How Your Campaign Can Stand Out In An Inbox Full Of Marketing

• By Rodney Laws
• 02-04-2021
• Digital Marketing

Email marketing is one of the primary pillars of a strong digital marketing campaign.

While it might not be as fashionable as an influencer-led social media campaign or an innovative mobile app, email still has a significant role to play in attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.

But how do you stand out in what must be incredibly bloated inboxes? After all, how many emails do you get a day?

Making sure your campaign can stand out in an inbox full of marketing material isn’t easy, but there are simple and innovative ways you can do so.

Let’s explore some now.
Get the basics right
First things first, you need to get the basics right.

Spend any amount of time in a populated inbox, and you’ll see just how many brands STILL aren’t doing this. They aren’t hitting key branding points, using the right messaging, or even optimizing their emails for mobile.

It’s amateurish and puts people off their brand.

To make your next email campaign stand out, ensure you’re getting these basics right. These include:

- An enticing, topical subject line
- Well-timed emails that suit your audience’s schedule (don’t send your emails in the middle of the night)
- Strong calls-to-action peppered throughout your copy/banners
- A sense of professionalism (increasingly important in the age of more advanced cybersecurity scams)

Getting noticed in the world of email marketing isn’t easy, but if you aren’t hitting these key points, you haven’t got a chance.

Show you understand the user
Genuinely understanding your average customer is incredibly important in 2021, whatever your industry.

Never underestimate how important it is to let your customers know you know what you’re talking about. If someone starts to suspect you don’t or doubts your branding, they’re going to stop opening emails.

Nonprofits and community-focused businesses are a great source of inspiration for this.

It might be worth giving your email marketing a bit of a fresh start. Introduce your brand, show what you’re about and establish your expertise. This can be a great way of earning the trust and interest of vulnerable customers. Veteran disability compensation consultants VA Claim Pros are particularly good at this. Using case studies, reviews, and content that establishes their military background, they’re able to win over a unique and cautious audience.

The nonprofit Water Aid does this slightly differently but to similar success. The Water Aid website is less user-experience heavy but is clear and definitive in its message. It outlines their mission statement and ways users can get involved immediately, showing they understand both the people they’re helping and the kind of person on their website. This is simple, but effective content that can easily be repurposed into a mission statement email.

In cases like this, we’ve focused on on-site rather than email content. But the same principle applies. Re-evaluating and launching your brand message to show a greater understanding of your audience is key for getting lapsed readers who haven’t quite unsubscribed yet on your side and willing to engage with your brand consistently.

Think visually
It’s been said you only have three seconds to grab someone’s attention with a marketing email. One of the best ways to do this is to focus on interesting and inspiring visuals.

Strong imagery is what sets apart well-crafted emails from their poorer counterparts. Yes, strong copy (particularly CTA) matters, but the reader’s eyes will be naturally drawn to imagery and a strong visual layout.

Consider how your campaign can not just capture the attention of audiences with cheap visual tricks, but represent something more about your brand. Sustainable shoe and clothing company Allbirds excel in the visual department on their email campaigns. They both establish a strong visual style (note the contrast of photography and simplistic drawings) and even throw in a mascot to reinforce branding.

These are simple steps, but they give your business character while also giving your emails less of a routine feel. Sometimes, an email thrown together in a few hours can do great, but you can’t rely on that to be your brand.

Also, consider the visual aspect of words and the space around them. Following basic writing for the web principles can help your emails to look significantly more professional and achieve the same results as your content. Nobody wants to get a wall of text in their inbox, whether it’s from their boss or a brand they love.

Go in with a minimalistic, image-driven approach and you’ll likely notice a significant upswing in your email success and design.
Integrate an interactive experience
Of course, you can always take things a step beyond images and integrate a more interactive experience into your email.

- Gifs
- Animations
- Charts
- Infographics
- Polls
- Surveys
- Videos
- Puzzles

There are so many ways to add unique and enticing interactive elements to your emails. Whatever you think your audience may respond to is worth giving a try.

This content doesn’t just work because it’s a little different, but because it forces your audience to engage with the email on a deeper level. It’s easy to gloss over text and give up on it halfway through. But if you start a survey or watch a video, you’re more likely to finish.

It’s a brilliant way to stand out and further build your brand through email. Best of all, not everyone is doing this. If you can convince someone to click through to your email, you’re much more likely to retain them than with a standard text-driven email.

If you’re looking for inspiration, the Stripo blog features a great guide to examples of interactive content.

As long as you’re mobile-friendly and don’t overthink things, interactive content can be a great way to build stronger customer relationships and show a different side to your brand. An exciting campaign on both sides of the inbox!

Although there is a science to great email campaigns, it’s important to let yourself get a little creative and try to think outside of the box.

Striking the right balance between truly innovative and consistent with your brand ideals is important. Consider re-starting your campaign with a mission statement email before wowing your newly attentive readers with some inspiring content.

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