Every day, our inboxes are flooded with a barrage of automated emails that do little else besides giving us the task of taking 5 minutes at the start of our day to one of the following – marking them all as unread without reading, deleting, or unsubscribing from the newsletter altogether.
It is estimated that 320 billion emails will be sent daily this year; so how do you ensure that your email stands out from the crowd, and not only gets clicked on and read, but also entices that user to take action and convert?
We’ve rounded up our top tips for creating a killer converting email for your practice marketing campaigns.
It’s all about the subject line
47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone, whilst 69% of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line. Ask yourself the question – what makes you want to open an email?
People want to open emails that they feel they will benefit from, ones that give them ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out), or present compelling evidence about why they should. Ending the sentence with a question also gives the user the opportunity to ask and answer subconsciously. Some great examples include:
Uh oh, did you forget about your free gift?
Fancy free teeth whitening?
Act quickly, only three spaces left for our open day!
$800 off treatment for the first 20 patients
Don’t forget about the preview text
These days, it’s not just the subject line that sells people on opening your email. It’s also the preview text. Usually, this shows part of the first line of the email and can vary in length – from 35 to 140 characters.
The biggest killer of your email conversion rate is auto-generated preview text; phrases like “View this email in a web browser” or “Having trouble viewing this email?” This can sometimes happen with templated emails.
Ensure the main body of your email is pulling through into the preview text by sending yourself a couple of test emails first. Make sure the first few lines of your content emphasise the reason for your email – let it compliment your subject line.
DON’T BE SPAMMY WITH YOUR CAPS
What used to be considered Marketing 101 is now one of the biggest mistakes you can make when creating an email campaign:
HUGE SALE MASSIVE SAVINGS CLICK HERE NOW!!!!!!
Does this invoke you to want to read more? Or swiftly click the ‘delete’ button? Or worse still – the ‘This is spam’ link? Avoid all caps and multiple exclamation marks in both the subject line and body of the email. Not only are all caps the equivalent of shouting online but overusing them screams spam to users and email servers alike. If enough subscribers report you, it could also hurt your email deliverability or even get you blacklisted by your email newsletter service.
Personalise and visualise
Good marketing is all about personalisation alongside great graphics. If you want to grab your patient’s attention from the very beginning, you need to make your email feel like it was sent personally to them, and only them.
Few people want to read emails that are addressed “Dear Sir/Madam”, as opposed to their first or last name – there are simple rules you can assign in the PRM and other systems to allow their names to pull through into your content. Even fewer people want to read an email that simply offers paragraph after paragraph of text. Visuals help your recipients quickly understand the point of the email.
Psych your readers out
We’re all wired to react in predictable ways to certain situations – it’s how our brains work. Using psychology within an email marketing campaign can help you create highly engaging content that makes your users want to click and convert.
Some tried and tested methods of using psychology to help your campaigns convert include:
- Scarcity and urgency – similar to FOMO, time-limited discounts work well as people don’t want to feel like they’re losing something that could potentially benefit them. Using phrases such as “Just 24 hours left to save £500” can really help in enhancing click rates.
- Colour choice – different colours evoke different reactions within users and can help convey your message more effectively. Do you want to instil excitement among your readers? Colours such as red can create this buzz. Do you want to give the feeling of elegance to your email? You should use colours such as white and black. Also think about this when choosing the colour of your call-to-action buttons – for example, green means go, red means stop.
- Pictures of faces within your email can elicit the emotions shown on those faces or direct the gaze towards a focal point of your content, such as a call-to-action.
- Social proof is vastly important, as it tells readers that people like them think you’re great, which makes them more inclined to read your emails. Testimonials and links to reviews are great in solidifying your practice’s social proof for potential patients.
With these handy tips, you’re now in a great position to create email marketing campaigns that entice your recipients to click and ultimately convert into new patients!
