Here’s how clever copy and dynamic design can help you achieve your electronic direct marketing goals
EDMs (Electronic Direct Mail) are a powerful marketing tool for small businesses. Discover some inside info from a copywriter and designer on how to create an effective EDM to capture your customers’ interest. Plus check out the example of an EDM at the end of the blog which demonstrates how easily you can apply our copy and design tips.
Forelocks and Fleece and Lauren Bird Design are here to demystify EDM for small business owners. Whether you are just starting to send EDMs or have been using them for a while with minimal impact, we aim to help you get the most from your email marketing.
Do you remember the days where you would receive handfuls of flyers in your mailbox? Like many other things, direct marketing has moved online. EDMs are a cost effective way of communicating your brand’s latest offers and valuable content to your customers. To send an EDM, you need to build a database of your customers’ email addresses.
You’re probably thinking, that’s all fine and dandy, but how the hell do I build an email database?
There are a couple of ways to collect new emails from your prospective customers and build your email list. The easiest is through interaction with your website. Providing your audience with freebies is one of the best drivers for people to hand over their email – something free that is going to add value to their life. This could be a product discount, an educational checklist that helps with their specific pain point, or access to a webinar you’ve created. Competitions are also a useful method. People will hand over their name and email for the chance to win a prize – just make sure you are transparent in the running and drawing of it.
Creating your EDM requires careful consideration of what you want to include and what you should omit. Customers receive a barrage of emails every day from brands, so you want yours to cut through the noise and offer them something worth reading.
7 Tips for Nailing Your EDM Copy:
Your subject line needs to shine! Its only job is to entice customers to open the email. Use an active voice (verbs) and offer an action for them to take. E.g. Don’t Miss Out…Order Now… Ensure your preview text continues the intrigue.
Your subject copy must match your email copy. Have you ever opened an email only to feel tricked? Did you buy what was on offer? Probably not. Don’t try to trick your customers or they’ll hit delete – or worse unsubscribe.
Personalise the email with their name. This can be used in the subject and/or at the start of the email.
Speak directly to your customers. Use ‘you’ and ‘your’ to address them when explaining why they need your product. You want your email to feel like a personal conversation with your customer – treat it as if they’re standing in front of you.
What’s your offer? Be specific – what’s in it for them to buy from you upon receiving the email? Is it a limited time 30% discount? A final clearance sale? Buy one, get another for half price?
Is your Call-To-Action (CTA) meaningful? Use a relevant CTA to encourage customers to undertake what you want. There is no point having great copy all the way through only for the CTA to fail to convert.
Keep it brief. It’s a flash and dash, not a novel. Most customers will skim the email so make sure you say what you need to, make it sound worthy and use design to emphasise your written message.
7 Tips for Mastering Your EDM Design:
You need to make sure you’ve got an email template that fits with your brand visuals – lead with your logo, use your brand colours and your fonts. Make sure it screams your business.
The template will need to be in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). Breaking it down from fancy design speak, HTML is basically a digital language. Some designers and most developers are able to read and write HTML like you can read and write English. Most mailout platforms will have a catalogue of basic templates that you can upload images into which is great; however, it may not fit appropriately with your brand identity.
Make sure your template is responsive! This one is a non-negotiable. According to Campaign Monitor, over 50% of emails sent are viewed on a mobile device ¬– so you need to make sure that your email is as beautiful on a mobile as it is on a desktop.
Don’t have an email that is all images. Emails that are 100% imagery get flagged as spam shoved into people’s junk folder. You need to make sure that your email is a healthy balance of copy and imagery. This is also super important for the accessibility of people with screen readers – a screen reader can’t read an image.
Alt text is important. This is the text that shows when images are suppressed by your clients’ email browser. This is usually down to a customer’s email preferences, for security reasons and bandwidth.
Your images need to be optimised. This means making sure your image quality is crisp and beautiful, but the size of the image file isn’t astronomical. Keep each image as low as you can (no more than 1MB) without compromising on quality. This goes for animated gifs too. They can be fun to add into your email, but it will increase the size of your email.
Make sure your text is readable. It’s fun to play with fonts and colours but you need to remember that readability is key to getting your message across. Lighter colours like yellows and light greys make it difficult for people with vision issues to read. Also make sure there’s sufficient contrast between your email background colour and the text. Could your 90 year old grandmother read it? No? Try upping the size or changing the colour of the text.
Final Pro Tip: Make sure you test your email thoroughly before hitting the big ol’ send button! There’s nothing worse than sending an email with a broken link, missing imagery or spelling mistakes. TEST! TEST! TEST!
Does sending an EDM sound more painful than resitting your high school exams? Flick one of us an email and we can help you dip your toes into the world of electronic direct marketing. 😉
Until 30th May 2020, you can save 20% on a package of 4 EDMs created specifically for your Small Business by Forelocks and Fleece and Lauren Bird Design. That’s the copy and the design of your EDMs sorted and one less headache for you!
