase, but about 4% can be saved by email reminders. You should do everything you can to try and convert these purchases with prompts in your email marketing templates. After all, someone was interested enough to put your product in a cart. Don’t let the sale slip away when you’re so close to the finish line!
Emails can be the best way to convert these sales with reminders to complete a purchase. Often, the customer has simply forgotten or become distracted, so all it takes is a small nudge. Put the product that’s been abandoned front and center. Remind them what it is about the product they love and how it can help them in their lives. In some cases, you might also want to nudge the conversion further by offering a discount code to sweeten the pot.
Not everything you send should necessarily be about your products. Some customers also want to get to know you and your brand. People want to buy from fellow humans and – increasingly – from brands that they feel share their values.
This is where a weekly – or at least regular – newsletter can be useful. If you have a great brand story to tell, make sure you tell it. For many businesses this will include the charity and social responsibility work that they do to make their community a better place. It can also include interviews with the people behind the brand, such as the amazing people you employ. These email marketing templates should be packed with content, eye-catching pictures and links to parts of your website. They will usually be conversational in tone and put the voice and vision of your business at its heart.
It’s great to tell your own story, but often the best people to speak about your business are your customers themselves. Through all your marketing channels, you likely will have secured some passionate brand advocates, the kind of people who will go on the record to tell the world why your business is the best of the best.
Email marketing campaigns are a great place to include testimonials from your customers. Let them tell people why your product changed their lives. For these emails, put case studies at the heart, with pictures of faces and bold stand-out quotes. Usually one of the most punchy quotes is the subject line.
Personal recommendations can also come in the form of product reviews. For something more product-centric, emails can include a series of reviews for products that are tailored to the customer. These reviews, which may be buried further down on your website, can be brought front and center for your customer, making current and future purchases more likely. According to Trustpilot, around nine in 10 shoppers read at least some reviews before they make a purchase.
Summary
Getting started in the world of email marketing can feel like a big task. Many worry that they won’t be able to craft the perfect email before they go live with their campaigns. But there are plenty of tools that can help business owners to develop content that drives measurable results.
Remember that any email marketing templates can and should be tweaked on a continuous basis. The most important thing is learning and adapting to what your customers react best to. And if you’re looking for a sensible place to get started, don’t be afraid to rely on tried and tested templates.
