Hard thought it may be to admit, even the best offer, deal, or sale in the world can get lost in the mix thanks to the propensity of contact list members to put off the process of engaging with your brand. Looking a little deeper into the issue shows that this inactivity often stems from having an audience that is distracted, indifferent, or downright forgetful.Fortunately, with the right approach to developing email content and a willingness to generate a sense of urgency leading the way, your brand doesn’t have to fall prey to these promotional shortcomings. To help you along on this front, here’s a look at five powerful and impactful ways to spur your readers to action and close in on inbox-based sales that would otherwise fall through the cracks.
Focus on the Right Subject Line Wording
The best way to generate a sense of urgency, according to Ayaz Nanji of MarketingProfs, is by baking this concept into your subject line in an efficient and poignant manner. In particular, Nanji points to the following words as prime examples of inclusions that help translate this theme or idea to your contact list members:
- Urgent
- Breaking
- Important
- Alert
Leveraging these and other similar words and phrases ensures that your audience understands the time-sensitive and fleeting nature of whatever discount or promotion awaits on the other side of the open button.
Get on a First Name Basis
Outside of crafting a subject line that imparts the need for urgency to your readers, working in some personalization techniques and tactics also helps foster a more engaged and expedient experience. The driving force behind this approach comes from the fact that non-personalized messages come off as generic or mass-produced, thereby leading to indifference and apathy from the target viewer.By adding in names and other unique identifiers to your email marketing copy, your brand can pique the interest of the contact list member in question and ensure that they actually spend a few moments consuming your urgency-centric content. Just be wary of adding in too much personalization, as going overboard on this front can come off as creepy or awkward to certain audience segments.
Set a Deadline
If you’re looking for a “bare bones” or minimalist approach to generating urgency within your contact list, then you’ll find that it’s hard to go wrong with the simple act of setting a deadline. Going down this path isn’t exactly flashy or cutting edge, but incorporating a time limit or expiration date into your promotional inbox material forces these viewers into action if they truly wish to take advantage the relevant offer, discount, or deal.
Deploy a Scarcity Tactic (Marketing Land)
From a similar perspective, Marketing Land’s Neil Patel notes that enacting scarcity tactics within your content also incites your email following into action – albeit for different reasons. In fact, Patel even goes so far as to say that scarcity is one of the most powerful sources of urgent behavior across any marketing channel.The big key here is that as supply diminishes, consumers can’t help but place a higher importance on the item or offer at hand. Otherwise known as scarcity bias, this tenant of behavioral psychology translates especially well to the inbox as long as your brand is willing to go “all-in” and intentionally limit available numbers in an effort to drive demand upward significantly.
Leverage Imagery and Email Design
The final tip worth mentioning in this discussion focuses entirely on leveraging the design and visual portion of your email content development to instill a sense of urgency among your target audience. Essentially, for your brand to win via this approach, it will need to utilize a few clever tactics like GIF timers and images that denote action or movement.Naturally, having a timer that counts down to the end of a deal is fairly self-explanatory in how it promotes action. As for the “high energy” visuals, this concept joins the aforementioned scarcity tactic firmly on the psychology side of the conversation. By incorporating these photos or graphics into your content, you’ll start to subtly nudge your audience into action via the effects of suggestive imagery and recurring themes that evoke desired responses and emotions.After digging into all of the ideas and tips covered in this post, there’s a great chance that your brand is ready – and able – to reignite the excitement of its contact list via a renewed sense of urgency. All that’s left to do now is put this newfound insight to good use in the inbox as soon as possible.
