Email & SMS

The Art of Storytelling with Email

By Tinuiti Team

It’s no longer enough to simply sell a quality product at a fair price. Shoppers want to connect on a deeper level with the brands they do business with and the story behind the products they choose to purchase, making storytelling an essential component of your marketing strategy.

With its support for longer-form content, email marketing represents the best opportunity to tell your brand story and communicate what makes your product unique. 

“Through the use of effective email copywriting, brands can craft stories that appeal to both the consumer’s needs and their emotions, creating a compelling reason to buy while simultaneously building trust with your brand.” – Lindsey Newman Segura, Senior Manager, Creative Services at Tinuiti

Tell Stories with Automated Email Campaigns

With the creation of behavioral triggers, you can communicate with your subscribers at key points in their customer journey, allowing your brand story to unfold over time. 

A New Subscriber Welcome Series is a great place to start, by introducing your product line and the key differentiators that set you apart from your competitors. 

 

Create a Post-Purchase Series to show gratitude to new customers and welcome them to your crew. Make their first purchase experience extra special with the following messages from you:

 

“Personalizing email messages throughout the customer journey is a great way to create a more intimate connection between brand and audience. Be it for their birthday, a past purchase, or just asking for their feedback, connecting with your audience directly forges a deeper, more personal relationship that helps consumers feel heard and appreciated, setting them down the pathway to becoming advocates, or even evangelists, for your brand,” Segura says. 

On every email list is a group of customers who purchased once but for one reason or another haven’t shopped with you recently. Use a Customer Winback Series to tell them what they have been missing.

 

Tell Stories with General Update Emails

Do you have plans to launch a new product or unveil an exciting new feature? If so, use a series of product launch emails to get your subscribers excited and motivate them to convert. By building a launch campaign out into multiple touches, content becomes easier to digest and you can build on the narrative over time. 

In the example below, BottleKeeper sent a series of emails to communicate the launch of their new spring collection, highlighting new colors and product features at a high level before diving deeper into color stories.

Throughout the series, the BottleKeeper brand maintained it’s fun, irreverent voice, putting their unique personality on display. With the flood of promotional messages inundating customers on a daily basis, BottleKeeper’s distinct voice has helped it break through the clutter and maintain high engagement within their email program. 

In the examples below, Campaign promotes first the durability of their product – highlighting the quality and eco-conscious design – then sharing how to refresh the product over time as your needs or style preferences change.

Campaign’s use of a customer testimonial helps readers connect with the message on a more human level, making it easier for readers to picture themselves with the product. 

To get started with storytelling, think about who your ideal customer is and what motivates them. Identify facets of your origin story or product benefits that can be used to tie a connective thread between your customers’ wants and needs back to your brand.

Where possible, leverage the talents of an experienced copywriter to weave your core messages into compelling copy that will fuel a sense of connection with your brand, and ultimately drive them to convert.

 

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