When it comes to email marketing, crafting the perfect messaging can feel intimidating. This blog will take you through the basics of creating compelling emails. We’ll also go over the email missteps you need to avoid, how to monitor the impact of your email campaigns, and which email marketing tools work the best so that you can get the most out of this critical marketing channel. Ready? Let’s get started!

Crafting Your Emails

• Make Your Subject Lines Short but Sweet

  Email providers often cut off the ends of subject lines. Keep your email subject lines between 30 and 50 characters so your recipients can read the whole phrase immediately. Your subject lines should also give the reader an idea of what to expect in your email and (ideally) create a sense of urgency about the email content to increase open rates.

• Ditto with Your Email Text (Keep It Short, Too)

  Everyone’s busy these days. Whether recipients read your email content at work or home, they don’t have time to read a novel. The most successful emails will get to the point so that even readers with the shortest attention spans can still take in the information.

• Have a Strong Call to Action

  Don’t leave your audience guessing about what you’re offering them. The best email copy includes multiple strong, concise calls-to-action (CTAs) to increase the likelihood that a prospect or customer will reach the website, landing page, or content you want them to.

Adding Imagery to Your Email Design

• Use Impactful Images

  Make your content more entertaining and draw readers in with images related to your written content that evoke a strong emotional response. Make sure to avoid pictures that look too staged and to lean towards photos of your daily operations that feel natural and authentic.

• Include Your Company Logo

  Good emails keep your brand front and center by displaying your business’s logo. Displaying your logo helps with brand recall so that customers can more easily remember your agency and feel a sense of familiarity that will increase their comfort around your business and services. Logos have also been found to optimize positive responses to email outreach.

Create and Track Multiple Marketing Campaigns

• Create a Wide Range of Marketing Campaigns

  Different prospects will be interested in various areas of your services. Your email marketing strategy needs to include email messages promoting your products in a range of campaigns that might include special offers, new product promotions, and seasonally themed emails to appeal to customers’ various needs and interests.

• Track Those Campaigns

  You’ll also need to track your email marketing metrics so you can double down on the campaigns with the highest click-through rates and the ones that produce the highest conversions. It’s also important to remember that the insurance landscape is always changing. What worked last year might not work this year, making keeping track of open rates and conversion rates an ongoing process that you always have to stay up to date on.

What to Avoid

Don’t Get Labeled as Spam

You’ll want to avoid getting labeled as spam when creating your email marketing campaigns. Even if you put together a fantastic campaign, if your emails get marked as spam, the messages won’t reach customers or create value for your business. Emails labeled as “spam,” or unwanted junk emails, get eliminated by spam filters never to be read. Your audience can also mark your emails as “spam” and filter you out if they don’t like your messaging. To avoid this, you’ll need to follow a few steps:

• Limit email attachments; IT security often labels unexpected attachments as phishing scams.

• Avoid all-caps text in your emails; these often get flagged as suspicious, plus it’s just annoying to read.

• Make sure your spelling is perfect; misspellings make your emails look unprofessional and decrease engagement. Review every email several times before sending to make sure spelling, grammar, and punctuation are perfect.

• Choose a strong sender name that your audience can easily identify with your brand instead of a “no reply” address. A “no reply” address prevents your customers from answering your emails, which results in lost leads. It also tells your audience that you don’t care about them enough to even check your inbox for their responses.

• Make it easy to unsubscribe. Unfortunately, not everyone you send emails to will be thrilled to get them. By displaying a clear unsubscribe link, you can leave a positive, lasting impression, showing your brand is transparent, values customer choice, and complies with the law.

Save Time with Email Templates

For effective email messages that you plan on using repeatedly with different customers, it’s best to use email templates that save you time with simple, ready-to-use images and messages you can reuse. EZLynx Communication Center™ is an impressive example of email marketing software with templates for “Happy Birthday” wishes and other important dates. You can add, remove, and modify each template to create a reusable message that perfectly fits your agency’s brand.

Automation Is Your Friend

The personalized touch in your messaging builds the customer relationship over time. This means sending emails with birthday and anniversary wishes and timely renewal reminders that make your clients feel like they’re top of mind. With email automation, you can send these tailored emails to the right customer at the right moment without wasting valuable agent time. A great example of marketing automation software that helps you do this is EZLynx Automation Center™, which offers you a set-it-and-forget-it approach to emails that lets you send personalized notes at a pre-planned date to nurture the client relationship.

Use Emails to Maximize Retention

Marketing to prospects will only get your agency so far. To grow as a business, you need a detailed retention plan that involves proactively touching 100% of renewals. With EZLynx Retention Center®, patented predictive analytic risk models identify which clients are most at risk, call them to your attention, and give you a summary of premium-bearing changes between the insured’s current policy and the carrier’s renewal offer (no more manually comparing dec pages!). This system allows you to email at-risk clients right away with all the information they need to feel reassured about your services. Using automation, lower-risk renewals can be addressed with an email that lets clients know their policy is in line with the market and that you’re available to discuss in more detail if necessary.

Creating successful email campaigns can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. At EZLynx®, we have plenty of tools to help you craft the right message and send it at the right time for maximum impact. Check out our website to find the email marketing tools you need to increase sales, improve customer relationships, and maximize retention in one easy-to-use management system.