What exactly makes people respond to your marketing offers? What is it precisely that makes them engage and buy from you? It’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question asked of all advertising and marketing.
A guest post by Karen Talavera, President Synchronicity Marketing.
While the fundamentals of what makes us want to transact with a company or say yes to one offer over another remain relatively the same across channels, how marketers employ specific tactics can vary drastically from channel to channel.
When it comes to email marketing it’s important to know exactly which factors contribute to trust, engagement, purchase and loyalty, and how to translate them into successful email messages and overall programs. Let’ start with the first part of that and then get into tactics.
The Basic Psychology of Human Decision-Making
We can pride ourselves all we want on our intellectual superiority over the rest of the species on our planet, but a commonly overlooked fact is that we are as much emotional as intellectual beings – maybe even more emotional than intellectual. Our brains are equipped with reasoning and emotional centers, and both factor into decision making.
In online marketing, making emotional connections is especially important because the digital world can be fast, furious, and impersonal. There is a built-in immediacy in digital communication channels that often undermines the opportunity to slow down the sale and deepen the consideration process that older, offline channels afforded.
Plus, there is both a considerable amount of skepticism and unfortunately, fraud in the digital world. Allowing people to get to know you online with a relationship-building approach goes a long way toward creating the familiarity, comfort confidence consumers and business people alike need before they’re willing to buy.
It Starts with Creating Emotional Resonance
Despite our immense reasoning power, our instinctive “gut” reactions are older and better honed. From the standpoint of human evolution, we had to develop the ability to make split-second unconscious decisions to survive. This ability survives in us today and kicks-in when we’re faced with any decision – even if it’s not life or death – and often happens before our brains have time to intellectually process facts.
That’s why research has proven time and again that people buy from emotion and justify with reason. So it’s essential to know how to emotionally connect with people in your marketing, and in email to do so not just authentically but quickly.
Remember, there’s that built-in immediacy factor with email – people don’t spend as much time with it as print or television. That’s right – with email you have less than three seconds to create emotional resonance.
When you resonate with your subscribers you strike an emotional chord with them. You make a visceral feeling connection. You both tune into the same “vibe”, and it results in comfort and trust, allowing you to sell in a non-salesy environment.
As in music, your aim is to sing to the same tune as your audience, then harmonize with them by recognizing their needs, pain, challenges and desires and meeting them in that space.
When you authentically, personally, and transparently communicate with your target audience, they resonate with you. You get reactions like “this is perfect for me!” or “finally someone understands what I’m going through!”
So now that you know we must appeal to both the intellectual and emotional sides of people, how do we do it?
Stay tuned for part two where we discuss the tactics – or the 5 P’s of profitable email response.
To find out more, join us for a webinar with Karen on the Psychology of Email Response on Wednesday, 12 September at 1PM EST! Register for free here.
Karen Talavera heads Synchronicity Marketing and writes about how to successfully use email, social media and content marketing on the Enlightened Emarketing blog. For your free copy of the Top 10 Email Marketing Do’s and Don’ts click here.