Does one really have to consider the psychological aspects while drafting a sales email in order to pitch the clients? What magic do these psychological tricks play? Does it even help lure people?
Sale is a combination of psychology and strategy. Having a strong understanding of consumer psychology can help you better craft your sales emails to improve overall reception. By harnessing what influences purchasing decisions and channeling it into powerful lead nurturing emails, you can convert more prospects into leads, resulting in more sales.
Psychological selling is based on what we know about social behaviors and decision-making processes in relation to purchasing. Today, we’ll look at the psychology of a sales email and what to keep in mind when writing emails for different stages of the buyer’s journey. We’ll sift through all of the psychology that goes into writing a well-crafted and impactful sales email- from first impressions to understanding the purpose behind each aspect of an email.
Understanding human psychology is critical for improving your sales practices. As a result, we’ve compiled a list of the top psychological techniques you should incorporate into your email campaign to avoid low sales:
Personalization
Personalization is extremely effective in increasing email sales.
Did you know that personalization is cited by 98% of marketers as a major factor in improving customer relations? While 90% of customers find marketing personalization to be very or somewhat appealing.
We, humans, enjoy receiving personalized messages. Selective attention explains this. When we concentrate on a single object (such as a conversation or an email), we tend to tune out everything else. Some words, on the other hand, have the potential to break through the background noise and gain attention.
Colin Cherry, a British cognitive scientist, conducted a series of experiments in the 1950s to better understand how selective attention works. He discovered the Cocktail Party Effect after observing the dynamics of a crowded party room. In the midst of a loud cocktail party, experiment subjects were engaged in interesting conversations while tuning out everything else. Despite this, they were able to recognize and respond to a single word. That was their own name.
So, how does the Cocktail Party Effect relate to increasing sales? Given the research, it stands to reason that many professionals use their customers’ names to capture their attention and personalize their message. Something as simple as addressing a customer by name has the potential to make them feel more important and significant. Customers will be more satisfied with your brand as a result.
Furthermore, you can incorporate various personalized elements into your email pieces. Personalization, for example, can be included in the subject line. Personalized subject lines, in fact, are 26% more likely to be opened. Segment your audience to better understand them and create more personalized email content.
Here are a few examples of personalized subject lines
- Claim Your Free Access, [First name]
- Your Personalized Recommendations, [First name]
- [First name], please pay attention
- Hello [First Name], Come in and place your order!
- [First name], It’s nice to meet you
The foot-in-door technique
Even though the days of door-to-door selling are long gone, some tricks live on in the digital world. Have you ever heard of the foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique?
It’s a compliance technique based on the idea of making increasingly demanding requests in order to persuade someone to agree to a larger request. This is how it works. You begin by asking a simple question (basically, persuade them) as a first instinct and then the customers, in return, commit to your services. Also, one must keep in mind one important implication of this mechanism is that the first action must be voluntary: if a customer is forced to do something, it will not serve as a foot-in-the-door technique because they will not feel compelled to follow through on it.
Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser of Stratford University conducted a study and later published their: Compliance Without Pressure: The foot-in-the-door-technique. They began by asking, “How can a person be persuaded to do something he would rather not do?” They then described their experiments. They first asked a small group of people over the phone for a small request, and then they asked them in person for a larger request.
Example: One of the most common online examples is requesting a subject’s email address and then approaching them with a larger request. Giving one’s email address satisfies a minor request. Later on, the marketer can request a sale.
Consistency
Another effective psychological trick you can incorporate into your email sales strategy is consistency. How does it function? Customers will subconsciously remember your message if you repeatedly repeat your idea (such as an image, word, phrase or symbol) over time. Consistent, repetitive messages promote learning and aid in the formation of associations between the messages you present and your brand.
Create email content that is consistent in terms of ideas, visuals and tone of voice. This will assist your recipients in connecting these ideas to your brand, resulting in strong associations. When you repeat the same idea over and over, the message will take a special place in your audience’s long-term memory.
For example, you can regularly pitch to customers- say, every Tuesday, by sending dedicated emails advertising a new product, making a new offer to them or even telling them about your latest services.
Simple solutions
‘Simple solutions’ is a persuasion technique that implies persuading through the provision of simple solutions to relatively complex problems. Since humans try to avoid problems at all costs, this principle of providing on-the-spot solutions works. While writing your emails, emphasize how simple, quick and beneficial your solution is. Also, describe the relief your customers will feel once you have resolved their problems. Make it clear that you’ve already done the legwork so that your recipients don’t have to.
To be successful, your email campaign must be filled with the magic of simple solutions. It should make your recipients believe that all they have to do is press a magic button and all of their problems will vanish.
Storytelling
Our desire to hear stories reflects the basic human need to comprehend life patterns. Furthermore, hearing a story has a significant impact on the human brain. Our attention shifts, we memorize more and we become more emotional when we hear a good story. Our brain reacts to the story characters in the same way that it does to real people in real life.
Customer attention is more difficult to come by than ever before. This means that marketers must find innovative ways to present their messages to customers in order to demonstrate how their products or services can add value to their lives. One of the most effective methods for accomplishing this is through the use of storytelling.
It’s no surprise that many businesses incorporate storytelling into an email marketing strategy to increase customer engagement and sales. The narrative of your brand is a powerful persuasion tool. To narrate your emails, use the names of real people (such as your employees). It’s always a good idea to give your company a voice, a narrator who will guide your customers through their brand experiences. Make narratives that describe your products and their journey to customers.
Example: Brook Brothers used a story timeline to commemorate the company’s 100th anniversary. Brook Brothers tell subscribers in the email how their brand was created, as well as the iconic innovations they’ve brought to the industry over the last 100 years.
The Bottom Line
Email success is an essential component of any sales strategy. Use the following psychological techniques to improve your email marketing efforts and increase sales. Never stop refining your email strategies and incorporating science-based methods into your marketing efforts.
Through Stellar Digital’s email marketing services, we make sure we convey a proper message at the right time to the right people so that we don’t come off as annoying. We don’t spam either!
