Key takeaways
- Timing and frequency are central. Send emails at the right tempo and avoid over-mailing to improve results.
- Treat each email as a movement in a larger composition: every message should lead toward the campaign’s finale (sale, download, sign-up).
- Adjust your brand ‘volume’ (words, imagery, punctuation, colour) to match the message: loud for sassy brands, quiet for premium ones.
- The welcome message is the campaign’s prelude: it sets the tone and shapes audience receptivity for what follows.
- Think of campaign success in terms of whether individual messages collectively propel readers to the intended finale.
Introduction
Email marketing is not usually considered a creative form. People think about it as a business strategy, but for people who actually craft emails, they know that there is more to it then simply laying out some information in a template. In fact, the best email marketers are very creative people and dive deep into their work in order to produce something that strikes a chord with their audience.
Email content that is carefully written and creatively imagined can have a very powerful effect on its readers, but this type of email marketing typically seems to have an element that is almost unidentifiable. It’s sort of like music – there are common traits that we can consider, but there is something else that happens when it all comes together.
Are You On Beat With Your Email Campaign?
Email marketing is all about timing. Sending an email to someone at the wrong time or sending them emails all of the time is not likely to produce as good results as perfectly timed email campaigns.
“Good timing is a music basic, and it’s up to the conductor to make sure the piece is played at the right tempo. If the rhythm is off, any composition – by Bach or the Beatles – just won’t sound right to the audience,” Kristen Dunleavy, contributor to Business2Community, says. “Rhythm is just as important in our industry. But instead of beats per measure, we’re talking about the frequency of messages during a campaign.”
Does It Have Movement?
No one email stands on its own. Every email is part of a larger conversation and is the basis of your relationship with your prospects.
“In music, a movement is a separate section of a larger composition. And while each movement in a piece of music elicits a different emotion, collectively they all serve to propel the composition closer to its finale,” Dunleavy says. “Each message in your email marketing campaign is leading toward a finale, too. It could be a sale. Or the download of an ebook. Or a sign-up for a webinar. And while the ultimate purpose of every message in the campaign has that finale as its goal, each message will be slightly different.”
Do You Need To Turn It Up or Down?
You don’t need to scream to get attention. In fact, it is a better strategy to use the appropriate volume depending on what you want to convey. Of course, there is no screaming in email marketing, but you can control how a message is conveyed by what you write.
“Composers and musicians use volume to express emotions and feelings much the way that email marketers use words and images to convey their brands’ personalities. That’s why you go heavy on the adjectives, exclamation points and primary colours for your sassy brands, but quiet things down to convey sophistication and elegance for those on the higher end,” Dunleavy notes.
Set The Right Tone
The very first few seconds of a song or an email campaign will set the tone for everything that follows.
“In music, a prelude is an introductory piece of music, such as the first section of a suite. The email marketing equivalent is the welcome message. As we mentioned above, it’s the first “movement” of an email marketing campaign,” Dunleavy says. “Just as a good prelude will serve to develop the audience’s receptivity to what’s to come, a good welcome message sets the stage for a successful campaign.”
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FAQ
Rhythm refers to the frequency of messages during a campaign, the timing and cadence of emails that make the campaign feel cohesive rather than off-tempo.
Send emails at an appropriate tempo: avoid mailing at the wrong time or too often and aim for perfectly timed sends so messages perform better.
Each email is a separate section of the larger conversation that elicits a specific response while collectively moving the campaign toward its finale, such as a sale, ebook download or webinar sign-up.
Use words, images and punctuation to convey personality: go heavy on adjectives, exclamation points and primary colours for sassy brands, tone things down to convey sophistication and elegance for premium brands.
The welcome message acts as the campaign’s prelude: it introduces the relationship, sets the tone and develops the audience’s receptivity to subsequent messages.
Assess whether the sequence of messages collectively propelled recipients to the campaign’s intended finale. For example, a sale, an ebook download or a webinar sign-up.
