Due to its fast and easy nature, email marketing is a strategy that gives the impression that it does not have a strong power of influence. On the contrary, email is a tool that, if used correctly, can generate a high level of persuasion in consumers.
Persuasion is the ability of a person or means of communication to convince consumers into thinking or acting a certain way. In the case of email marketing, we can combine a variety of resources, tactics, and stimuli to reach people’s minds and influence their purchasing behavior.
What is the best choice of content?
Let’s begin with the most important element of email: Content. According to Cybearclick, 80% of people do a quick scan of the information in their email. While designing our email content, we should remember that the human minds loves simplicity and easy-to-understand content like images.
Embedding a video in our email is one way to increase the recipient’s the level of engagement with our brand.
Engagement is the application of strategies that improve the consumer experience; it helps to define the relationship with our consumers and their level of commitment to or love for our brand.
Including video in our email marketing campaigns helps improve our users’ email experience. The visual component directly impacts their primitive brain and encourages impulsive buying.
Reasons to embed a video in email marketing campaigns:
- According to a report by Hubspot, the brain processes visual effects 60,000x more quickly than text.
- Impact completed a study that proved that 60% of the people born between 1981 and 1985, also known as “Millennials”, prefer a promotional video over reading a newsletter.
- Impact also discovered that 80% of Millennials consider videos to be very important in the purchasing research process.
- Thanks to the autoplay function that Viewed has created, it’s now possible to capture the recipient’s attention from the moment they open your email, which can help you reach up to 173% more CTR (click through rate).
How to create an email marketing campaign with the power of persuasion?
With the increase of offers in the market, it is constantly more difficult to convince consumers to purchase our products and services. This is why we should harness already existing knowledge about the functioning of the human mind.
Below we share 5 tips that will help you improve your email marketing strategy:
1. Satisfy your consumers’ social needs
Previously it was believed that creating high quality products would make anyone want to purchase them; however, in reality it’s been proven that this is not enough. It’s now necessary to add value to products and services that are related with consumers’ needs and lifestyle.
In 1943, the psychologist from the United States, Abraham Maslow, created the hierarchy of needs, two of them being the need to be acknowledged and the need to belong to a social group.
Nike is a company that knows how to satisfy this need via their email marketing campaigns; they use email to promote an application made exclusively for running enthusiasts, which not only creates a digital community but also provides information related to running.
Their emails invite consumers to use the application to share personal photos of their runs and give them the necessary means and resources with which to belong to a group.
We also recommend reading our article “Email Marketing: Trends for 2017” to learn more about the importance and benefits of integrating social networks into your email marketing campaigns.
2. Push your consumers to finalize their purchases
In this section, we touch on email marketing campaigns for shopping cart abandonment, and we recommend combining two techniques in order to persuade your clients to finalize their purchases.
For your clients who haven’t finalized their purchases, send an email that awakens their “desire to be and feel”.
For example, you can send a video that shows a woman who is dressed in your latest fashion collection and is the envy of all who see her, or a video of a man basking in the attention he gets after using your body lotion.
You can also supplement this tactic by using the opinions of satisfied customers to motivate indecisive consumers; this tendency is called the “Bandwagon Effect”.
This effect highlights the fact that one single person is more vulnerable in the face of the majority’s opinion.
3. Play with your price descriptions
The way you present your price plans or packs in the content of the email is key to your clients choosing one over the other.
The professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, Dan Ariely, conducted an experiment in which participants had to choose one of the following options:
- A digital subscription for $59.00
- A printed subscription for $125.00
- A printed and digital subscription for $125.00
Ariely concluded that although a truly inexpensive option exists, the majority of people won’t miss out on the opportunity to save money by purchasing 2 services for the price of one.
According to Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, this is due to the minor mental struggle between the system of reward and the system of loss aversion. In this sense, people will opt for an option that represents less loss rather than one that gives them a reward.
4. Offer an additional, unexpected benefit
Dr. Robert Cialdini mentions that the “family” is the determining element in a person’s purchasing decisions, since they tend to respond favorably when it comes to choices that could benefit their family.
Before creating this kind of campaign, don’t forget to adequately segment your data base; for example, you can offer a toy to your clients with children when they purchase women’s perfume.
Another option is to make use of strategic alliances, similar to jetBlue airline which lets its clients earn points or save money via its partners.
Conclusion
When creating an email marketing campaign, you should consider all the elements that have a high impact on the minds of your consumers. Take into account their basic needs and the way in which their minds process information.
The key is to play around with all of the elements and information you plan to send in orderto ensure positive results. Remember: “The important thing isn’t what you communicate, but how you communicate it.”
For all this and more, we recommend embedding video in your next email marketing campaign; you are sure to surprise and thrill your clients and increase return on investment by up to 50%.
