3 Steps to Better Email Marketing

November 17, 2021
7:50 am

When hosting an online auction, it is important to maintain communication with bidders to keep them up-to-date on how your auction is progressing. Email marketing is one of the best ways to engage your audience. Here are three easy steps you can follow to build better, more “clickable” email campaigns that will stand out in any inbox.

Step 1 | Start email marketing with an eye-catching subject line

Your email subject line is the most important part of your entire email. A boring subject line could cause your email to become buried under hundreds of others. Or even worse, be flagged as spam.

Use Emojis: Studies have shown that emotional content increases the effectiveness of email marketing as much as 70%! Emojis are there to visualize the emotion your message is suggesting. When used in email subject headlines, emojis help separate your email from the sea of other emails in your subscribers' accounts.
Breaking News: People love news. To be more specific, they love breaking news. Using such announcements in your email subject line is a great way to spark interest with your audience. But, you need to use words that suggest urgency to instigate clicks, such as “Alert” and “Tomorrow."
FOMO: FOMO stands for the "Fear Of Missing Out." By including phrases like “Last Chance” or communicating a time limit like “Last Hour,” you can significantly boost your email open rates. Email subject lines that use FOMO with a sense of urgency have a higher open rate—22% over those that don’t.

If subject lines aren’t constructed carefully, you are more likely to see a decrease in open rates, a decrease in conversions, and an increase in spam reports. To avoid this, you should be aware of words that perform terribly in subject lines, such as Newsletter, Journal, Forecast, and Training.

Pro Tip Be careful about filling up inboxes. There is a fine line between being persistent and spamming your audience. Just because someone has opted in to your mailing list does not mean they want emails from you every day. Be aware of how many emails you are sending. If you see a large number of unsubscribes with each email you send, consider reducing the frequency.

Step 2 | Fill the body of your email with captivating content

Once you pull your readers in with a subject line, your next task is to deliver engaging, informative content in the body of your email that is well organized and easy to read.

Write for the Web: Writing email marketing copy is similar to writing web copy. That means it’s important to follow a logical structure, keep paragraphs short, and only include one main idea per paragraph. Use bullets and subheadings to break up blocks of text and make your emails scannable.
Consider Mobile Readers: Mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) are used with increasing frequency for reading email. Since only the first few lines of text are displayed as a preview on mobile devices, your first words must contain compelling information or a strong call-to-action.
NO SHOUTING: Avoid all-caps and multiple exclamation points in both the subject lines email bodies. Not only are all-caps the equivalent of shouting online, but overuse screams spam, which will hurt your open rate.
Visuals Matter: Adding photos, videos, and graphics are just as important in email marketing as they are on social media. Be sure to use aesthetically pleasing color schemes in your email marketing—ones that are eye-catching but still readable.
Links, Links, Links: Link as much media as you can back to your website. Add links to your social media accounts, and most importantly, check that all your links are working properly before you send your email.

Step 3 | End by inviting your readers to take action

A call to action is a word, phrase, or sentence that encourages your readers to take a specific action. With the right call to action, you can persuade readers to do something specific, like buying tickets or registering for your online auction.

Use Action Words: The best calls to action use action words that let your readers know the specific action they should take next.
Create Urgency: Calls to action also use urgency and scarcity to trigger FOMO, making it more likely that your readers will take action. Include a countdown or use language like “Now” and “Today."
Get Personal: Good CTAs get personal. While some address readers directly, you can get better results by including CTAs that reflect their control of the process. Try using “Me” instead of “You” in your copy to accomplish this.

A good CTA avoids friction words that might make people hesitate. This removes some of the obstacles that get in the way of readers taking action. Avoid using Friction Words such as Download, Buy, Order, and Submit.

Pro Tip Analyze your campaign data. After you send each email, review open and click rates, and keep track of data from different campaigns. This will allow you to determine what information is impactful, as well as which days and times offer greater success.

These 3 Steps to Building Better Marketing Emails have been proven to increase the success of email marketing campaigns, and we hope they will do just that for you. Take a tour of Auction Frogs today to get started with your next online fundraiser today!