Have you heard? My new book Continuous Discovery Habits is now available. Get the product trio's guide to a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery. We’ve already established that sending product emails is absolutely necessary. So let’s take a look at how to design product emails that convert. After all, ineffective product emails aren’t much better than not sending product emails at all.
Start With a Great Template
I like to start with a good email template. There are a number of things you will want to keep in mind whenever you design an email and you don’t want to have to remember them every time you introduce a new type of email. Instead, create a good template that already includes all of them.
This has a could of advantages. First, a good email template means you don’t have to “design” each and every email. You can design your template once and plug in the details for each of your different types of emails.
Second, you can user-test your email template once and rest-assured that barring any significant changes down the road, it’s a reliable template.
Third, your users will start to grow accustomed to your template and learn where all the important elements are. This will increease the usability of your emails and will improve your conversion rates.
Fourth, your team only needs to implement and client-test your template once. Don’t underestimate the value of this. Testing your email design on the many email clients that exist can be a lot of work. Relying on a template allows you to do this once
Let’s take a look at what goes into your email template.
Key Elements to Include In Your Template
My email templates include the following elements:
- From address
- Subject Line
- Company Branding
- Email Title
- Salutation
- The body of the message
- A primary call-to-action
- An optional secondary call-to-action
- A boilerplate about the company
- A why you got this email and how to unsubscribe section.
- My company’s physical address.
That sounds like a lot. But some of these elements don’t change from email to email. For example, every email we send includes the same:
- Company Branding – a logo plus tagline
- Boilerplate copy about our company
- Footer with our company address
Most of the elements will vary with each email. Let’s call out a few specific elements.
Who Your Email Is From Matters
The from name is one of the first things your recipient is going to see. Do you have a strong brand? Do you need to distinguish between different types of messages? Is it a user-generated message sent by a third party? Let’s take a look at a few examples.
Amazon has a really strong brand. They send most of their messages from Amazon.com. Odds are the recipients of Amazon emails recognize the brand and want to open them. Oddly enough, their order confirmation emails come from the address auto-confirm@amazon.com, an address with no name. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t include a name, but undoubtedly they want these emails to stand out from their other emails, so they are designed to look different.
LinkedIn sends a lot of email. They change the from name based on what they are sending. Glancing through my email archive, I see email from LinkedIn Connections, LinkedIn Communication, LinkedIn, a variety of senders named by combining the group name with “Group Members”, and finally, some come from my connections name via LinkedIn (ie. Sally Smith via LinkedIn) for when I receive a new message in my Linkedin inbox.
You Can’t Spend Enough Time Writing Subject Lines
There are a lot of great resources on how to write good subject lines. This is your hook to convince people to open your message out of the many in their inbox. If you don’t have a good subject line, your email won’t get read. So spend as much time, if not more, on your subject lines as you do on the rest of your email copy.
Explore these resources to learn more about writing great subject lines:
- Best Practices in Writing Email Subject Lines by MailChimp
- Rethinking Email Marketing – KissMetrics Blog (see the section on Open rates)
- The Three Key Elements of Irresistible Subject Lines by Copyblogger
Tease Them With the Email Title
I also like to include a great title in my product emails. It’s a great way to draw the reader into your content. It acts just like a headline in print. Lead the reader into your story.
If You Do Anything, Get Your Calls-To-Action Right
Do you know what action you want your reader to take? Does your email lead them to take that action?
More often than not, people muddle their calls-to-action. If you don’t know what action you want your reader to take, neither will they. Pick one, maybe two, desired actions. If you pick two, one has to be the primary and the other has to be the secondary. Drive people toward the primary.
Think of your secondary call-to-action as your Plan B. To the reader, you want to offer your primary call-to-action, but if they aren’t interested or it isn’t relevant to them, you can fall back to your secondary call-to-action.
Everything in the email should drive the user toward clicking on your calls-to-action. This is the key to getting conversions.
Learn more here:
You Got This Email Because … And Unsubscribes
While you probably can email people more often than you think, you don’t want to email people who don’t want to receive your emails. This will just annoy people and hurt your brand.
In each and every email that you send, make it clear why the recipient received the email. And if it’s applicable, make it clear how they can stop receiving similar emails in the future.
Unsubscribes aren’t a bad thing. Don’t be discouraged by them. Remember you want to create value with your emails. If people arent interested In your content, that’s okay, let them go. Focus on the ones who are.
The Salutation and Message Body
Finally, all we have left is the salutation and the body of the message. For the salutation, my only advice is if you are going to populate the recipient’s name from a database, make sure it works. You know what I’m talking about. How many times have you received an email addressed, “Hi {first name}”. All this does is tell me that a computer is talking to me. I don’t want to hear from a computer. I want to hear from a person. Create the illusion that you are talking to me in your product emails, not a computer.
For the message itself, write good content. Make sure it fills the space appropriately. Test it – both the effectiveness of the copy and the layout of the message.
Final Thoughts
Phew. That was a lot. You made it. Now before you move on and forget everything you read, take a few minutes and sketch out an email template. Do it on a white board. Grab a pen and paper. It doesn’t have to be fancy. But get some hands-on practice before you’ve forgotten everything you’ve read.
Still want more?
- 6 Ways You Are Undermining Your Email Campaigns Before You Even Write Them – KissMetrics Blog
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