When It Comes to Email Marketing, There’s a Sure Way to Shine

It’s time to ditch our bad email marketing habits. So the first step is to acknowledge them, right?

If you’re working in any sort of office, chances are pretty good that your inbox is full of digital flotsam and jetsam — rows and rows of automated messages with subject lines like “10 Ways to Spruce up a Dreary LinkedIn Profile” or “Don’t Miss It! Our Blowout Sale Ends for Good in 24 Hours.”  They’re all meant to be enticing, but sit untouched like ducks in a row.

You watch these emails pile up over the days, weeks and months — perhaps clicking “opt out” every once in awhile — until everyone that glances at your inbox makes a tired joke about all those unread messages. And within a few months or so, your inbox looks less like a flow of information and more like a virtual graveyard.

Even though email marketing is definitely part of the ruling class when it comes to ROI, that doesn’t mean it isn’t abused by countless companies. Bad emails — or bad content, that is — get lost in the sea of any inbox.

According to McKinsey, “e-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media,” including Facebook and Twitter combined, so it’d be foolish to cut email marketing out of your repertoire. In fact, you’re six times as likely to get a click-through on an email rather than a simple Tweet.

But how can you make sure that you aren’t spending time and resources on an email that nobody will open?

It’s always worth conducting some A/B testing on subject line, opening hooks, personalization and writing styles. But a surefire way to ensure success is by stocking your posts with authentic user-generated visuals — the kind that speak to your audience. Here’s why.

Great Visuals Stay with You

As it turns out, good snapshots aren’t just part of a solid email marketing strategy, as they also help us remember information. Dr. Lynell Burmark, an author and expert in visual literacy, has this to say about pairing words with images:

“We can talk until the cows come home, but unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2) … Images, on the other hand, go directly into longterm memory where they are indelibly etched.”

Another study backs this up. After a mere three hours, participants who sat through a verbal lecture recalled just 25% of it. On the other hand, participants in an “illustrated lecture” — or a verbal lecture supplemented with visuals — remembered 55% more of the content.

To really maximize what you’re saying, go beyond just slapping any old stock photo on your email marketing template and calling it a day. When you use Scopio to find authentic user-generated visuals that will stick with your readers, it’ll help them remember your content even more.

Visuals Make or Break Your Design Flow

Great visuals have the power to record history, challenge viewpoints and spur discussion. They aren’t easily forgotten. So what’s a good design without a strong visual element to structure it?

Savvy email marketers know that it’s wise to let subscribers feast their eyes instead of starving them of visual content. In other words, you should have at least one captivating image on your email template to draw in your subscribers. Let’s take a look at this Starbucks newsletter as our first example of inspiring email marketing.

The coffee chain’s email leads with a great capture of pour-over iced coffee. The reader’s eye travels in a circle, first taking in the brew and then skipping over to the text placed in the image’s negative space. The other segments follow the same pattern, switching up color palettes and textures to keep subscribers scrolling indefinitely.

This isn’t to suggest that all companies conducting email marketing campaigns have to spend thousands of dollars to craft Starbucks-tier in-house visuals. Instead, smaller companies — and even startups — can implement user-generated visuals from social media platforms such as Instagram or Twitter to get the best value per buck.

With more than 400 million users, Instagram is home to a plethora of talented photographers creating visual records of their lives. These social media photos are an affordable — but more importantly, authentic — way to tout your brand’s values.

Just give Scopio’s white-labeling capabilities a try, and start sending customized request messages to photographers or influencers on social media. You’ll be able to stock your emails with great visuals, and you’ll generate even more excitement around your brand.

Good Email Marketing Inspires Others to Share Their Creations

Despite their hefty marketing budgets, even larger brands still take advantage of UGC’s cost-effectiveness and authenticity. Take a look at the womens’ clothing brand Charming Charlie, who gathered user-generated content to create the interactive (yet affordable) email campaign below.

By creating their own hashtag for social media, Charming Charlie found an easy way to grab up content from their most loyal customers and encouraged more fans to post their own #ccstyle creations.

Another prominent example is Warby Parker, the eyeglasses and sunglasses brand that rose to fame for their hip, affordable frames.

This campaign is deceptively simple — there aren’t any products front-and-center, and the giant “buy now” button so common on retail emails is nowhere to be seen.

But by promoting their #seesummerbetter hashtag on email campaigns and over social media, Warby Parker spurred delighted customers to create more branded content. These photos can be reposted and shared with friends. And with a little bit of help from a platform like Scopio, Warby Parker could categorize, license and publish all of their content on one convenient dashboard.

Want to find the posts that matter to your brand and sift through the advertisements, memes and junk on social media? It’d be wise to use an intelligent platform like Scopio to make sure you don’t run into any legal questions. Sign up for a no-strings-attached demo here.

Scopio is the industry’s premier search and licensing platform for images and videos on social media. We help companies find and use the photos and videos that matter to their audience, from capturing content to evaluating the analytics on campaigns. Wondering how to find authentic visuals that brighten up your emails?  Request a demo with the button below or email [email protected]. Featured photo by Haley Arndt/Scopio submission.

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