One marketing channel that is commonly overlooked or neglected by dive operators is email marketing. However, email marketing is a great, cost effective way to easily communicate with your database and ignite growth within your business. Over 34% of the world’s population have an email address and everyday over 109 billion business emails are sent worldwide. That’s a lot of emails!
With so many emails filling up everyone’s inbox, it can be tough to stand out above all the noise. Here are 10 tips to create an engaging email that will give your dive shop a competitive edge and help increase your open rates and conversions.
1. Keep It Simple
Try not to over complicate your message or design. Keep your message short and concise. If someone opens your email and sees a long, unexciting body of text, it’s almost guaranteed they are not going to read it! Whilst it is important to have good content, it is equally important to have a simple email design. Your email should use a logical hierarchy with large headlines and images that focus the attention. This is important so your reader can quickly scan your email and it is clear what your message and call to action is.
2. Use the Inverted Pyramid Style (Not as Complex as It Sounds!)
The inverted pyramid method is designed to grab your reader’s attention, keep them engaged and then guide them to take action. How does it work? Use an attention grabbing subject line to get your reader’s curiosity. Next, include your email’s short and concise message to build anticipation and excite your readers. The final step is to add your call-to-action, your opportunity to “close the deal.” If you have successfully delivered the first two steps, the reader will more likely be willing to click and convert by the time they get to the end of your email.
3. Use a Catchy Subject Line
The subject line is the bait to entice your reader to bite. It is the first thing they will see when they receive an email, so it needs to stand out above the rest. While we encourage you to do your own testing, some studies say using 40 to 50 characters is best to increase the likelihood of a higher open rate. The key is to convey your message to customers in just a few words. You can also pop some emojis in there too which can help grab attention among the black and white of an inbox and convey your businesses personality to customers.
It is always a good idea to A/B test your subject line. This allows you to create two subject lines which will be sent to the same size data segment to see which one is performing better. For example, to a group of Open Water Divers in your database you could test two subject lines.
- “5 Benefits of PADI’s Advanced Open Water Diver Course”
- “Advance Your Diving for $449”
Your A/B test would show you which subject line had the most opens and as you conduct tests over time, you’ll start to learn the more successful ways to write your subject lines.
4. Use a Clear Call-To-Action (CTA)
A call to action is the point in the email where the reader has the decision to take the next step or not. One of the simplest ways to do this is to add a clear, eye catching CTA button. Your CTA button should be large enough to read easily, but not so large that it is considered obnoxious. Make sure your button includes short and concise text that is action orientated such as “sign up now,” “book now” or “read more”. In the above “Advance Your Diving for $449” email example, the call to action button could be “Purchase Now.”
Try and position your CTA button in the first half of your email. This is referred to as “above the fold.”
5. Make It Responsive
What is a responsive email? Simply put, it means your email is adaptive so that no matter what device (Desktop, iPhone, iPad etc.) the recipient views your email on, it displays according to the screen size so it remains user friendly and looks good. Fun fact – according to a study by litmus.com, mobile devices remain the most popular reading environment with 42% of all emails being opened on smartphones or tablets.
6. Keep on Brand
If you haven’t already done so, create some branding guidelines and make sure you carry these across all marketing communications, including emails. Brand identity not only makes you recognisable, it also helps you stay consistent. This will help set you apart from the rest. When creating your brand guidelines consider things like brand logo, typography, colours, tone of voice and imagery. It is helpful to create a few variations of email templates using these brand guidelines. Creating email templates will help streamline your emails.
7. Offer Real Value
Don’t send an email just for the sake of reminding your subscribers of your existence – you need to offer them something of value. An example of this could be to send your recent Open Water Divers a congratulations email for completing their PADI Open Water Diver course. You could then offer them an incentive to continue their journey with you and complete the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course. Remember, try not to discount courses but instead value add!
8. Make It Shareable
Creating email content that has the capability to share on social media is a fantastic way to build brand awareness and lead generation. It amplifies the impression your email marketing has on potential customers. When your primary audience shares your content on social media, they create a secondary audience. According to the 2018 Yellow Social Media Report, 79% of people now use social media. With this in mind, you can see the importance of opening up your email content to this massive audience. Luckily, diving opens the door to amazing content. Include diving related content in your emails that divers in your database will enjoy and want to share.
9. Include a Video
There is no better way to communicate your message as quickly and effectively as video. Videos are eye catching and far more interesting then text. Plus, we have the advantage that diving videos are awesome and people want to see it! So why not include one in your email? Make sure your videos are relevant, good quality and short. If your video is irrelevant, poor quality or too long you will lose your audience. Whilst it is quite complicated to play a video within an email, the easiest thing to do is to have a video thumbnail with a play button overlay.
10. Track and Analyse
Now that you know how to create the perfect, engaging email – it’s time to learn what the most crucial element is. That’s right folks, its tracking and analytics! At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how optimised your emails are if you can’t see results. So have a clear goal in mind, decide what your metrics will be to see how you are tracking towards your goal. Some of your goals might include converting Open Water Divers to Advanced Open Water Divers, increasing equipment purchases by 10%, grow your subscriber database or generate more leads to your dive shop. Some metrics you should consider are click through rates, conversion rates, bounce rates, and email sharing rates just to name a few.
A final thought – before you click send, think to yourself “would I read this?”
Visit out PADI Pros Site for our Marketing Toolkit which offers you a range of email templates that you can use for your email campaigns. If you have any questions, please contact your regional marketing team at:
EMEA: [email protected]
PAP: [email protected]
