Sending emails is a must for onsite teams across the country. While email no longer has the title of a “modern” method for communication, it is expected and a must for any onsite team who implements a competitive follow up strategy. Having good marketing emails will help you rise above the rest.
In other posts we talk about why, at Nurture Boss, we prefer text messaging over email, but email can still be a very effective follow up method. By implementing some best practices you can easily reach your audience with content that resonates and yields engagement and conversions.
So what does a “good marketing email” look like and how do we send them? Take a look at some best practices Nurture Boss has identified after analyzing our internal data of millions of emails sent.
We will break our analysis into a few sections or categories:
- Subject Lines That Lead To Opens
- Timing Of When Your Message Hits The Inbox
- Email Content
- Email Design
- Avoiding The Spam Folder
Subject Lines In Good Marketing Emails That Lead To Opens
Subject lines matter! Which of these two emails are you more likely to open?
Subject lines should give a sneak peak to what the content of the email will be. Recipients want to open emails that provide them with value, not emails they know are trying to sell them something. The topic of subject lines could have a post of their own, but for our sake we will break it into 2 categories.
- Good Subject Lines
- Personalize your subject line. Add things like the customers name, unit #, desired amenity, move in date, etc.
- Make sure your subject line is relevant. If the prospect just toured, don’t write a subject line asking them to tour.
- Name recognition. Put the name of your property in the subject line, a prospect will recognize the property name and want to see what you have to say.
- Urgency and Curiosity. By providing content that peaks their interest and implies a deadline, people will be more likely to open your email immediately.
- Keep it short. At Nurture Boss we recommend 60 characters or less.
- Avoid Trigger Phrases (Spam)
- Spam trigger phrases are words or phrases that make you more likely to end up in the spam folder. Good marketing emails will avoid these. A short list is below. Click the link at the beginning of this paragraph to see a comprehensive list.
- Act now
- Buy now
- Can’t live without
- Click here
- Deal ending soon
- Drastically reduced
- Exclusive deal
- Important information regarding
- Offer expires
- Please read
- Urgent
- 50% off
- All-new
- Best price
- Bonus
- Giving away
- Great offer
- Incredible deal
- Promise you
- Will not believe your eyes
- Spam trigger phrases are words or phrases that make you more likely to end up in the spam folder. Good marketing emails will avoid these. A short list is below. Click the link at the beginning of this paragraph to see a comprehensive list.
Timing Of When Your Message Hits The Inbox
At Nurture Boss, our emails have an average of a 45% open rate! This is more than double the industry average. How do we do it? There are many factors but one of the most impactful is timing. We send emails when people are in their inbox. By collecting data on when prospects and resident are opening your emails you can start to get an understanding of when you should send them. Having a robust analytics system in place is key to accomplishing this.
How many of us open our personal emails and have 50+ unread emails? How many of those 50+ emails are junk? If you are anything like me, you start by reading the subject lines and maybe opening a few in the beginning. But then you get tired of it, and “Select All” -> “Delete” becomes a reality.
By ensuring your email is at the top of the inbox when your customers goes to check their email you can greatly increase the chance your email will be read. One of the best tips Nurture Boss can offer for sending good marketing emails is to send them at the right time.
Good Marketing Emails – Content
Personalize, personalize, personalize. We can’t say it enough. At Nurture Boss we have created a “hyper-personalization” engine. This means each and every message sent to a prospect or resident is crafted to speak specifically to the things they care about.
Personalization DOES NOT mean adding someones first name. This is a given and everyone should do it. Personalization means you are talking about things the recipient cares about. Is Johnny moving in next summer, bringing his dog, and interested in 2 bedroom floor plans? Is Susan bringing her cat with her this week when she moves into her studio? Johnny and Susan should not receive the same content.
Personalizing each and every email to the level necessary to be effective can be time consuming and difficult. Finding an automation solution that can do this for you is crucial to your long term success. Nurture Boss’s AI and Automation is one great solution for this 😉
If your email content is personalized, relevant, easy to read, and has a clear message, you are off to a great start!
Good Marketing Emails – Design
Email design is important for two reasons. First, if a prospect is apartment hunting and visits 5 properties, there is a good chance each of those properties are leveraging the same PMS or CRM. This means the prospect will receive 5 follow ups that all look pretty much the same. It is difficult for your property to stand out in all this noise.
Second, design creates an immediate emotion that we feel and naturally associate with the business. If your email looks old, outdated, or sloppy, those are the emotions our customer has now associated with our property.
Ensuring your emails have great design is a good way to make a great first impression and rise above your competitors in the prospect’s apartment search.
Much more could be said on this topic, so for the sake of being concise we have highlighted some key things to think about when designing your emails.
Key Strategies For Good Design
- Branding. Stay true to your brand. The voice and tone of your property should be consistent across all marketing efforts. This includes emails. Receiving an email from your property should “feel” the same as visiting the website or the property.
- Colors. While this belongs under the scope of branding, it is worth pulling it out to its own bullet point. Colors evoke emotions. What are the colors you use in your email saying about your property?
- Scannability. Does the design of your email make is “scannable”. People want the short version of everything in life. Why do you think TikToks’ 10 seconds videos have taken over the internet? Your design should allow for easy scannability so the recipient can quickly “get the gist” and move on if they want.
- Imagery. A picture says a thousand words. Sorry but it’s true. 🤓 By using powerful imagery you can convey deep meaning to your customers. Using animated GIFs is a great way get a “video” into your email without worrying about the complexities around that.
- Text to Image Ratio. Having a good text to image ratio is important. If your email is all images, not only do you risk the user seeing nothing if the images don’t load, but the needed context for understanding is missing. Every image you send should be accompanied by at least several sentences of text.
- Mobile Responsive. More than 70% of people look at emails on their phones. Everything you send should be “mobile first”. Simply put, design your content for smart phones THEN make sure it looks good on a tablet, laptop, or desktop as well.
Good Design For Multiple Email Providers
One more comment around email design. Building HTML emails is notoriously tricky. Every email provider has different rules and visual engines that turn your HTML email into something beautiful for the end user. It is impossible to accommodate these all perfectly. I highly advise against testing your emails with your work email address. If I had to guess, your company has you using Microsoft Outlook Business which is one of the worst email clients for email design there is and more importantly, your customers aren’t using this.
Check out these stats on which email providers are being used by age group. In short, design for Gmail.
Avoiding The Spam Folder
The dreaded spam folder. When is the last time you went into your spam folder of your personal email address to see what was inside? Never? Me neither. Ensuring the marketing emails you send don’t land in spam is crucial. While some of the topics below (like “Subject Lines That Lead To Opens”) also impact if you end up in spam or not, there are some more technical tips you can implement to avoid the spam folder. Sending good marketing emails starts with hitting the inbox.
You may be wondering, “what causes my emails to go into spam”? Anyone who offers you a black and white answer to this question is misleading you. There are many factors that can determine if your email will land in spam. Sending good marketing emails means educating yourself on common red flags that can trigger your email ending up in the spam folder and avoiding them.
I left this section for last because it’s a little technical. Grab your closest IT support person and give the below a read.
Tips and Tricks For Avoiding The Spam Folder
- The number one and best way to avoid the spam folder is to send valuable content your customers care about or need. The more recipients engage with messages you send the less likely you are to end up in the spam folder. Avoid sending emails too frequently or only sending promotional material.
- CAN-SPAM. This FTC law is monitored by inboxes and emails that do not comply will be sent straight to spam. Click the link above to read the law in its entirety. You can see an abbreviated list of highlights below.
- Tell recipients how to opt-out and promptly honor those opt-outs
- List the physical address of your business (or property)
- Be accurate with your “From” and “Reply-To” email addresses
- Use honest subject lines that aren’t meant to trick the recipient
- Ensure the IP address (your technical support team will now how to provide this IP address to you) you are sending from is not on a Blacklist. You can use this tool to check! If you are on a Blacklist, get your IP removed as soon as possible. Each Blacklist will have its own process for removal. Follow that Blacklists process to clean up your IPs reputation.
- Ensure your authentication records are set up correctly. This is another technical to-do that your IT team can help you with. In short, you want to make sure the way your IP and domain that you send emails from is set up to “prove” to the inboxes that you are not a hacker who has stolen someone email and is sending out malicious content.
- Avoid attachments where possible. While attaching content is a great way to get more value to your prospects and residents, it may also trigger their inbox’s spam detectors. Make sure at the very least you are attaching common file types (images and PDFs).
- Send text emails along with HTML emails. HTML emails are those beautiful emails filled with buttons, colors, and images. These are great for end user experience but email providers want to make sure you have also provided a plain text version. Not only is this good for accessibility but also for email providers that may rely on the text version in certain scenarios.
- Avoid trigger phrases. This was discussed in more detail in the section on subject lines so I won’t re-hash that here. Just be sure the content of your email don’t give off used car salesman vibes.
In Summary
Emails still have a long future ahead of them and they aren’t going anywhere. Sending emails is a great way to reach everyone of your audience members. If done correctly good marketing emails can be a very effective way of getting your message our there.
Partnering with an automation company who knows the ins and outs of good marketing emails are a great start on your journey to being a more effective salesperson and marketer.
