“Focus Daniel-san, Focus!” Mr. Myagi, the wise teacher from the karate kid movies had a great point there. Because without focus, how to create an effective email marketing message that delivers a strong punch?
A problem with many email promotions is the lack of focus. The question: “What do you want me to do?” remains unanswered too often. And that is a shame, because clear and focused email promotions yield much better results.
So how to add focus and create a successful email promotion?
In effective email marketing, good preparation is key
Good preparation is key to crafting a focused email promotion. This is why Focus is even a separate category my pre-flight email marketing checklist. Every email should have one main message, one thing that you would like the reader to do (first). But sometimes that message gets side-tracked, losing its focus. Keep in mind what you intend to achieve while writing your email promotion or newsletter.
Even after the email promotions is finished. Check for focus once more before you send the email campaign out. If the message isn’t clearly delivered, go back and re-think the email, edit content, move and remove. Let’s see how to create a sharper, more focused and effective email marketing promotion.
Be single minded and drop the nuance in your email promotion
The nuanced brain is great. But there is no room for nuance in effective email marketing and focused sales promotion.The recipient should be able to know what your message is about almost instantly, or the power of focus is lost. So in creating the email, we need to make choices.
Be more single minded, leave out all the terms, conditions, if’s and buts. The worst thing you can do is confuse people by adding too much nuance to your email promotions.
A straight arrow, powerful and focused email promotion doesn’t go into nuance, but still can fit perfectly with the subscriber. Even by making your email promotion appeal to a bigger target group you are increasing your email HIT ratio and adding focus. Everything about that email reinforcing the main message and brand.
Prioritize your Call to Actions
Make clear what you want your newsletter subscribers to do by prioritizing the Call to Actions. The placement, size and colors of your Call to Actions and content can help the reader know what is expected of him. Attention isn’t multiplied by the number of (equal) options, it is divided.
So if for instance your email newsletter is all about getting people to click through to a product page, dim down or remove the social media sharing buttons. They might just be too distracting. In effective email marketing you can’t dilute attention. Go through all the elements of your email that way, removing distractions, adding focus.
Don’t give me all you got, just give me what I need
The text in the email should be about half of what it is when you write it the first time. And then half of that. Short is sweet in focused messages. Although there are exceptions, most of the time you want to get people on a landing page as quick as possible.
There is no need to elaborate in your email, or give all the information you have. Give the needed information to “get the click”, no more. This will ensure your message is focused.
Tailor your offer
You want to present the right offer. This is probably not the same offer for each recipient. So get to know your clients beforehand, by asking for preferences, tracking behavior and using purchase and profile data.
Then segment your email list, make multiple versions and send them to the email segments. There is no room for a lot of options in a focused sales promotion. Keep focused by offering your readers the offers they can and want to act on.
Make the link to the next step clearly identifiable
Make sure all the important links in the email are clearly recognizable as links. Even if you have inserted great call to actions, for an effective email marketing promotion the recipient needs to easily recognize them as links. Users know what a link is and how it looks like, they see them all the time on the web.
The basic text link is an underlined text with a contrasting color. Or a button. Let them know what they can expect when clicking on that link, by using clear and descriptive words.
Keep this in mind: Putting the effect in effective email marketing
There are more things you can do to even further focus your email, but the most important thing is to keep the question ”Is it clear for the reader what to do?” in mind while you are writing your email. And keep checking it until your email promotion is sent. This way your email can be a part of an effective email marketing program and you can add more focus to your focus.
