Each and every one of us receive an influx of email marketing promotions through to our inboxes every day, but what is it that makes us respond to some and ignore others?

I read an interesting article recently about how businesses need to make the online conversion process after clicking on a call to action quick, simple and user friendly as a heavy amount of content may detract a potential consumer away (Hernandez & Resnick, 2012). This is a factor which Bills, the restaurant, appears to have incorporated into their marketing techniques.

I receive, on average, 30 marketing emails a day, their origin mainly based in the retail and food sector. Due to the heavy influx, my immediate reaction is to delete them in bulk, however there was one recently that caught my eye. The subject line was clear, simple and related to my wants and needs: Bills – Dinner On Us? This email immediately caught my eye amongst the heavy amount of content displayed by other businesses.

The email content was short, concise and displayed a clear call to action. It successfully corresponded with the season of the year through pulling on people’s feelings and emotions by offering a free dinner for two in a warm, cosy environment. The advertisement was visually very appealing and easy on the eye through colours, text and imagery, all of which corresponded to create a bold advertisement without being too much for the user to take in.

The combination of the clear, simple subject line and visually appealing email advertisement corresponded effectively and encouraged me to click the call to action button which simply stated ‘CLICK HERE’. Once through to the landing page, the colours, text and imagery mirrored the email advertisement structure, therefore providing a sense of consistency, which works effectively at decreasing the drop off rate. The landing page did not require a lot of information to be entered; name, email, date of birth, post code and favourite Bills restaurant.

The example of Bills email marketing implies that businesses need to create a clear and concise subject line which feeds into the target market wants and needs. Once through to the email advertisement and the landing page, the content needs to be kept to a minimum in order to require as little as possible from the potential consumer.

Let’s hope I get that free dinner!

Hernandez, A., & Resnick, M. L. (2013, September). Placement of Call to Action Buttons for Higher Website Conversion and Acquisition An Eye Tracking Study. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 57, No. 1, pp. 1042-1046). SAGE Publications.