How to Master the 3 Key Elements of an Effective Email

In football lingo, a "triple threat" is a player who can run, pass and kick with equal skill. In entertainment, the term refers to an individual proficient in acting, singing and dancing. And in the world of marketing, it's reserved for those possibly perfect individuals who can write brilliant copy, design eye-catching layouts and increase ROI without breaking a sweat. Fortunately, you don't have to be Shakespeare with the pen or Picasso with the brush to create effective emails. You just need to master a three-pronged approach--relevant topic, informative content and attention-getting creative--that's guaranteed to engage subscribers and boost conversions. Here's a guide to nailing the email trifecta by Brian Brown, Director of Product Strategy at Silverpop:

I. Focus on Relevant Topics

As email volume continues to rise, it's essential that your marketing messages increase in relevancy to stand apart from the noise. To help achieve this objective, approach your email program with the goal of speaking to each person as an individual, covering topics that will create a deeper level of engagement. Three tools to get you rolling:

• Dynamic content: Collect prospect and customer information through preference centers, forms and surveys, and then use this info to automatically replace entire sections of your messages based on each recipient's unique requirements, interests and needs.

• Web tracking: Let customer and prospect actions on your website inform subsequent emails. For example, try assigning new subscribers to different communication tracks based on the Web pages they browsed before opting in.

• Triggered messaging: Emails triggered by behaviors such as purchases, downloads or event attendance typically deliver several times the conversion rates of standard broadcast emails. So, sprinkle satisfaction surveys, review requests, cross-sell emails, anniversary incentives and other trigger-based messages into your overall mix.

II. Provide Informative Content

Today's customers and prospects are more knowledgeable and more connected than at any time in history. As a result, interruptive advertising and product-centric marketing messages are more likely to get tuned out. The trick, then, is to create messages that are eagerly anticipated by your audience. Here's how:

• Make it educational: Instead of focusing solely on sales- or promotion-related content, provide educational content (e.g. recipes and baking tips, retirement-planning calculators, best practice white papers, etc.) that aligns with recipient interests.

• Address their pain points: Monitor social media, industry blogs, online communities, etc. to improve your understanding of what customers and prospects are talking about, and use these insights to deliver content that helps address these pain points.

• Match content to buying cycle: Segment campaigns by relationship stage, specifically targeting different email messages and offers based on both explicit and implicit indicators of your customer's readiness to purchase (interested, engaged, lapsed, etc).

III. Deliver Eye-Pleasing Content

By creating aesthetically pleasing messages in which design, layout and creative elements complement the text, you'll engage customers and prospects more strongly, resulting in increased opens, click-throughs and conversions. Instantly improve your email creative by:

• Minimizing clutter: In the overloaded inbox, less is more. So, leave room for white space, which increases readability, and use strong borders and color accents to provide a visual structure that can survive images being blocked.

• Building for mobile and tablets: More people are checking email on the go, so ensure a positive experience by using alt tags and strategic pre-header text, including key messaging in the top-left corner, and incorporating clickable content blocks that are at least a fingertip's width apart .

•  Designing around the sharing concept: If you have shareworthy content, build a short, focused email centered on a single subject and include both graphical icons and text encouraging recipients to share content. Test different link placement to see what works best.