It’s early in the morning and you pick up your favorite book, say Harry Potter and make your hibiscus tea.

You get all cozy on the couch and start sipping on your tea and reading the book.

The book is so engaging that you are only physically present in the living room of your couch but your mind is wandering at the castles of Hogwarts.

If you’ve read the book, I’m sure you understand what you mean.

JK Rowling has a way with words. She gets very descriptive and makes the reader visualize every minuscule detail without any effort.

You needn’t be a fan of the Harry Potter series to understand this.

Take any book for that matter - how does the author make you feel?

They do the magic of making you traverse where they set the story with you physically staying intact where you are.

If these books tell stories with a bland narration of what they intend to say, how’d you like it?

Eww! Right?

You’d finish your hibiscus tea and slam the cover of the book hard.

Email marketing is no different from a fictional book.

It needs all the ingredients for a sumptuous email.

Why Does Your Email Need A Dash Of Fun?

• To tell memorable stories
• To build an amazing brand
• To make audiences stick around
• To engage and entertain

5 Steal-Worthy Strategies To Make Your Emails Engaging

1. Use Power Words In Your Emails

Emotions are powerful.

Every email that you send has a message and an emotion attached to that message.

Be it an email with links to your recent blog post or a feature update or a limited deal - every email has a message with emotion as a key variable.

Humans connect when you lure them in with emotions and words play a major role in that!

Instead of saying “There are offers on all products till the end of October”

This is a more powerful subject line: “Limited deal on all products. Offers expire in 30 days!

Words like “limited” and “expire” instigate a sense of urgency and urges the recipient to take action. It also creates a feeling of losing out if they don’t act on it immediately.

Depending on the purpose of your email, you may want to sprinkle these power words to not only add a dash of fun to your emails but also make them goal-oriented.

2. Stock Images and Videos

The aesthetics of your email heavily depends on the media assets that you use.

The stock images and videos complement the aligned paragraphs, white spaces, the contrasting colors of the CTA buttons and make your email look ravishing!

Using stock images and embedding videos in your emails are important because:

• It gives the readers a visual cue
• Communicates the objective of the email within seconds
• Keeps your audience engaged and hooked
• Gives the reader more details and understanding of your offerings
• Makes your email more honest and resourceful

Stock images and videos are particularly effective when you market SaaS products or if you own an eCommerce store.

Let’s for example say that you see gadgets online.

When you leverage emails for your marketing efforts, just tables with all the specifications won’t make the cut!

You have to leverage images and videos to make your pitch more genuine and compelling.

There are a lot of email marketing tools like BayEngage that have an in-built library of stock images whereas tools like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign do not. In which case you may want to look for Mailchimp alternatives and ActiveCampaign alternatives.

Pick a tool that facilitates this as it is key for your email engagement.

3. Fun, Bright, and Relevant Emojis

Emojis are great ingredients to spice up your bland emails.

They are particularly helpful in increasing your open rates because:

• Emojis tell a story
• Make the objective of your email apparent
• They break the inbox clutter
• They weave in a story
• They entertain your audience

Adding emojis helps you add more weightage to your text-only subject line and ensure a high click-through rate.

Here’s a quick comparison of subject lines with and without emojis.

Examples:

1. Tick tock...the sale ends at IST 2 pm

VS

⏰ Tick tock...the sale ends at IST 2 pm

2. Just swish and flick. Magical offers are live now.

VS

🧙 Just swish and flick. Magical offers are live now.

3. Save $100 on your next purchase. Grab your coupon now!

Save $100 on your next purchase. Grab your coupon now! 🤑

Remember to not overdo them and keep them relevant to the purpose of your email.

4. Get Hip With Gifs

Gifs are a great way to get your point across to your audience with minimal effort.

The features of your products and the tips on how to navigate through them are understandable and more compelling with gifs rather than using words to explain them.

Gifs are a powerful visual medium that can get the point across within seconds.

Gifs also have an element of entertainment attached to them.

Think about this for a moment.

Instead of building a lot of sentences that try to convey to the reader how an annoying boss can ruin the workday, a meme of Michael Scott.

This sums things up better than words can! Doesn’t it?

But, here’s what you need to know:

• Don’t explain your gifs - It defeats the purpose
• Keep it relatable and simple
• Use words wherever necessary and avoid gifs
• Don’t overdo it
• Don’t be disrespectful
• Pick popular fictional characters that everyone knows and relates to
• Know the geography that you target - don’t use Michael Scott’s gif to an audience who belong to India

5. Be Insanely Relatable With Memes

Memes are the trend, the buzz, and what people relate the most to.

The Internet is ruled by memes and everyone knows this. Memes are not just a content type that belongs to social media. They’re used by marketers across all the channels and content formats.

Be it blogs, community forums, slides, and of course emails memes are the way to land straight to your audiences’ hearts.

Memes are more powerful than a thick paragraph of words.

Think about it - What’s more engaging, entertaining, and instantly digestible?

This sentence or the meme that follows?

“Clean up your email lists for the holidays and keep your database fresh and updated”.

Best Practices For Using Memes In Your Emails

• Don’t overdo it
• Make sure that you understand your audience
• Don’t test the intelligence of your audience with a complicated meme
• Keep it light, relatable, and simple. Don’t overcomplicate it
• Don’t offend anyone
• Keep in mind the native audience

Wrapping Up

Email marketing need not be a serious and monotonous task!

When spruced up, it can be entertaining, fun, and engaging!

I hope these tips come in handy the next time you plan your email campaign.

If you want to add anything else, share your ideas in the comments and I’d love to chat!