Re-Energize Your List: Try New Packaging
Maybe your creative could use a face-lift. Maybe your offers have become stale and predictable. Don’t underestimate the difference an update to your email design can make. With a fresh design and some new offers, you might find you can keep your new members engaged longer and you can re-activate some members that seem to be losing interest.
If you tend to offer the same kind of special from email to email, try mixing it up a little. See how a Free Shipping offer performs. Try a dollar off with minimum purchase offer vs. giving a percent off the total. Changing the nature of the deal can catch your reader’s eye and elicit a click-through. If your emails are not offer-based, but are rather content-based, work on having clear subject lines that give readers a hint as to what’s in store for them if they open the email.
If your email design hasn’t changed in the last year or so, consider a redesign. You could freshen up the color palette and adjust the font or it could be a complete overhaul—changing the concept and even the name of the publication as well as the design.
Another thing to consider is re-working the layout. For an email that is text-heavy, you might try putting the content on your website so you can shorten the email by providing links to the “full story” on your website. If your email uses a lot of graphics, make sure that the graphics are not pulling the eye away from your main message.
Come up with a few options and test the different designs and/or offers to random samples of your list. See which emails get more clicks and trigger more members to spend time and money on your website after clicking. If you’re testing creative, you’ll probably want to keep the subject lines the same, so all else is equal.
And remember, since you’re trying to get members who haven’t recently opened emails to open this new email and see the new design, you’ll want to carefully strategize the subject line. You might even want to target the least active members with the new creative and an extra-special offer, whereas for your more engaged members, you simply ask them to check out your new design. You’ll have to decide which approach is more likely to be successful with your customers. Whatever you do, try a few different things with different subsets of members so you have some results to compare.