Mastering Emotional Triggers in Email Marketing: Boost Engagement and Conversions

Intro

According to Harvard Business Review, 95% of our decision-making to purchase something, happens in the subconscious mind. Our emotions guide us about what we do and choose.

For those in marketing, it's important to know that emotions can really push people to take action. When you're sending out marketing emails, tapping into these emotions is using an "emotional trigger." This method involves reaching out to people's emotions to encourage them to do what you want, like clicking a "Buy Now" button.

Your goals can be different like getting more sales, adding more people to your email list, keeping potential customers interested, or just bringing more visitors to your website.

But how to use email emotional triggers to drive your customers? Let’s find out!

In this article, we have defined 5 different strategies to make your next email campaign more emotionally available, for your audience.

What Are the Emotional Triggers in Email?

Emotional triggers are just as they sound. Many of us react emotionally to what others say or do on purpose. These reactions can make us feel sensitive, and stressed, and often stop us from thinking clearly. In the world of marketing, using email emotional triggers can pull on a customer’s feelings to influence what they buy.

Below are some uplifting emotional cues that can be easily incorporated into your next email marketing campaign:

1. Anticipation or excitement: Gretchen Rubin), a well-known writer, shares a thought that getting excited or looking forward to something is the first step out of four to feeling happy. When people anticipate something nice, it makes them feel positive, and they might even talk about it with others. This idea can be a useful tool in your campaigns to create a feel-good vibe among your audience.

2. Belonging or connection: The desire to be part of something larger than ourselves is a basic human instinct. This need drives us to join groups or buy things that help us feel connected to certain communities. Brands can tap into this by building strong, supportive communities around their products, making customers feel like they're part of a family.

3. Curiosity: Brands can make people want to learn and do more by sparking their curiosity. They might use eye-catching details to grab attention, but making promises they can’t keep might hurt how people see them over time. A better approach is to tap into people's love of learning in a real and reliable way.

4. Fear of missing out (FOMO): FOMO is so powerful it can make people feel rushed and push them to act right away. When someone feels scared, they feel a push to do something to get past that fear and feel safe again. Sharing real facts and numbers can make this fear stronger. But, it's important to use this carefully.

5. Hope: Hope is about wanting something good to happen. It's a positive feeling that looks forward to a better outcome. However, the opposite feeling is guilt, which can be a challenge. When charities write messages, they need to be careful to inspire hope without causing guilt. This balance requires careful and skilled writing.

Importance of Emotional Triggers in Email Marketing

The goal of emotional triggers is to create emails that tap into specific feelings. It is all about understanding the impact of your words and images on people's actions. These words can impact your audience in various ways:

1. Makes Your Email More Human: When you reach out to customer support, receiving a reply from a machine rather than a humancan leave you feeling disconnected. This situation is similar to emails. Writing emails with a touch of emotion and a personal tone can make them more engaging and easier for the reader to connect with.

2. Keep Your Email Relevant to Customers: The things we want and like change as time goes by, but how we feel tends to stay the same. This means that even though an email's details might not matter after a while, the way it made someone feel will always be remembered.

3. Emotions Are More Effective Than Logic: In an interview at the Harvard Gazette, Famous Author and Physicist, Leonard Mlodinow, suggests that emotions significantly influence our attention, processing of information, and integration of memories and goals into our decisions, highlighting their hidden yet vital role in how we think and act. Similarly, emails that make us feel about the brand are more effective in getting responses than emails that just stick to the facts.

4. Influences Purchasing Decisions: In Gerald Zaltman's book on understanding customers, it's revealed that many of our shopping decisions occur without our conscious awareness. This subconscious influence of emotional triggers shapes our beliefs and motivates us to buy things.

Strategies To Use Emotional Triggers in Email Marketing

In email marketing, emotional triggers can impact customer engagement and conversion rates. Here, we explore five effective strategies for integrating emotional triggers into email campaigns.

1. Use Urgency and Scarcity to Drive Action

Crafting a sense of urgency and scarcity in your email marketing efforts can drive prompt action and interaction of customers with your brand, and prevent them from delaying their decisions.

To use urgency and scarcity in your emails, focus on limited availability. This might entail spotlighting time-bound offers or a limited supply of products. For instance, you could send emails featuring a time-limited discount or an exclusive deal accessible to a limited number of customers.

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For instance, in the above example by Zapier "Offer ends tomorrow" creates urgency, urging customers to act promptly.

To strengthen your urgency and scarcity message, use clear language. Incorporate bold visuals or text to highlight your message.

“Discounts are the rawest form of urgency as a consumer”.

"Employing phrases like 'sale' or ‘last chance’ taps into this psychology, fostering a sense of urgency and motivating rapid decision-making." This strategy not only accelerates sales but also cultivates a dynamic customer response.

[Vineet Gupta, Founder,2XSAS]

2. Use Curiosity or Intrigue to Pique Interest

Did you know that adults can only focus for about eight seconds? If something takes longer, like reading an email, they might not finish it.

If you see that many of the people who get your emails have a short focus time, you can make your emails easier to look through. You might also try to make them more curious.

An email from TrustedHousesitters uses curiosity to grab attention by posing an interesting question.

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The email from TrustedHousesitters asks: "Can I trust a stranger in my house?" It's not the most unique question, but it's something many can relate to and ties back to what the brand is all about.

The curiosity is satisfied once you open the email. They even push you to be more curious with their call to action that says "Ask a Question."

Still confused about where to start? Here are 9 easy steps to create a successful email marketing campaign. Read now!

3. Leverage FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) to Boost Engagement

This concept is strong and can subtly influence the decision-making process of your customers. Using FOMO to create a sense of urgency is effective, for instance, saying "Don't miss our Black Friday deals! Offers end in 10 hours!"

Depending on what your company does, a more straightforward approach to invoking fear might work. For instance, insurance businesses might use messages like, "What if you're found driving without insurance?"

Another approach to create a sense of FOMO is by showing that many others are already on board. This idea suggests that individuals are more inclined to make a move when they observe others doing so.

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Like in the above example, you can also influence by showcasing feedback or recommendations from customers that highlight the benefits you're offering. To make it more effective, consider these essential email design tips to craft your next campaign.

4. Use Personalization to Create an Emotional Connection With Your Audience

According to Salesforce, 75% of customers believe businesses should know what they want and anticipate their expectations. This highlights one of the major benefits of emotional triggers in email campaigns.

By using personalization in your emails, you can show your audience that you understand them as individuals. This can create a sense of trust and loyalty, which can lead to increased engagement and sales.

To use personalization in your email campaigns, you can use data points like previous purchases, website interactions, or demographic details to segment your audience and send tailored emails.

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For instance, you can craft personalized emails suggesting products based on a customer's purchase history, or extend a discount on items they've displayed interest in on your website.

5. Use Storytelling to Evoke Emotions

Sharing tales is a key strategy used by email marketers in their campaigns, and there's a good reason for it. Storytelling is an ancient method used by humans to share and keep messages and historical events alive through generations.

What makes stories so powerful? As mentioned above roughly 95% of our thinking happens in the subconscious mind, rather than in our conscious thoughts. When we share stories, various parts of the brain associated with emotions, movement, vision, sound, and even taste are activated. This becomes especially important when we recognize that emotional impulses largely influence donating behaviour.

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The Canadian Red Cross shares a story about taking Syrian teen refugees to a youth camp abroad, aiming to inform rather than just seek donations. It’s engaging, making you curious to learn more or watch related videos.

Conclusion

Using emotions effectively can be really impactful! It's about finding what makes your audience excited and motivated to do something.

This involves understanding what they need, what they want, and what they tell you about their preferences. By researching who your customers are and what they like, you can figure out what really gets them going emotionally.

However, don't try to control your audience's actions directly. Rather, aim to motivate and uplift them, encouraging them to make a move.