7 Innovative Marketing Email Secrets Exposed

Since eCommerce poses the challenge of not being able to communicate with customers face-to-face, one of the most personal tools in your toolbox is the email. But, how can you leverage the medium as an innovative marketing tool to get more people to complete transactions they may have been leery about, to make them more satisfied with your company and to act as an advocate for you and to get them to click on those email in the first place? 

Successful Email Secret #1: Send your email from a person, not the company. 

When you send email from a real person, your email open rate increases -- plain and simple. This is because recipients are typically more likely to trust a personalized sender name and email address than a generic one. Hubspot actually performed several A/B tests on over 50,000 recipients and found that personalizing the sender name and email address increased the open rate an average of 3%.

Successful Email Secret #2: Pre-set the preview text. 

This is the text that follows the subject line in most email client inboxes. Preview text sounds like exactly what it is -- a text preview of the content inside the email. Use it to provide a short, to-the-point synopsis of what you're offering (keep it to 50 characters or less). When you don't set the preview text, the client will automatically pull from the body of your email, which not only looks messy, but is also a wasted innovative marketing opportunity to engage your audience.

Successful Email Secret #3: Modify the version in plain-text. 

Not every recipient is going to see the beautiful, HTML, rich-text version of your email. Some clients don't support HTML-rich emails, while other times, a person may simply choose to only view messages in plain text. When you don't optimize the plain-text version of your email, the outcome can look pretty terrible. 

Successful Email Secret #4: Add links to images. 

Your ultimate goal in innovative marketing is to get people to click through to a webpage. One way to increase the clickthrough without littering the copy with links is to add a link to your images in the email. You can simply click on the image and then use your email tool's "Insert/Edit Link" option, or you can link an image in the HTML editor

Successful Email Secret #5: Add alt text to your CTA buttons. 

Because not all email clients are created equal, not all of your customers (or potential customers) will be able to see the gorgeous image you’ve commissioned and entered in your email. If that picture is one to click with a CTA, then the opportunity is lost…unless you set an image’s alt text. When you do this, they’ll be able to see the CTA and complete it regardless. 

Successful Email Secret #6: Add social media sharing buttons. 

Increasing the number of people who see your link will increase the number of people who click on it. So, be sure to extend the life of your email by adding social sharing buttons. 

Successful Email Secret #7: Allow for easy forwarding.

Another way to extend the clicks on your email beyond its shelf life is to prompt your audience to forward the offer. You can add a little PS at the end of your email copy and the call-to-action to a pre-made email complete with subject and body -- all someone has to do is enter their associates' email addresses and hit send.

Customer interaction is king in the world of innovative marketing online – and adding that human touch via the 7 email tips above can nudge consumers to go back to their abandoned shopping carts, be happier with your company and to maybe even act as an advocate for your brand.