Stories are embedded in our memory since they are a part of our childhood. Using story forms is the most endearing way to hook your audiences, sustain interest and create memories. Have you ever thought about incorporating this age-old form of communication in your email marketing campaign? If not, you should, because we believe it works.
It is tough to create and maintain the interest level amongst your audiences, who get the same old promotional emails or newsletters designed in the most stereotypical manner. In fact, Martech Advisor reveals that when email content is interactive the click-to-open rate increases by 73%. Storytelling through series of emails creating curiosity would just create the magic you are looking for to catch audience attention. Curiosity is the hunger to know more.
Two postulates of curiosity are:
People get curious about something due to the gap between what they know and what they want to know.
When you wish to maintain curiosity share/ “leak” knowledge or information, do it a bit at a time. Remember, don’t give out too much knowledge or information. When you give out too much information, curiosity decreases. A gap in knowledge makes us impatient to learn more.
There are certain ways in which you can create a storyline that unfolds bit by bit; email by email:
1. Teasing your audiences:
First initial email should just have only the background of the event, offer or information you are planning to share. Here you are creating a scene, which builds up curiosity in the mind of the audiences so that they crave to know more. They will wait for your next email as this is just a teaser. In advertising, teasers work wonders for example movie or sitcom teasers increase the craving in the audiences to know more.
2. Subject line:
When you write a subject line, it should not reveal much about the subject of email series. It should be such that the audiences crave to know more. Something like, “We will reveal it all soon”, “Get ready, all is about to get revealed”.
What are we trying to do here? As we gradually reveal the information in totality we are building up the story through the subject line first. A subject line is like the title of a presentation based on which the audiences judge what will be in the email. So, choose your words wisely.
According to Invesp 47% email recipients open email based on the subject line of email. 69% of them report emails as spam based on the subject line. For the below email the subject line is “Your lips will love you for this! Discover a game-changing lip look”
The first mail creates suspense for March Gamechanger series.
For the below email the subject line is; “Your search for the ‘holy grail’ of liquid lipstick ends with the Game Changer March Fab Bag”. The March gamechanger offer is revealed in the next email with the price mentioned in it.
3. Knowledge-based emails:
If you are educating your audiences about the market, business or products through your emails it’s not easy to create curiosity. The best way in such a case is to hold on to vital information in the initial emails. It would be great if you could do some research work as to what your audience is interested to know more about. Based on this study you can build a series of emails where you give initial information and not reveal all the information your end customer is looking out for.
4. Penultimate or final email:
Only in the last email, you should reveal it all. If it’s a knowledge-based email series, in the last email you can provide a Pdf document where all the information is systematically revealed. If you are sharing a discount offer or coupon save it till your last email.
The pitfall to such a series of emails where you build a story is that you tend to overextend it. Somewhere down the line audiences might lose interest and believe that you are only interested in building curiosity. Let the series run in two or three emails where the last email will reveal it all. It’s like opening a Pandora’s box bit by bit.
Remember, the penultimate email should have something special as the audiences have trusted you to share an extraordinary study, fact, offer, discount, etc. The surprise element should end with a value-add.
Juvlon assists you through email and SMS campaigns to realize your marketing goals. For further queries get in touch with our team.