Creating Marketing Offer and Promo Emails
- Updated on: 2018-09-08
- Read original article here
If you’re like most marketers, you rely on email marketing to drive results for your business.
One of the most frequent campaigns you probably send is the marketing offer email to inform your subscribers of new products, special promotions, exclusive discounts, etc.
These campaigns are great as they directly drive sales and revenue for your business.
But do you know what elements to include in those emails to get people to click-through?
In this post, we’ll share with you the 5 key elements of a high-converting marketing offer email and show you some examples from our customer email gallery of marketing offer campaigns that got it right.
A marketing offer email is essentially any campaign a marketer like you sends to drive sales.
This can take a number of different forms, including:
Essentially, any campaign whose primary goal is to increase sales of your products or services can be classified as a marketing offer email.
Given Campaign Monitor is an email marketing service, we see a lot of campaigns come through our system. Over 1 billion every month in fact.
While each marketing offer email will be different, there are some common elements in the most successful ones that we wanted to share with you.
In a marketing offer email, the value proposition is a short statement that concisely explains the benefits you get from taking the offer. A good value proposition explains to the reader what the offer is and why they should care about it and take action.
As an example, take a look at the value proposition from the announcement email of our drag and drop email builder:
As you can see, the email contains a prominent value proposition at the top that reads ‘create beautiful emails in minutes’.
This value proposition succeeds because it is clear and simple, and focuses on the benefits for the reader. It tells them exactly what the product does (creates emails) and the benefits they will get from using it (beautiful email campaigns in just minutes).
So when creating your next marketing offer email, make sure to include a value proposition that clearly outlines what you are offering the reader and the benefits it provides them.
Research shows that the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text, so it’s critical to include images in your marketing offer campaigns to help get your message across.
A great example is this email from Campaign Monitor customer Rip Curl, who used email to launch their new GPS watch.
As you can see, Rip Curl uses high-quality images of the watch throughout the campaign, ensuring that their message (we’ve launched a new watch) was received by recipients even if they didn’t read the text.
So when creating your next marketing offer email, make sure to include high-quality images of the products or services you are offering. This will help get your key messages across even if people only skim the email and don’t properly read the text.
In order to get people to click-through from your marketing offer email, your copy must make it clear to them what the benefit of doing so is.
One of our favorite ways to do this is by using a copywriting formula, such as the BAB technique. These formulas are great because they provide a framework for writing email copy that almost forces you to present your offer in the context of how it will benefit the reader.
To help illustrate, I created two email campaigns promoting Campaign Monitor. One that doesn’t use the BAB formula and focuses on features and one that uses the BAB formula to focus on benefits.
Without using the BAB technique
As you can see in the first email (Before BAB), the copy is largely focused on the product features and support and does little to speak to the pain points and desires of the target audience.
The second email, however, is completely focused on the reader. It speaks directly to their pain points and desires and positions the offer (in this case a free Campaign Monitor account) as the bridge between their painful world and their desired world.
So when you are creating your next marketing offer email, make sure to focus your copy on the benefits your reader will get from using whatever product or service you’re offering them. You can use the BAB copywriting technique to help with this, but there are also others such as the PAS formula and 4P’s technique which are equally as effective.
When you present someone with an offer, like a new product you’ve just launched, for example, your readers will have some natural hesitation and anxiety towards it.
This can be caused by any number of things, including:
So in order to get people to click-through from your marketing offer email, you need to take steps to reduce that anxiety.
A great way to do this by including social proof elements, such as testimonials, in your campaigns.
So when creating your next marketing offer campaign, try to include elements of social proof like testimonials, customer numbers, star ratings, etc. to reduce anxiety and reassure readers what you are offering them is high-quality and worth their time.
When it comes to creating a high-converting marketing offer email, the final piece of the puzzle is using a prominent call to action button.
This is important because buttons make it clear to the reader what the next step is and encourage them to click-through.
In fact, when we recently tested using a button in our email marketing campaigns (as opposed to just using linked text) we increased our click-through rate by 28%.
This is because buttons have a number of unique attributes linked text doesn’t, including:
So when you’re creating your next marketing offer email, make sure to include a prominent call to action button that stands out and get noticed. It’ll help ensure your readers know exactly what the next step you want them to take is and make it super simple for them to do so.
The marketing offer email is one the most important email campaigns marketers can send. It directly drives sales and revenue and helps you achieve your goals and KPI’s.
So next time you are creating a marketing offer email campaign, ensure it has the 5 key elements:
By doing so, you’re ensuring that you’re getting the best results possible from your email marketing campaign.
