Email marketing is about much more than sending the right emails to the right person at the right time.
The most important thing email marketers need to focus on is establishing sender authority.
MailNinja’s ORTE model was created to help you with exactly that.
Most email marketing services let you send personalized newsletters. But how do you choose relevant content for each subscriber?
How can you make sure you’re sending “relevant” messages?
Well, a crucial component of high-quality emails is sender authority. Whether you run a gaming website like Fruit Blast or a blog about handmade products, the first step is to identify the relevant aspects of all the potential customers who will be affected by this campaign.
Before you learn how to apply this strategy to your projects, do you know what the ORTE model is? It consists of 4 basic principles (Opportunity, Relevance, Timing, Execution).
· Opportunity
The most profitable opportunities come from finding alternatives to all the usual steps in your email marketing strategy.
The secret is to try something completely different, to make a positive impression, be unique and anticipate any problems that may come up.
Social media marketing has become pretty common. However, for some reason, many businesses steer clear of email marketing services.
This is your opportunity.
Simply by sending more emails than any other business in your area, you’ll be able to stand out. But what if you’ve noticed that your emails usually have a low open rate? That’s another opportunity to try something unique and be different.
You can send a personalized newsletter with unique content and relevant information; something different from your competitors.
Study your competitors. Maybe they’re sending too many emails. Or maybe your emails have a better design?
You can use this research as a benchmark. But don’t stop there. If you want to take your emails to the next level, you should also study businesses outside your industry. This will let you create truly unique content for your readers.
Plus, by knowing what your main competitors are doing, you can start converting your customers with your best advertising. You can make your content more relatable than any other company’s. You could also offer promotions and discounts, relevant content and much more.
As you update your content, don’t forget the strengths of your existing marketing program. What’s working in your email ads? Several email marketing services let you set up A/B tests to find out which campaign will get the best results.
A professional tool can help you find the perfect combination of subject line, copy and sender name.
Of course, testing can also expose several weaknesses in your email marketing strategy. If you find something that’s lowering your open rates, you could also hire qualified professionals to help you. If your budget is too tight to hire someone, you can also learn to write better emails yourself.
Look for campaign examples and ideas for increasing your conversion rate, and use them as inspiration for your next email marketing campaigns.
Notice how these professionals use formatting and personalization. Also, most great emails can be read comfortably on screens of different sizes. More and more people buy products and services on their mobile devices. So make sure your newsletters are mobile-friendly too.
Remember that the subscriber’s perspective is essential. It’s far more important than your own point of view. If consumers can read your emails on any screen and the text has been written with a sound copywriting strategy, your email campaigns will be more likely to succeed.
And remember to reward your most loyal customers with amazing gifts, or with something that really matters to them, so they open your newsletters.
Another important step in making your content as appealing as possible is identifying your best-selling products.
Once you know which of your products perform best, you can create more attractive promotions on less popular options while continuing to showcase the items people already love.
· Relevance
Let’s take a look at some email marketing tips on how to create personalized content that is specific and relevant to your readers.
First, there are many feelings you can trigger with your emails. Here are a few:
· Pride
· Anxiety
· Guilt
· Exclusivity
· Fear of missing out (FOMO)
· Curiosity
· Love
· Loyalty
· Trust
Why is it important to stir up emotions with your email marketing campaigns?
It’s simple. Feelings make people take action. And one of the best ways to trigger emotions is the AIDA formula.
This formula breaks down into the following steps:
1) Attention
The first thing your email needs to do is grab the reader’s attention.
And the most important part of grabbing attention is writing effective subject lines. However, you should avoid clickbait subject lines. They can be very effective at grabbing recipients’ attention when used correctly, but if the content of the message doesn’t live up to the subject line, it can end up frustrating the subscriber.
You could even use this strategy, as long as you don’t write generic subject lines and you always deliver on what you’ve promised.
2) Interest
Did you know that a reader spends an average of 12 seconds on an email after opening it?
That’s a long time. But it’s not enough when the message is confusing, the text is long, the call to action isn’t visible, or the newsletter isn’t optimized for smartphones.
If the newsletter content hasn’t been created properly, all you’ve achieved is making readers curious about the email’s subject line.
3) Desire
What do you need to do to make someone want your product?
Believe it or not, with a clear message and the right recipient, all you need is a great product.
4) Action
As soon as a potential customer wants your product, you can try to turn that desire into action right away with a well-placed call-to-action button.
So that’s the AIDA model. Do you need to include every step in every email? Not always. You can skip steps 2 and 3 when emailing long-standing customers who have subscribed to your list and are eager to receive and read every newsletter you send. All you need to do is grab their attention and provide a visible call-to-action button.
Most importantly, consider demographics. You need to send different types of content to different types of audiences. Have you ever heard of email marketing segmentation?
It’s basically the art of making sure people of all ages, genders and backgrounds can engage with your messages. It’s a powerful mechanism you should include in every marketing plan.
And personalization starts with the signup form. When people subscribe to your newsletter, you can seize the opportunity and ask for additional information. If you haven’t done so yet, you can create a survey to gather some extra data about your subscribers and understand what they want to receive.
· Timing (the best time)
Here’s something you may not know: choosing the right time is very important when sending a newsletter. The two main factors to consider are your subscribers’ time zones and the hours with the best open rates. If you’re sending a newsletter to people all over the world, it’s best not to send it to everyone at the same time.
Also, even for people in the same country, it’s important to run A/B tests to find out the best time of day and the best day of the week to send an email marketing campaign.
Study your subscribers’ countries and habits to find out whether most people use their smartphones in the morning or in the evening. However, this kind of data can be hard to come by. The best way to know for sure whether a particular approach works is to test it.
· Execution
Value proposition
What are the main advantages of your product?
At this point, you should point out the best parts of your product to the reader.
However, you should avoid using buzzwords to inflate the value of your offer. Using pompous phrases would have the opposite effect: your offer would lose credibility and the ad would simply overwhelm the reader. Also, if you want to write about a more advanced topic, it’s best to use industry-specific jargon.
That’s what your readers expect from your messages.
The goal of your copywriting strategy should be to boost engagement and get readers to click your CTA to visit your landing page.
Design
How do you design your emails? Do you include a photo of your products?
You should. The best results come from emails with around 60% text and 40% images. That excludes the subject line text and the calls to action.
You can use the inverted pyramid concept as a guide for writing your emails. Start by presenting several benefits the user will get from using your product. The goal is to draw the reader’s attention to the most important part of the message and guide them to the call-to-action button.
Color psychology
Try to choose colors that are eye-catching and interesting. It’s that simple. Also, once you’ve chosen a primary color for your design, consider choosing a contrasting color for the call-to-action button to make it even more visible.
If you send your emails to several different countries, keep in mind that colors have different meanings in each country. For example, red symbolizes love and passion in most Western cultures. In China, however, red is associated with prosperity and good luck.
· Email marketing for casino operators
Email marketing is still an effective tool for all kinds of businesses. And casino operators are no exception. Better acquisition and retention rates are just some of the email marketing benefits casinos can enjoy.
Emails give casinos the opportunity to increase website traffic. But as we mentioned earlier, emails are only effective if they provide high-value content. And if you’ve already improved the quality of your content, you should send a newsletter as often as possible.
Let’s take a look at what goes into a typical well-crafted email from an online casino:
An eye-catching opening line. Mentioning the recipient’s name and starting with a friendly tone is usually enough to spark the reader’s interest in your message. A great way to open a newsletter is to give the reader a preview of what’s to come.
Make sure the recipient knows who sent the email.
Believe it or not, some casinos don’t include the company name in their newsletter.
That only confuses readers. Adding the venue’s name to your emails makes your brand look more trustworthy.
The subject line should grab attention. It’s what encourages the recipient to open the email in the first place. However, writing the perfect subject line is tricky. You don’t want to give away too much information just to try to increase your open rate. But at the same time, the subject line needs to be appealing enough to convince the reader to open the message. And it also has to be truthful; if you’re lying or promising something you won’t deliver, the campaign will have only one outcome: frustration, lower engagement, reputation problems and unsubscribes.
Try to get to know your audience. This is crucial for any email marketing campaign, but especially for casino emails. If you send a newsletter to the wrong audience or demographic, it could backfire. Before sending any message, it’s important to understand who is on your email list and what kind of content they prefer to receive in your newsletters.
What is the purpose of your email marketing campaign? If you define and communicate the purpose of each message from the start, subscribers are much more likely to read your emails.
If the message is hard to understand or doesn’t offer any relevant information, most subscribers will end up not reading it.
· Conclusion
Those were the 4 pillars of the ORTE model.
Following these guidelines will make your email advertising campaigns much more profitable. The principles of opportunity, relevance, timing and execution let you send highly targeted, personalized emails that your subscribers will open and read. So before you launch your next email marketing campaign, study your competitors and the market, and make sure you send relevant content at the right time. Soon, your readers won’t be able to wait for the next great newsletter from your company.
This methodology is a good example of how to apply copywriting to your email template to get better results.