How to Write Email Blasts Your Customers Will Actually Read

You’ve probably heard this saying before: content is king. And in today’s environment with any information we want in the world available to us on our smartphones, with apps pushing updates and people finding out about world events thought their social media news feeds instead on actual news websites, there’s a lot of content and clutter to cut through. Standing out isn’t easy.

With the proliferation of social media and the unique content being created for each of those platforms, you might be wondering if you should still focus on email marketing. Here’s a tip – don’t give up on it! A recent article from Inc.com showed that among all age groups, email marketing is still extremely popular, and that 44% of Millenials check their email every morning as soon as they turn the alarm off on their phones.

Sounds like a thriving marketing channel, right?

But with everything else you have to do to run your business, you might be wondering how you can create compelling email content that will actually get read, and not deleted, by your customers or prospects. The answer: stop talking about yourself so much and start talking about the problems you can solve for your reader.

Let’s say, for example, you’re a local restaurant. You want to send out an email blast to help fill more tables and keep your reservations book full through the summer months. You’re probably just wondering how to do that. Do you send an email announcing a new summertime happy hour special? Hmmm…sounds a little self-serving. How about you think of your customer’s lives a little more, and figure out a way to solve the barriers that keep them from eating at your place instead of at home.

If you notice that your clientele is mostly couples in their 20s and 30s who come in to dine sans kids, instead of sending an email with a subject line of “Check Out Our New Prix Fixe Menu” go with something that solves a problem for them, like “How to Plan the Perfect Date Night.”

Of course, as the owner of your restaurant, you know the best place for your target audience to spend their bi-monthly date night is at your establishment. But what keeps them from coming in every few weeks?

A likely answer is childcare. And who can blame them. Depending on where you live in the country, if Grandma and Grandpa can’t watch the kids it can cost you an extra $15 to $20 an hour on your date night to have that high school girl advertising her babysitting business on your neighborhood Facebook page to watch your kids. And that’s not feasible for many families, especially if your restaurant isn’t of the budget variety.

Instead, do the leg work of finding reliable, local childcare for your diners.

In cities across the US, many children oriented businesses host Parents Nights Out on Friday and Saturday nights. These events are a win-win for parents and kids as Mom and Dad find a safe and fun place to drop off the brood while the kiddos get entertained by their favorite indoor playground, trampoline park, or gymnastics center. And because these kid-friendly businesses are watching larger volumes of kids during their Parents Nights Out Events, the price for a night of childcare is often significantly lower than it would be if you directly paid the girl on the high school softball team who lives down the street.

And the less your customers have to spend on childcare, the more money they have to spend on their dinner at your restaurant.

A young family’s busy schedule is often another blockade to getting out of the house. But when the stars align, you’re more likely to get Mom and Dad to say “Yes!” to a date night. If you notice that your area has a few Parents Night Out scheduled for a particular weekend, provide an additional incentive for dining with you on those days in the form of a coupon. And we’re not talking about cutting into your profits, here. Perhaps offer a coupon for a free dessert with the purchase of two full priced entrees to entice your diners to stay at their table a little longer. Because while your ideal couple sees the coupon as a way to save a few bucks on their date night, you know instinctively that couples who stay for dessert are also more likely to order an extra round of cocktails or dessert shots as they share that chocolate mousse cake, making you come out ahead in the end.

The result is that your email will catch your reader’s attention by talking about a problem they often face (figuring out how to get out of the house without the kids), providing them with a solution to one of the biggest barriers they have between you and walking through your front door (finding safe and affordable childcare), and inviting them to get a little something extra on the house (that free dessert, which is likely going to end up with a couple of extra drink orders, too). And as your ideal customer is reading your email, they won’t feel like they’re being sold to, because the reality is what you’ve done is shown him or her how you’re a solution to their problems, and not why they should order that new appetizer on the menu.

The Bottom Line

We know that many small businesses simply don’t have the volume of marketing work to warrant hiring a full-time, or even part-time, in-house marketing team member. That often means that the task of marketing your product or service either falls on you or another member of your team who has a knack for writing, or let’s face it – a little extra room on their plate to get the job done.

But the key to effective marketing is staying on track and up-to-date with the latest marketing and consumer trends, which is something your Operations Manager might not have time to do, even though she does manage to write a one-paragraph email on Mailchimp every month and post a few Instagram photos every week.

Keep your best resources working where they’re most effective, and let us fill in the areas of your business that don’t exactly warrant full-time staff. If you have a marketing need, either with an upcoming product or service launch, or for ongoing communication and engagement with your clients and prospects, we’re happy to step up to the plate so we can bring more people through your doors or onto your online store.