For years, marketers have been using email as a bullhorn. They’ve been blasting out impersonal ads and promotions to anyone who will listen and cluttering up inboxes in the process.
But here’s the thing about email…
You checked yours this morning, right? And we’re guessing you’re probably going to check it again later today. Meanwhile, businesses are sending 280 billion emails per day, and that’s expected to grow to 333 billion by 2022. With so much continued investment in email, it’s clear that marketers still see the potential.
The underlying issue here isn’t that email as a channel is broken, the issue is that we’ve been doing email marketing all wrong.
Just think about why you send email in the first place. The underlying goal of email marketing isn’t to drive clicks, it’s to grow relationships. And in order to grow those relationships, you need to have actual, one-on-one conversations.
☝️That’s conversational marketing in a nutshell. By applying a conversational approach to email marketing, you’ll be able to unlock the channel’s hidden potential and send emails that people actually want to open.
In the book The Boron Letters, Gary C. Halbert explains that people divide their mail into two piles: an A pile and a B pile. The B pile consists of shiny, colorful fliers and ads and anything that looks like it comes from a brand. The A pile, meanwhile, consists of personalized letters – which usually come in white envelopes, with handwritten names and addresses on the front. And while Halbert was writing about actual mail, you can apply the same principle to email.
As marketers, when we send highly designed HTML emails with impersonal, one-size-fits-all messages, we’re creating emails that are destined for people’s digital B pile. In order to get in the A pile, we need to start sending emails that look and feel like they’re coming from a trusted friend or family member – not some faceless brand or corporation. That means stripping away all the fancy design elements and sending plain text email. And more importantly, it means writing compelling, personalized copy that engages leads and customers and keeps the conversation going.
By focusing on getting leads and customers not just to click, but to reply to your emails, you’re getting back to the channel’s roots. After all, email wasn’t built to be a one-way marketing broadcast tool, it was built for two-way conversation. By encouraging your email recipients to reply, you’re letting them know that there are actual humans (like you!) working behind the scenes and available to help… even if the email they’re receiving is automated.
While email as a marketing channel isn’t dead, there’s no denying that the way we do email marketing needs to evolve. In today’s real-time, on-demand world, the old-school, “spray and pray” approach to email marketing no longer lives up to buyer expectations.
That’s why we created this pack of conversational email templates for you.
Inside, we’ve compiled 12 personalized and engaging conversational email templates. Use these templates to build a modern email marketing strategy – one that prioritizes conversations over clicks.
So what are you waiting for? Get the templates here.
Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll get….
Nine proven best practices, including:
- Write the way you speak
- Add a human touch with real images and videos
- Finish with an offer to reply for more information
12 copyable templates, just like this one:
