If you’re new to email marketing, you might be wondering how to go about convincing people to buy your products or services. We’re breaking down the best approaches to take when pitching a business or brand, particularly if you’re trying to pitch financial services firms.
The Basics
To get started, you’ll need a list of email addresses. That way, you can send out your carefully crafted messages to prospective customers.
You’ll also need to decide on a pricing plan. Since you’re directly competing with online marketplaces like Amazon and Shopbop, you’ll want to make sure that you have a good grasp of how much each individual recipient is likely to pay.
You don’t need a perfect list. In fact, you can start with a list of purchased addresses from other marketers and grow it from there.
The Necessary Research
When sending out a cold email, you’ll need to do your research first. This means that you’ll need to spend time discovering as much as you can about your target audience. You don’t want to randomly send out unsolicited messages to people because you think that they’ll be a good fit for your product or service. Instead, identify specific individuals or groups that you think will be interested in your offering.
Consider the demographics, psychographics, and digital behaviors of your target audience. This way, you’ll be able to craft a message that they’ll specifically find valuable. You can also use technology like Google Analytics to discover popular pages, blog posts, or websites that your target audience is visiting. With this information, you’ll be able to determine what kind of content they’re responding to and use that as a launching point for your email campaign.
The Outline
After you’ve done your research, you’ll need to craft an outline for your email. There are four essential items that you need to include in your email’s outline:
- A compelling headline
- A single, succinct paragraph
- Matching subheadings
- A concise, useful piece of body text
Make sure to include appropriate visuals alongside your text. For instance, if you’re using an example of a product to promote, make sure to include a graphic of that product. You can also use an outline to brainstorm any supporting materials that you might need for the email.
The Body
Now that you have your headline, paragraph, and subheadings, you can start to put the body of your email. For the body of your email, you’ll need to include a short introductory section, three to five strong paragraphs, and a conclusion.
The introductory section is a great place to introduce your product or service. This is also the place that you can share information about your pricing plan. You can include helpful supporting materials like websites or blogs that your target audience might find valuable. You can include customer case studies or statistics about the market size for your product or service.
After you’ve introduced your product or service, you can move straight into your strong paragraphs. These are the areas where you can share your compelling story. When writing your story, keep in mind the following guidelines:
- Use specific details about the target audience’s needs, wants, and behaviors.
- Be authentic – tell the truth but omit no details relevant to your story.
- Be concise but engaging.
- Avoid using colloquial language.
- Start from the most important point and give supporting details to illuminate it.
- Use numbers whenever possible – facts and figures make for better content.
As you write your story, you want to ensure that it’s concise but also has the necessary details to make your point. When you write your email body, you’re aiming for perfection but you’re not expecting others to read your entire email. They’ll only be able to absorb so much information at once.
The Call To Action
At the end of your email body, you’ll want to include a call to action. This is where you’ll ask your recipients to take some kind of action. For example, if you’re selling fashion accessories, you might ask the reader to visit your website or to sign up for your newsletter.
The call to action should match up with one of the core objectives of your email campaign. If you have several calls to actions, it’s imperative that they’re all tied back to a single goal.
Attachments
Attachments are a pain to most people. However, for marketers, they can be a goldmine. When sending out a marketing email with attachments, you’ll want to consider the following guidelines:
- Use relevant images.
- Include a concise, relevant header.
- Use short, snappy sentences.
- Mention key web addresses.
- Avoid lengthy wordy passages.
- Don’t use fancy fonts.
- Format your attachments carefully.
- Proofread before sending.
With these guidelines in mind, you can craft an email that will make your Marketing Coordinator proud. Of course, you don’t need to follow them slavishly – it’s all about finding the balance that works best for you.