Marketing emails are an easy and powerful way to communicate with your customers. However, our carefully crafted missives often go straight to the virtual bin. So what’s involved in creating irresistible and compelling emails that customers are sure to open? Here are 5 tips to help you entice them.
1.Don’t bombard people with emails
Otherwise you’ll be no different from a pesky work colleague who never shuts-up. Campaign Monitor cited that emailing too often was the biggest factor for people unsubscribing from mailing lists. No matter how great the content of the email is, if you are spamming your customers, their eyes will glaze over. It could get worse if in a pique of frustration, they unsubscribe, thinking your tour is boring and refusing to give you their business.
As for “how much is too much?” – three times a week may be pushing it. Once a week will remind the customer of your existence, but not so much that they feel overwhelmed by the emails.
2. Timing is everything
When you send your email has a big impact on your open rate. Businesses vary, but a good rule of thumb is Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. On Mondays people are settling into their working week routine, and by Friday they are already dreaming of the weekend. However, you know your industry and your customers, so you can experiment with times and see which gets you the best open rates.
3. Optimise for Mobile
According to emailmonday, 55% of people will read a business email on their mobile rather than on their desktop device. HubSpot estimates that 69% will delete an email immediately if it isn’t optimised for mobile. To capture customers who check their emails outside of work, you have to make sure that your email is optimised for mobile. The easiest way to do this is to ensure that you have a responsive email template.
You can also maximise your mobile impact by making your email images smaller, your CTA buttons bigger and keep your subject headings short (between 25 and 31 characters).
4. Be authentic
At the end of the day, you are a person writing to people. Anything too salesy, overt or jargon-heavy will immediately feel like spam and will lead to unsubscribing customers. We are lucky in the tourism industry that we facilitate amazing, aspirational and exciting experiences, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to make people feel that by opening your email. You’ll hopefully give them a nice reprieve from their daily grind.
5. Get to the point
You only have a few seconds to connect with your subscribers, so you have the tiniest amount of time to give them what they want. Depending on your ideal customer you will want to evoke a specific feeling that your experience may provide. Destination NSW cited that many families book a holiday because they love the idea of ‘reconnecting’, while single millennial travellers may be attracted to special and worldly ideas. Use emotive words in your subject heading to get your experience across. Here is a list of high emotion words to help you get started. Hopefully these tips will have your subscribers eagerly opening your missives!
