Despite the growing interest in social media platforms and instant messaging apps, email marketing continues to impress with its engagement efficiency. Whether you run a small local business or operate with international distributors and retailers, email marketing can indeed help further your goals, even in 2020. According to Business 2 Community, 61% of customers prefer to be contacted by brands via email. In addition, 64% of marketers rely on a dedicated email marketing platform, such as Smaily, for their customer outreach. But to really know what your customers want, you also have to get into the theoretics of it, such as implementing knowledge from cognitive psychology in email marketing.
In order to take full advantage of the customers’ preferences, you can employ cognitive psychology hacks to your email scriptwriting going forward. Doing so will enable you to seal the proverbial deal more easily and convert more leads than average via your email marketing efforts. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the most practical and effective cognitive psychology hacks for email script creation in 2020.
1. Personalize Your Writing
Per the definition by Simply Psychology, cognitive psychology is the scientific field that is focused on information processing that goes on in people’s minds. Customers’ perception, attention, memory, thinking, and consciousness all belong in cognitive psychology, meaning you should focus on the personalization of your scriptwriting.
No one likes to receive an email that has obviously been copy-pasted dozens or hundreds of times and be expected to engage the brand. As such, make it a habit to include some form of personalized content in the email writing, such as name, last name, or purchase history. Make it clear to the recipient that you care about their experience with your brand, and their psychological response will be to pay closer attention.
2. Scarcity & Exclusivity
As humans who live in a modern, digital society, we are driven to purchase goods and services which will soon go out of stock. The same applies to limited-time offers or exclusive deals by the brands we know and love, making this an important cognitive psychology hack to implement.
Using Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to your advantage can do wonders for your engagement and subsequent conversion rates. Implement keywords that revolve around “exclusivity” and “one-time offer” in order to garner the attention of your recipients. You can include a ticking clock or similar symbols, which can signal how much time is left on your latest deal, improving the email’s effect.
3. Balance Writing with Visuals
While scriptwriting is the primary carrier of your sales information in email marketing, you should consider creating original visuals to complement it. According to 99 Firms, 65% of users prefer emails that contain mostly images. There are good reasons for these numbers.
Many customers rely on smartphones to read emails or are too busy to read multiple paragraphs of text in the middle of the day. Implement original images of your products or create eye-catching content with tools such as Canva and paper writing services to provide written context. Focus your recipients’ attention on short but informative writing complemented by visuals, and you will grab their attention more efficiently than by scriptwriting alone.
4. Custom Fonts & Color Palette
You should aim to differentiate your brand from others in your industry at first glance. Custom fonts present on Google Fonts can be integrated into your email writing quite easily and serve as a spark of creativity and professionalism.
Likewise, your brand’s style guide should find its way into email marketing to catch the readers’ eye and associate the email with your brand instantly. Your email’s visual presentation is just as pivotal for cognitive psychology as the script writing present within, so pay close attention to custom visuals.
5. Efficient Call to Action Placement
Ideally, you will want to come out of each email marketing campaign with double-digit engagement numbers to drive conversion organically. This can be achieved by playing to your readers’ cognitive psychology with carefully placed calls to action.
Calls to action are a traditional marketing tool that revolves around the literal “calling” of the reader to specific “action.” For example, simple “Visit our online store” writing with the hyperlink attached to its body can help your cause tremendously. Failing to add any form of a call to action to the email’s writing will inevitably cause the marketing campaign to fare poorly due to passivity.
6. Limit the Available Options
It’s only natural that you should want to present as many purchase options to your customers as possible via email marketing. However, this can lead to decision paralysis, a psychological condition that will lead to no choice being made whatsoever.
To avoid this, limit the sales options you attach to your email marketing to 3-5 on average, with hyperlinks to your online store for more. This will show the reader a snippet of your offer without overwhelming them with too much written content. Format your writing properly and use bullet points and white space liberally to make the cognitive psychology hack more effective.
7. Social Proof Creates Trust
Given the abundance of online shopping options, customers might be wary of email marketing from unverified sources. This can be mitigated by reaching out to influencers, industry experts, and previously satisfied customers with the goal of creating social proof content.
Social proof will positively affect the cognitive psychology response from customers who may only have a passing familiarity with your brand. Quotes, video interviews, and reviews in relation to your products can find their way into your email marketing entirely or as blog headlines with hyperlinks.
8. Offer a Non-Commitment Freebie
A great way to drive engagement and conversion through cognitive psychology is to implement loss aversion hacks through free giveaways. Loss aversion is a cognitive mechanism that is centered on the customers’ wish to gain something accessible rather than lose it for no good reason.
For example, if you operate as a SAAS business, why not give your recipients 7-day free trial access to the platform? If you sell digital goods such as fonts or graphics, giving away an item for free in the attached link can have positive effects. The olive branch approach to email marketing is extremely effective as it will showcase that your business is not purely profit-driven and more pro-consumer oriented.
9. Avoid Dark Patterns
Regarding user experience in cognitive psychology, it’s worth looking at dark patterns and why you should avoid them. Dark patterns represent UX tricks that some designers and marketers employ quite literally to trick users into specific actions. Examples of dark patterns range from fake social proof, guilt-tripping the customer about the purchase, or hiding the unsubscribe button in your email’s content.
Don’t think that such tricks in script writing creation will help your brand in the long run. If enough recipients spot what you are trying to do, your brand can be black-listed and the market as automatic spam, which is a terrible consequence. Be professional, respectful, and pro-consumer in your email marketing, and the recipients’ response to your campaigns’ performance will reflect that.
In Summation
In practice, there is no right or wrong way to write content for email marketing – it comes down to your target audience and their psychology. What you can do, however, is implement tried-and-tested cognitive psychology hacks such as the ones we’ve discussed to bridge the proverbial gap.
Put yourself in the shoes of your recipients and think about which emotional triggers, sales offers, and calls to action might work well. You can always reevaluate your strategy and change the writing approach based on initial performance until you strike a good middle ground. Don’t overlook cognitive psychology in your email marketing writing, and your customers will undoubtedly respond favorably to your efforts.
Author’s Bio: Helene Cue is a professional writer, editor, and email marketing specialist with a keen interest in business development and online sales. She regularly partakes in Free Essay Writer‘s essay or article creation on a plethora of topics and forms, ranging from academic to blog-oriented styles. Helene is fully committed to her writing career and aims to build a reputation as a professional content creator. In her spare time, Helene likes to read popular literature and exercise.