5 Must-haves To Include In Your EDM

Now you might be thinking…well is it almost the same as email marketing?

The answer is partly true because although EDM marketing primarily relies on email, they generally have the same format. But EDMs are much more flexible because they involve a vast number of marketing channels. EDMs are always a great addition to any business, but what matters in the end comes down to how you can implement them successfully. Thus, here are 5 must-haves you should include in your EDM.

1. A Killer Subject Line

An attention-grabbing subject line is one of the most important parts of every EDM marketing.

If you’ve spent hours and hours writing the perfect content, but your subject line doesn’t grab the reader’s attention, you’ve just wasted hours of your time.

In fact, if you cannot hold your reader’s interest within the first few seconds of reading your subject line, you will certainly lose them. Your subject line acts as a door toward the rest of your content, which means they cannot see your content unless they clicked on your subject line to see more of the content.

You see…a great subject headline should include elements of curiosity, urgency, offers, stories, or even humor, but the point is mainly to grab the reader’s interest and make them want to know about it more.

A great example of subject lines would be “How-tos”, “The Real Secret to ___”, “Top 10s”, and alongside with subject lines that include limited time offers such as “Free__”, “Limited Time__”

2. A Clear Call to Action

A clear call to action encourages your prospect to act in the direction that you want to get them into. It often comes in a form of a button or a clickable link. They are extremely important in telling your customers what to do next. If you don’t, even if they read your content, they don’t know what to do with that information. Most of the time consumers are ready to take action but if there is nothing more to be done, they’ll easily brush it off and move on.

A call to action also has to be very clear and it should only serve one purpose. There should only be one call to action to maximize the potential for conversion. If there are too many calls to action at once, you’ll risk losing a consumer because you are making it hard for consumers to make decisions and as a result, they will lose focus on your main offer. The key question to ask here is “What do I want my reader to get from this”?

This will help you craft your call to action button or link. Examples of call to action may look something like “Learn more”, “Start Your free trial”, “Swipe Up”, or “Sign Up Now”.

3. An Opt-out Option

Giving them an opt-out option shows that your company is empathetic, and it makes readers feel comforted. As much as you wanted them to subscribe to your newsletters or emails, by giving them an option to opt-out, you show respect for their time and freedom to do what they can about it.

There is also no point in keeping customers who have no intention of reading your emails or direct mail content as they don’t contribute anything to the ROI. It is also more effective if you keep only the best customers for your business subscribed, as you will gain better conversion rates and not waste space for irrelevant consumers.

4. Personalisation

Personalisation in your EDM marketing can help cut through the clutter and capture the attention of your target consumers. This can be done by leveraging the information you have about your target consumers and catering based on their individual interests. Although this may take some time and effort, the results will make up for it.

According to Econsultancy, 74% of marketers know that personalisation increases customer engagement yet only 19% of marketers are actually using personalisation. This means that most businesses have not used personalisation in their EDM marketing strategy. It is also proven that personalisation greatly increases conversions. In fact – BMW, the company that sells luxury vehicles saw its conversion rates increase up to 30% after implementing personalisation. Some tips for email personalisation techniques may include the subscriber’s name in the subject headline and their name in the email copy.

5. Test it Out

It is important to also test your different EDMs like different versions of subject lines, call to action, designs, layout, and copy to determine which works best. The test can be done through A/B testing which compares your different versions of EDMs to different segments of your database to determine which version performs the best. You should also monitor everything before releasing the EDMs to the public, and also by making sure every piece of information has no error, images, CTAS, every link is working, and up running.

By having these 5 must-haves to include in your EDM efforts, your business will surely benefit a lot from it, even if it takes more effort to build these elements. Contact Marketing Eye today to find out how we can help you to incorporate email direct mail (EDMs) into your marketing strategy.

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