The line between marketing and sales has blurred, with marketing becoming less of a broadcast to a wide audience and more focused on individual prospects/customers.
What does this mean for marketing emails? More importantly, how can you ensure your emails don’t get bogged down in sales language and lose their authenticity?
To find the right answer, you need to look to the fundamentals of marketing and sales. To begin with, the ideal buyer persona for your product doesn’t need to be’sales-y’; they need to be able to benefit from what you offer without feeling pressured into buying it.
When you write your marketing emails, you need to remember that your objective is to produce something that will draw your readers into taking action. You don’t need to beat your readers over the head with selling phrases to accomplish this. Instead, you can use language that’s relevant to the topic at hand and will resonate with your audience.
Here are some pointers to help you avoid losing your marketing email’s authentic messaging.
Focus On The Salient Features
Just because your product is B2C (business to consumer) doesn’t mean that your target audience has a high volume of buying experience. For example, people in the tech world may have shopped for a smartphone many times over, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy a data plan.
Instead of focusing on what your product can do for someone, you can bring them closer to the product by explaining the reasons why they need it. In other words, the features that make your product unique should serve as the main focus of your pitch.
A better approach would be to start with the benefits that your product offers and then list the features that make it unique. As a copywriter, this is something that I call’reverse engineering’.
Avoid Overusing Superlatives
A key part of any sales effort is to close the deal. But overusing superlatives—words or phrases like ‘best’, ‘excellent’, and ‘perfect’—in your copy can pull on the heartstrings and damage your argument, even if you intend to be complimenting your product or service.
Writing copy for marketing emails is different from other sales contexts because you’re not directly selling an item; you’re trying to convince someone to choose your product after reading your pitch. In other words, you’re writing to persuade and inspire, not to convert.
In the marketing world, people often use superlatives to describe a product that they love. While this may be true, it can also damage your credibility as a marketer if you’re not careful. For example, if you’re emailing to promote a new mattress and you write, ‘This is the best mattress I’ve ever slept on,’ the reader may actually take you at your word and buy the mattress you’re pitching. Or, if a reader has already purchased a mattress and is reading your email to decide whether or not to buy a pillow, they may feel pressured into making a purchase just to keep up with the ‘best’ mattress trend. This is why, when pitching a product, it’s better to say, ‘This is the best XYZ that I’ve ever used/seen,’ as opposed to ‘This is the best mattress I’ve ever slept on.’
Include Social Proof
The line between marketing and sales has blurred, with marketing becoming less of a broadcast to a wide audience and more focused on individual prospects/customers. What does this mean for marketing emails? More importantly, how can you ensure your emails don’t get bogged down in sales language and lose their authenticity?
To find the right answer, you need to look to the fundamentals of marketing and sales. To begin with, the ideal buyer persona for your product doesn’t need to be’sales-y’; they need to be able to benefit from what you offer without feeling pressured into buying it.
When you write your marketing emails, you need to remember that your objective is to produce something that will draw your readers into taking action. You don’t need to beat your readers over the head with selling phrases to accomplish this. Instead, you can use language that’s relevant to the topic at hand and will resonate with your audience.
People love to feel like they’re part of a group. In sales, gaining social proof can be an effective way to increase your likelihood of convincing someone to buy your product. When you include relevant social proof—whether it’s the endorsement of well-known figures or statistics from reputable sources—in your marketing material, you’re helping to demonstrate that your product is part of a respected trend.
If you want to create a marketing email that doesn’t lose its integrity, you need to focus on the fundamentals of marketing and sales. By doing this, you’ll ensure that your marketing material retains its persuasiveness. And at the same time, you’ll be demonstrating that you respect your audience’s intelligence by not taking the easy path and falling back on marketing gimmicks.