When it comes to getting your email marketing done, most marketers will focus on the tried-and-tested (and true) core ideas, such as having a compelling subject line, making sure the CTAs are clear and well placed, or ensuring effective segmentation. All of these ideas are right – and I’ve written about them often – but what about the more subtle issues that can sway your audience (or you!) in the wrong direction?
It might be that you have a technically perfect email campaign, but it’s still not performing, and you can’t work out why – let’s take a look at the hidden biases that may well be sabotaging your email campaigns.
The Biases Held By Your Audience
To start, let’s look at the preconceptions your readers might have that are preventing them engaging properly with your excellent email campaign.
Ambiguity Aversion
The idea here is that people avoid the things they do not understand. It actually takes quite a lot of self-confidence to be willing to engage with something on which you know very little, especially when there’s no one there to guide you. If your reader doesn’t feel that confidence, then they’re likely to dismiss your product or service – not because it’s not right for them or wouldn’t be extremely helpful, but because they are simply unclear on what they’re meant to do.
The Solution
Be clear and confident with your copy. Write CTAs that are focused and definite rather than vague. ‘Contact us to find out how we can help you’ is a little wishy-washy and doesn’t provide definitive action, while ‘Call us now to boost your profits’ or ‘Get your free 15-minute strategy call’ show confidence that your service will accomplish something. Make sure your CTAs let them know exactly what to do and what they’ll get.
Projection Bias
People assume that they are going to feel the same tomorrow as they do today – it’s why going food shopping when you’re hungry leads to overbuying for the week, while if you are full, you tend to get too little. This means that if your offering doesn’t work for them right now, they make the mistake of thinking it will never be relevant.
It’s quite a tricky bias to overcome, because to do so, you need to make your reader think in a future-focused way. It can often help to make them aware of the bias, so that they choose to take preventative steps. Following on the weekly shop example, writing a shopping list overcomes projection bias by looking at future needs rather than being led by your current level of hunger.
The Solution
Frame your product in such a way that they are imagining a clear future state, rather than simply thinking about the now:
- When it’s past midnight and you’re tired…
- For those rare moments when you can finally put your feet up…
- If your car breaks down on the motorway, you don’t want to wait hours for a breakdown service…
- Banish those Monday morning blues…
By forcing your audience to think about the future, you encourage them to avoid projecting how they feel now and replacing it with the idea of how they might feel then.
Zero-Risk Bias
Generally speaking, people avoid risk. While there are some exceptions, things that are assured are preferred even when they’re less valuable. Consider the difference between buying a toy for £3 and putting £1 in a claw machine to try to win that same toy, or paying £3,000 for qualified builders with a proven history of successful projects coming to retile your roof vs. giving £1,500 upfront to the man in the pub who promises he can get it done sometime next week.
In terms of marketing, people have become wary of their data, meaning even something as simple as passing over an email address can add a perception of risk, and asking for credit card details immediately turns off a huge number of potential customers. It’s important to grow trust.
The Solution
In your marketing, make it clear what people will get from their engagement, and minimise the sense of gambling. Consider reframing your CTAs to encourage confidence and security over vagaries:
Poor version | Positive version (clear low-risk) | Why it works |
Enter your card details to start your free trial | Try it free for 14 days – no credit card needed | Rather than being rejected from the outset, customers can try and will be happier to subscribe once their trial is completed. |
Talk to sales… | Book a free, no-obligation strategy call | Instead of a vague idea of calling up at some point, customers will be more likely to check their calendar and book an appropriate time. |
Fill in your email details to get your report sent to your inbox | Download your report instantly | Lacking a hard sell to get the email, users will feel pleased to get their report for free and will explore the services further. |
The Biases That Affect You
It’s not just your audience that come with pre-conceived notions. You will also have your own biases. Consider:
- Survivorship bias – This is one of the big ones, the idea that you repeat the things that worked for you, rather than iterating and fixing mistakes on things that may have just missed the mark. Repeating successes without understanding quite why offers fewer chances to learn and improve and will ultimately stifle growth, whereas analysing your failures will give you essential data that will improve you as a marketer.
- Anchoring bias – This is where you get stuck on the first thing you learned, rather than continually growing and adapting as times change. Trends in marketing move quickly, as does technology and the expectations of the audience. Just because something was right when you started doesn’t make it true today.
- Sunken cost fallacy – This is the problem that occurs once you’ve already put time and effort into something and don’t want to scrap it, even if you know that it’s not really working. Effective email strategies are best when you have the confidence to cut your losses.
Smoothing Over Biases with Nathan Littleton
Building a comprehensive strategy for your email marketing campaigns needs to take into account these little quirks of human nature, and doing so requires experience, so it’s great that I’m here to help. Working together, we can build an effective marketing strategy that will boost your email engagement and result in higher returns.
I’m sure you want to learn more, so let’s talk – book a free, no-obligation strategy call today. You’ve got nothing to lose.
(You see what I did there, right?)
