What differentiates a good marketing email from a bad one, in your mind? Perhaps it’s the imagery or the use of fonts. Maybe it’s the copy – or lack thereof.

My theory of “less copy is more money” was proven valid last week in one of my company’s sponsorship emails.

This is an example of the email for our upcoming event, SSOW. The subject line was simply (Your company’s) Involvement in Shared Services & Outsourcing Week. 

This is why I thought this email was so great:

1. The calls-to-action are extremely apparent
2. The use of colored fonts against a dull background really pop aesthetically and are very professional
3. There are no block lines of copy – because that is really all that’s necessary!!!
4. It treats the reader with respect – want to see the agenda? Click there. Want to see the list of attendees? Click here. Want to Register. Click here. The imagery and words are implied, therefore we don’t need to tell them what to do, which leads me to …
5. The epitome of great writing, and therefore great marketing emails, is to “show” and not “tell.” What does this mean? We’re showing them how to navigate the email and more importantly, we’re showing them the value they’ll receive at the event through easily digestible tidbits.

Anddddd….. drumroll please.

How did it perform??

The marketing manager says,

“There were three things that we did differently with this email that we were a little bit worried about:

• No downloadable links. Only requests that pop up to an email
• We had only TWO items they would request: Spex Prospectus and Current Attendee List
• A image based email with hardly any text. So almost like sending an infographic. And of course making it look fabulous and pretty :)”

All three test  had very positive results:

• 19 actives. 7 of these we received in the first 10 minutes.
• 21% open rate

Compare that to the previous email (on the right) that had:

• 1 active
• 11% open rate

Well done, well done.