Wakeup Call: Begin Your Emails with a Call to Action in Mind

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AppId is over the quota

Every email has a goal and 99 out of a hundred times that involves the subscriber taking an action. So the call to action is one of the most important parts of any email. But what if you can’t find them? While it could have been a Call to Action hero, you can imagine that an email that doesn’t include a CTA that spells out exactly what is it the subscriber should be doing, is doomed to fail. Fail. Fail. 

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Before you start writing and designing your email, know what you are working up to. The email should be in function of the Action, not the other way around. Or as a famous email marketing quote says:  The email is the invite, but the party is on the landing page.
Examples of Actions that you want them to take can be:

Buy a product,Register for an event,Renew your subscription,Request a quote,Do a demo, take a trial,Requesting a call back, they are all working up to a sales.

Sometimes it is very specific actions to your industry or product, like request a test drive for automotive.

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But not all actions are the same as goals or even outcomes. Your (end) goal might be to increase sales or increase customer loyalty. But there can be a couple of steps before that happens, like the action to view a video or read an article. Especially in B2B there are long sales cycles and complex products, that require some extra steps. Examples of these are:

Read an article or a blog post,Watch a video,Take part in a prize draw,Update their preferences,Download a whitepaper.

See the example by Secret escapes, they use an extra step “visit sale” instead of “Buy now”. The outcome is actually exactly the same, it takes you to the product page. But “visit sale” is a smaller ask. There is also a second CTA, “Set reminder” this sets an email alert that is sent just before the offer ends.

These intermediate CTAs are definitely allowed and can boost the end results quite a bit. So think about what the steps leading up to a sale are. Or are you having an email disconnection - asking too much, too soon? What you can’t do, however is to hide in the valley and not include a clear CTA.

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Sometimes you might be tempted to not include a (clear) call to action. Don’t give in. Or your colleagues might not see why the CTA and whole email isn’t strong. Don’t give in.

You can definitely rationalise any type of email and any misuse or leaving out a CTA in your email. The key word is “rationalise”, because we all feel it when we see it; it could be clearer, cleaner and more obvious. Every email should be caveman-proof, totally clear without any additional explanation.

I have heard many, many, many different excuses over the years. Including beauties like;

this email is purely informative,we feel it wouldn’t be appropriate,they will surely understand,the CEO wants it this way,it is meant to drive offline sales,it is perfectly clear to me,we already had an approval on this version and continuing…

They will share it by themselves, we don’t want to come over as pushy, it is lead nurturing, we want it to be extra classy, the product isn’t available yet, the offer isn’t that good, we don’t want everybody to buy, etc, etc. No kidding, people say these type of things and mean it. On top of those excuses, a new instant classic of for not adding a clear(er) CTA: it was meant to be content marketing.

An example I ran into recently was with a pre-announcement / teaser mail. Even if the product isn’t finished yet, you can still ask for an action; let them pre-register, add comments, share or save-the-date.

Reasoning like this is like staying in the cosy (and costly) valley of low conversion. Not that every email should be a hard sell, but it does need a perspective for action. So don’t stay in the valley, go find yourself some action!

If you can really find no action, you are probably best off not sending that email. So before anything else, always start with an action and outcome in mind.

Using Content Marketing Strategies in B2B Emails #Infographic

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AppId is over the quota

With 191.4 billion emails sent daily around the world, grabbing your customers’ attention with your message can be a shot in the dark. One of the most effective strategies emerging in global marketing is to use content marketing for your newsletters. Today’s infographic will tell you why it’s worth it.

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Today almost 93% of B2B marketers are using content marketing strategies to engage current customers and attract new ones. 78% of marketers are producing more content than a year ago, and only 35% of them find it hard to produce good quality content.

But producing good quality content is one thing. Making it work for your business, that is – engage and convert – is another.

To promote the content and make it reach their audience, B2B marketers use social media (87% of marketers) and their own websites (81%).

How about email marketing? Can it effectively promote your content? Read the infographic to learn more.

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Marketers use different forms of content to engage their prospects and customers:

Customer testimonials are rated #1 most effective content marketing technique. Testimonials give customers an independent outsider’s point of view on your products and services.Case studies are considered effective by 88% of marketers. They help your audience visualize how they themselves can benefit from your services.Videos can help online shoppers make buying decisions, according to 96% of consumers.Whitepapers are still considered an advanced way to communicate with your audience. But they’re a great and appreciated way to share your expertise and knowledge. They also improve your position as an industry thought leader.Infographics. People love them. And they can be a perfect way to present a lot of dull stats in an attractive, digestible format.

These are all great types of content marketing you can use. But the real key to creating successful content is to understand your customers, their needs, and routines. When you’ve got that, you can create content that really helps solve their problems.

Read the full infographic and let us know what type of content marketing you find most effective for your industry.

To embed the infograhic at your blog or site, please use the following string of code:

Transactional Emails – Your Way to Win Customers’ Hearts

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AppId is over the quota

Marketers make much effort convincing their clients to join their brand community and hoping for them to become truly loyal brand ambassadors. Whilst doing so, many fail to notice that their email marketing campaigns focus mainly on revenue generation rather than on building strong and positive relationships. Apart from regular commercial newsletters there are other types of messages, such as transactional ones, which aim to create bonds. If you don’t know what transactional emails are just yet, this article is for you.

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Contrary to the common belief and a bit misleading name, transactional emails aren’t just reserved for e-commerce and buying or selling products online.

Transactional emails are messages automatically sent to individual users in response to their activity e.g. on your website or another email, or aiming to call them to generate a particular action.

Typically, these emails can be targeted at any type of audience. These could be your regular newsletter subscribers, clients or even prospects that are still in the decision-making phase considering your offer. Both, their action or inaction, could trigger the deployment of one of your transactional emails.

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You may wonder – “What kind of emails would you classify as transactional?”. In fact, you’re probably seeing many of them on your every day basis, by simply going into your own inbox. The most popular transactional emails we have found are:

Subscription confirmation emails,Password reset emails,Order confirmation messages,Thank you emails sent in response to an action (e.g. survey completion, order placement),Bank account balance updates,Autoresponders,Cart abandonment emails,Re-engagement emails,Welcome emails,Rss-to-email,Webinar and training invites,Product delivery time updates,and many more!

As you can see, you can find many different types of messages to be classified as transactional emails. There are no limits as to what kind of emails will be automatically deployed to your individual subscribers. It depends only on which actions you feel are important and should be triggering your transactional emails.

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The main advantage of using transactional emails is the fact that they are sent to subscribers individually rather than as a mass delivery. Although this kind of messages can also be effective, it is the emails that take into account demographic and behavioral data that tend to achieve best results. This is because they offer value and truly invite the individual readers to take part in the conversation, which is rather uncommon when it comes to regular promotional newsletters.

Another great advantage of such emails is their time of deployment, which takes into account each individual’s actions. Through delivering your emails right on time when the subscribers are still in front of the screen, you have a greater chance to capture their attention and reach them when their engagement level and purchase intention are the highest.

Your newsletter subscribers will surely be grateful and appreciate your effort when each message they receive will offer them value. Matching of the offer to individual customer’s preferences, needs and actions is something we can only dream of when thinking of other popular promotional channels. Every single email following this pattern will mean more to your audience, which you should expect to see in the increased open and click-thru rates of your email marketing campaigns.

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OK, so by now you should already know what transactional emails are and how important for your audience they can be. What you may not know is that such emails are effective also in terms of building strong relationships with clients and achieving great conversion rates.

It is thanks to birthday emails, messages thanking for joining the newsletter subscription or an invitation to an upcoming event through which you can shape and mold the bonds between you and your audience. If you promise to offer them value by delivering timely content that is well-suited with their needs and wants, you should not worry about them going out seeking amongst the competition. Provided of course, that you deliver on your promise.

This means there’s nothing else left for you to do, other than to carefully analyze your current communications with your audience and try to find any weaker areas that could be improved by adding automatically deployed, yet at the same time, personalized emails. You can trust me on this one. There is always a spot where you could fill in at least one of such messages if you truly put your customer’s hat on.

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Here are several creative examples of newsletters sent by companies who have already implemented transactional emails into their communicational strategy. Take a look and perhaps some of them will inspire you to go and introduce them into your own marketing program.

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Welcome emails are messages sent at the moment when your audience is most engaged i.e. right after they have joined the subscription. Although they are extremely effective in terms of starting a conversation and its tone, they aren’t yet universally used. Through them you can introduce your team, offer, ask your subscribers to add you to the contacts list or follow you on other social media channels. It’s an opportunity you should not miss out on.

Adidas welcome email

Sugar Sync welcome email

Do it yourself #1: How can you create a welcome email? It’s plain easy.

All you have to do is to create an Autoresponder, which will be automatically deployed to your audience upon subscription.

You can achieve the same result if you create a time-based Autoresponder and set its date to “0? which refers to the moment of subscription.

For more information on Autoresponders take a look at this manual and our faq section.

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Another great example of transactional emails are thank you messages automatically sent right after a user has performed a particular action. This gives you a great opportunity to build positive relationships with your audience or even to cross-sell on other products that you have in your offer. Showing your gratitude towards subscribers you get to remind them about your brand and make them look more fondly at your offer.

Vemma personalized emails

H&M thank you email

Do it yourself #2: Do you want to find out how to create a successful personalized thank you email, which is displayed in a number of different languages and portrays the picture of the recipient himself? You can read all about it in this post.

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A great example of combining the powers of personalization, segmentation and automation are emails which aim at reactivating the subscribers that have stopped opening your messages. Go on and make your audience interested and engaged in the conversation again. Perhaps the only thing stopping them from buying from you is a small coupon, which will motivate them to take action?

Crocs re-engagement newsletter

Do it yourself #3: In order to plan a re-engaging campaign, all you have to do is to locate your inactive subscribers. You can do so by going into Search Contacts and finding the groups of people whose “Last newsletter open date” is before a certain time of the year, which you believe is long enough to be considered inactive. Save the search and create a newsletter with an offer that will dazzle them.

Looking for some more inspiration? Do you want to communicate with your audience even more effectively than ever before? Check out our Book of Inspiration to learn all about the great campaigns you, yourself can do.