How to create an irresistible, high-converting email from scratch

Understand your audience

Before you do anything else, you must understand the audience you will send your email campaign to.

For example, do you want to send this campaign to every single person in your database?

Probably not, it is far too broad, and unlikely to generate many conversions.

Instead, think about what the goals and objectives of your campaign are. For instance, here at Gold-Vision, we offer a wide range of features and services that are going to appeal to different people for different reasons. If I tried to send the same email to every person on our recipient list, I would find it very hard to make sure there was something on there that would interest each person enough for them to want to convert.

Segment your audience to serve them better

When I start planning a campaign, I will start by segmenting the audience, for example by industry or job role. That way, I can plan a sequence of emails that I know will touch on topics, features and pain points relevant to the people receiving it. This gives the campaign a more personalised feeling, which will only increase the likelihood of conversion. The areas of Gold-Vision that would be of interest to someone in the software industry are going to be different to those of interest to someone in the construction industry.

Catch their attention with compelling subject lines

Now that you know who you’re going to send your email to, we need to work out how to get them to open it. This is where your subject line comes in. Think of this as your first impression.

We all do it – check our emails throughout the day and sort the wheat from the chaff. Think about what it is that stops you mid-sort. In the first instance, I’m going to assume it’s emails from people you know (colleagues, customers, newsletters you’ve intentionally subscribed to). So once those have been taken care of, what remains is a raft of subject lines competing for your attention.

B2B buyers and consumers feel overwhelmed by the volume of emails and 67% set up a junk email account to dodge unwanted emails. (Gartner, 2022)

If you’re anything like me, the majority (if not all, most days) are going straight into the bin without a second thought. However, occasionally, there’ll be a subject line that catches my eye.

So, what sets them apart?

• When this rare event occurs, they have usually hit on a pain point or question within the subject line that I am thinking about at that time (think back to the previous section about understanding your audience).
• They’ve avoided using terms like ‘limited time’, ‘free’, and ‘exclusive deal’ within the subject line (phrases like this are extremely likely to trigger spam filters and just give readers the ‘ick’)
• They’ve made sure that the subject line is not so long that it gets truncated by my email client, so I get the full hook at first glance
• They use the pre-header text to add an extra level of intrigue or context in support of the subject line

If you’ve followed the above tips and are still unsure if you’ve created a compelling subject line that will increase your email open rates, there are several free tools that you can use.

Engage them with your copy

All being well, you’ve hooked your subscriber in with a compelling subject line and now they’re looking at your email… what now!?

It’s simple – just remember these rules:

• Don’t forget your audience. There’s a person at the other end of this, imagine you’re talking to them directly and avoid jargon
• Follow a logical structure. Give them information that sparks their interest, shows the benefits of your message and creates the desire that will ultimately get them to click your call to action
• Keep your messages clear and concise. Limit to one main idea per paragraph to keep the body of your email short, sweet and to the point
• Use persuasive language. Again, this will vary depending on the purpose of your email, but persuasive language is essential if you’re looking to drive conversions

Treat them with your design

You could have the best-written email ever, but I can guarantee people are going to struggle to read it and ultimately convert if it doesn’t look great.

We’ve all seen them – an email that is essentially just a block of text, images few and far between, and lacking that all-important logical structure we were just talking about.

These emails feel overwhelming and inaccessible which is not the place that conversions live.

So, what do you need to do to avoid falling into this trap?

While the approach may vary slightly depending on the type of email/campaign you’re sending there are some fundamentals that you can always remember:

• Make sure the whole design is consistent with your brand (logos, colours, imagery and fonts) ¹
• Ensure that your design is responsive and looks good across all devices ²
• Create an eye-catching hero area, including a headline, image, and CTA ³
• White space is your friend! Used strategically, white space helps your email to not feel cluttered and makes the content easier to digest ⁴
• Make sure your images are of the highest quality possible, relevant to your copy, and are optimised for fast load times ⁵
• Pick fonts that are clean and easy to use (think Arial, Helvetica, Verdana and the rest of the Sans Serif family) ⁶
• When it comes to colour, please don’t overdo it. Beyond making sure they are on brand, you want to make sure any use of colour contributes to a visually cohesive look ⁷
• Include links to your company’s social media profiles ⁸
• Don’t forget your unsubscribe link– make sure it’s available and easy to find ⁹

Make them feel seen with personalisation

We’ve touched on this a little already but personalised content in your email deserves a special mention. Everything we’ve discussed so far is going to go a long way to improving the conversion rates of your emails, but personalisation is something that will take these rates to new heights.

Simple examples of email personalisation can be things like using technology (such as your email marketing system) to insert your recipient’s name in subject lines and the email copy itself. Something as simple as this increases the chances of catching that all-important attention when the recipient first sees your email in their inbox. If you remember that each recipient of yours is probably receiving countless emails each day, anything that can give your emails a leg up on the competition is a must-try!

However, with some systems, you can take this personalisation further. If you’re lucky enough to have an email marketing system that integrates with your CRM then the chances are that you can pull on even more fields and data points to personalise your emails and make them feel uniquely tailored to everyone receiving them.

If you couple clever personalisation with hyper-focused audience segmentation, then your chances of creating high-converting emails increase tenfold.

Make sure your Call to Action (CTA) is relevant to them

Each point we’ve covered so far is an essential part of what makes a high-converting email. However, it would all be for nothing if you got your CTA wrong. Common challenges that come with the CTA include how many to have, what to say, how to say it. Luckily, the ways of a successful CTA are pretty simple:

• Where possible, aim for one CTA. You don’t want to overwhelm your recipients with too many options when it comes to conversions
• Keep it short and simple. This will help your message to stand out and make it clear to the reader what you want them to do
• Make sure your email CTA is appropriate for your audience. Something like an ‘arrange a demo’ CTA is not going to be appropriate for someone at the beginning of their journey with you.
• Design them to be easily found. Pick contrasting colours and prominent positions in your design to make sure they won’t be easily missed.

Experiment, test, repeat

The final words of advice I have for you on this is to experiment with different ideas and test, test, test. The best thing you can do is try out different subject lines, layouts, CTAs, imagery, copy and use of personalisation until you find the combinations and approaches that work for you.

Just take it one step at a time. Avoid trying to test every variation in each email at the same time as it will be almost impossible to know which change was the reason for any increase or decrease in engagement. Instead, focus on one area at a time – such as a different CTA – and analyse the results.

Keep an eye on your open rates and click-through rates in particular to help you gauge the effectiveness of the things you are trying.

Over to you…

Hopefully, this guide has given you the confidence to take forward what you’ve learned here and apply it to your next email marketing campaign. Don’t forget, for high-converting emails you need to: