Consumers distrust corporate brands, yet trust is important for building strong relationships with customers. One way to cultivate trust in the face of such mistrust is to make your marketing more approachable, starting with your email marketing.
What makes email marketing more approachable? It starts with knowing your audience well and moves beyond email to how you interact with your target audience on other platforms.
Audience
In order to up your email approachability, you need to know what your subscribers want, what they care about, what problems they face day to day, the language they use to talk about those problems, what devices they’re using to interact with your emails, how often they want to hear from you, what topics they’re interested in reading about—in short, you need to know everything about them. This knowledge is key for the rest of the steps toward making your emails more approachable.
Brand Voice
Your goal is to create an approachable brand persona that people know, understand, identify with, and relate to. You want to not only convey integrity, reliability, and authority, but also friendliness, optimism and empathy.
Be real.
Speak in the language your customers use. Care about what you’re saying, make sure it’s useful, and take the time to say it well.
Stay positive.
Nothing’s as inviting as positivity. Keep your content positive. Keep your interactions with your subscribers positive. In part, this means making it easy for folks to unsubscribe should they want to. Don’t hide your unsubscribe button or make subscribers go through the process of logging in to their account in order to unsubscribe.
Show integrity.
As the age-old saying goes, honesty is the best policy. In terms of email marketing, this starts with subject lines. If your subject line speaks to a specific topic, make sure you address that topic in the body of your email. If your email includes links, make sure subscribers are driven to the right page for every link.
Write economically.
Say what you need to say with the fewest words possible.
Say it straight.
Approachability is about being friendly and easy to talk to. You want to emulate that in your content by making it clear, straightforward and simple—but not simplistic.
Transparency
Transparency doesn’t mean you have to be an open book about every aspect of your business. Instead, when done well, it lets your customers know you’re human. It shows them that you share their values, which is a big driver of trust.
Share the story of your brand and why you do what you do, including your brand values. Include information about your business practices to show customers they can confidently expect honest dealings with your company.
Accessibility
Being approachable also means it’s easy to access and engage with your content. This step requires images that load quickly in the email clients and on the devices your subscribers use. If your subscribers use mobile devices, it means making your emails mobile friendly.
Personalization
When we talk about personalization, we’re thinking beyond just addressing your subscribers on a first name basis. Instead, personalization means crafting your content specifically to your target audience. It’s about relevance. Craft content that speaks directly to the issues your audience cares about and then use segmentation to get that content to the right people on your list.
Beyond Email: Social Media
Make it easy to your audience to interact with you beyond email. Offer ways in your emails to keep the conversation going on social media. Then, be present and active on social media networks, listening to feedback and responding thoughtfully.
Creating a more approachable persona through your email marketing will go a long way toward growing love for your brand. It helps increase engagement and build brand trust, which is key for cultivating loyalty and commitment. This, in turn, leads to bigger purchases, higher levels of repurchase, cross-selling, and referrals.
Got a story about email approachability? We’d love to hear it. Share it in the comments section below.
Get in touch with Filament today to get help crafting email content that creates an approachable persona for your brand.
