Catch of the day

When it comes to in-house creative you’re an email marketing rockstar-so you’re perfectly prepared to create a third-party email right? Not necessarily. But you will be just as soon as you’ve read this article about the unique formula needed for  third-party email success. Read on!

Lead love: Ensure potential subscribers get hooked!

1. Keep it plain (text). You may be used to doing beautiful graphic HTML emails for your house lists, but this is not the best idea for a third-party email. Heavy HTML can run into rendering issues, meaning that there’s a good chance it will not be visible in many browsers.  It can be hard to forsake the sophisticated graphics that you are used to creating, but remember, there’s no point in beautiful graphics if no one is able to view them.For this reason it is best to stick to plain text. You can still create a nice-looking email; just save the more fancypants graphics for when they convert to your house list.

2. A well-crafted subject heading. It’s no exaggeration to say that the success of a third-party email rides largely on a well-crafted subject heading. As a copywriter, the equation I use for third-party email subject headings is Relevance + Benefit. With these two elements in place, you’ll get surefire open rates every time.

Examples of successful third-party email subject headings:

• Private Sale for SilkySoft Customers
• Greenwood Residents: the important security statistic your neighborhood watch may not have told you (whitepaper)
• Engineers: Invite-only Boeing webinar happening Tuesday

As you can see, although these emails are technically third-party, you are minimizing the unfamiliarity gap by demonstrating that you know who they are and that you’re sending them a customized offer. This goes a long way toward making someone want to open an email rather than report it as spam. Again, once they are on your house list you can go for fun headlines like “Sparkle.Sizzle.Save,” or “Tales of the Dinnertable Part 2013,” but until they recognize you as the sender, it’s best to go for clarity over cutesy.

3. A juicy, measurable offer. When you are sending house emails, the email incentive may be no more than a pleasant distraction from their work at lunch time. With third-party emails, you have to work a little harder to get people to opt-in. This is where the offer comes in.  If you are reaching out to an audience for the first time, hook their attention with a captivating offer that will make them want to convert. Remember, these people don’t know you and didn’t directly opt-in to receive emails from you, so you need to craft an offer that will make it worth their while. For example, give them an attractive first-timer discount, an interesting webinar, or a useful white paper.  Note: As you can see, all of these offers have a clear action associated with them, which will make your third-party email campaign measurable-that means a juicy offer for them, and juicy data insight for you! Score!

4. Don’t forget about the landing page. If you are sending a third-party email, you should create a custom landing page to coincide. House emails generally just connect to the homepage, but this is not the best approach for lead generation because the homepage might not reinforce your desired action clearly enough. Instead, send your leads to a custom landing page that clearly reiterates the action that you want them to take “download a whitepaper, register for a webinar” etc. Make sure the colors and tone of the landing page echo that of the email to minimize disorientation and reassure readers that they’ve come to the right place.

Congratulations, your initiation into the world of third-party email creative is complete. Now go out there and hook those leads!

email marketing, email prospecting, opt-in emails, third-party emails