Do you know which medium of communication rates as “most intimate” after private messenger chats?
If you guessed email, you’re right. Why? Because it’s like you are sending a personal letter to your best friend or long-lost relative in Spain.
Remembering when a recipient opens your email they’re in a very different frame of mind. They’re in their private space, and yours is one of many emails in that space – from their colleagues, family, significant others, or even another random stranger for that matter.
Your email should bring you very close to your recipient, so pay attention to making it a good experience for them instead of just another piece of marketing mail.
How can you do that? Good question!
Here are the top 12 ways to provide a good email experience for your customers.
1. Always have a clear “From” field. Your customer must know who is sending the email instantly, and if it shows an individual’s name instead of something generic name like “Team XYZ” or “LHM Admin” that’s all the better for you.
2. Make sure the subject line displays fully, and try to make it all on one line. Don’t make it too big; remember, it’s just a teaser to get your customer to open the email.
3. Always restrict the number of images to a bare minimum. It’s an email, not a blog post! Your customer will probably read it on their mobile phone, so make it easy for them.
4. Use a white or light-colored background; they’re easy on the eyes and make for smooth reading.
5. Limit the number of font sizes and types. If you want to use Comic Sans until the cows come home, go for it — but don’t mix it with several other styles.
6. Give them a break and keep it short and simple. You’re writing an email, not a book, and your customer has other unread messages in their inbox.
7. Use short chunks of text. It’s an accepted writing principle over the web and in emails — don’t make your paragraphs longer than 1-3 sentences.
8. Is your email’s Call to Action easily noticeable? Your customer shouldn’t have to scroll up and down forever and ever to find that link! Text CTAs should be descriptive, and button CTAs should be appealing.
9. Don’t distract the reader! Marketers are tempted to insert several CTAs to different pages, products or services. A big mistake! Keep it to one or two CTAs and keep your message crisp and clean.
10. Optimize for mobile. A staggering 62.9 percent of the world’s population own a mobile phone, so you can be pretty sure your customer will use their mobile device to read your email.
11. Test your email in all email formats — your client could use Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL or something else. Make sure the appearance stays intact on all of the “big” platforms.
12. Always provide your customer with a browser version of the email. That way if they do face an issue with the email in their platform, they can easily switch to the browser version.
Like most marketing content, clarity and simplicity must be the two guiding factors when it comes to email marketing. Even if you don’t use the above as your “cheat sheet,” ask yourself one question: “Would my customer love reading this?” Or test your email out on an unsuspecting co-worker to see if they can easily access, understand and enjoy the message. If they read it to the end and click on the CTA, you’ve succeeded in giving them a wholesome customer experience!
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