Under the Bonnet of a Great Email Campaign

4 Mins Read

A great email campaign can be a great marketing tool for your car dealership, but only if it’s executed well. Information overload means that too often, nothing stands out, so most of us ignore a lot of the emails we’ve signed up to receive.

Here’s our guide from our email marketing specialists at Kee on how to make your email grab attention and not blend into the thousands of unread marketing emails sitting in your customers’ inboxes and spam folders.

1. Make your subject line work hard

They say you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. The first impression your customer has of your email is the subject line, so you’d better make it a good one! 69% of recipients will report an email as spam based on the subject line alone, so it’s a vitally important area to get right.

Keep it short and sweet, using actionable language where possible. Give your audience a reason to click and open. The last thing you want is to be ignored, so be creative and give them a good reason to open your email and open it first.

2. Don’t go crazy with the imagery

Although glossy images are visually compelling and a great sales tool, when it comes to email marketing, you’ll want to avoid heavy use of large images. This is because not all inboxes will load them, leaving your reader to be greeted by blank, white space. It’s important not to rely on images alone to sell your product or convey your message.

Make sure any critical information isn’t trapped in an image, and make sure you always use ‘alt text’ behind your images so that copy still appears, even if the images don’t load. Having said that, don’t avoid imagery completely! A striking visual can make all the difference to how much the recipient reads; just be sure to carefully consider the file size and messaging to ensure you’re not held back by slow-loading imagery.

3. Think about how it will display on mobile

59% of the marketing emails we create for our clients are viewed on mobile devices. So, with over half of your customers accessing their emails on mobiles, your marketing emails should always be mobile-friendly, or they severely risk turning customers off.

To be as mobile-friendly as possible, try to keep your image sizes down, use an appropriate font size, and test to make sure your email looks as good on a mobile as it does on your design screen.

But remember, there are still some 40% of your subscribers who will be reading your email on a computer with a much larger screen. Make sure the tiny type that looks great on a phone is just as legible and attractive on other devices too.

4. Keep copy light

Of course, your email has to contain copy, but how much? You don’t want to overwhelm recipients with pages and pages of text, but you do want to get your message across.

Use shorter blocks of text that link back to full articles or product pages on your website. This way, your email generates web traffic in addition to providing information to your customers.

5. Make links look like links

If you want your customers to click, to take action, you need to make it obvious. Make your links look like links and stand out too. The standard styling for links is to format them in a bold, blue font and underline, but you can change this to match your corporate identity and styling. Include plenty of opportunities to click, from text links to images and icons. You want to lead your audience to further information, probably on your website, so make the pathway easy to find with plenty of routes to the destination.

6. Keep it simple

If in doubt, keep it simple. Consider what you want to achieve from your email and whether your design aligns with your goal. Review it, make improvements, then review it again. What is marketing if it’s not one big learning process?

7. Get personal

Make your email come from a real human, maybe your MD or your sales manager, with their name and contact details. And make sure it starts with the recipient’s name, rather than ‘Dear Sir’, etc. And you’ll want to make your content relevant to the person reading it too. How often have you bought something from one of the big online retailers, say a toothbrush, then you’re besieged by emails offering you toothbrushes? A new car buyer probably doesn’t want to know how much they could now save on the car they just bought, but service plan or accessory offers could mean another sale.