The Anatomy of a Great Email To Drive Sales

Understanding The Important Parts Of Email To Make Your Email Marketing Effective

Email marketing is still a great way to drive sales for most businesses and a great way to reach your audience in a direct way.  However, there are good emails, and there are bad emails.  Let us tell you one thing:  we’ve seen them all!  In our business, we have seen many email marketing campaigns go gangbusters, and then others that flop immediately.  While there are a number of reasons why a campaign may succeed or fail, the email itself needs to be engaging and created in a way to drive sales.  At Data-Dynamix, we guide our clients and partners to create emails that succeed in the five major parts of an email, and we want to let you in on those six important sections today.

1. From Name.  The From Name, while small, is extremely important to an email.  In today’s world of spam and scams, an email from someone who sounds questionable is immediately written off and thrown to the spam folder.  You want to make it easy on your audience to know exactly who they are receiving an email from.  Also, if you are doing a multiple email campaign, you need to make sure you are staying consistent by having the same sender for each deployed email.  Consistency is key here!
2. Sender Address.  The same principles we just talked about in #1 apply here as well!  Consistency is key, and credibility is key.  You want your audience to see a legit-looking email address that makes sense with the company or brand.  Of course, you always want to be using professional email addresses with a paid domain.  Emails ending in hotmail.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com, or the like will not be taken as seriously as ones ending in “yourbrandname.com” addresses.  We also recommend having an email come from a specific person in the company, rather than a generic office email such as “[email protected].”  This adds a personal touch that subconsciously tells the reader that your company cares enough to send a personal email.
3. Subject Line.  Whew!  Subject lines might be the most important part of the email.  So important, that we’ve written on this topic in our blog before.  You can go into further detail on the details of a winning subject line here.  In the meantime, just remember that subject lines are the first thing people notice in an email, and they are the deciding factor for if an email gets opened.  They also are a deciding factor for the importance a viewer puts with the action item in the email.  The language, punctuation, and tone you use in an email is vitally important to the life of your email campaign.
4. Preview Text.  If the subject line is the most important, then the preview text section is right behind it.  Many email browsers let you preview the email before actually clicking it open.  This is a great opportunity to entice readers to want to read more and open the email.  The preview text section is important because it encourages readers to open the email and see more from your campaign.  This section is also important because even if the audience does not actually open the email, they have a chance to receive branded information and make connotations about your brand based on what they see in the preview text space.  When you are designing an email, careful attention should be given to the design and language used in this important section.  Quality graphics and engaging copywriting will help grab the attention of your audience and make the most of this valuable real estate within your email campaign.
5. Body.  The body of the email needs to have a compelling message and call to action.  Text is not enough in our digital world:  you need to have compelling graphics to help sell the message. Let the graphics and text work together to evoke emotional responses from your audience.  Another key piece to your email body includes links to a landing page or other website that allows the customer to react and respond to your advertising.
6. Unsubscribe Section.  The details at the bottom of the email are an essential part to any campaign.  Having consistent, professional, and clear information helps users know that you are a trustworthy business.  In this section you need to have an easy way for viewers to opt out of future emails.  This is a best-practices standard in the world of digital marketing and one that needs to be respected.  Of course, no one wants people to unsubscribe to your emails, but having an easy, clear way to do that is essential for the integrity of your business.

Email marketing campaigns have the opportunity to fail or succeed, and a huge factor to that is the structure and design of the email itself.  Set yourself up for success with a well thought out email campaign that covers the basic six sections and you are well on your way to a winning email marketing campaign.

This article originally posted on the Data-Dynamix Blog.