In a previous email case study, we took a look at the importance of educating customers about your products. However, if your product is new and you’re trying to gain trust in the market, preemptively answering commonly asked questions can help grow sales. You can add such emails to the pre-purchase portion of your lifecycle emails.
Let’s take a look at such an email from Turo and see what works, what can be made better, and what got us to click.
Answers to common questions email – Top
1. Layout
The email layout is well-crafted – big image up top with the topic, clear call-to-action buttons, and answers broken up by sections with large headings. The image is the first thing you see when you open the email and conveys that the insurance policy, in this case, will be summarized in the email. The call-to-action buttons give an easy way to read more about the topic, and the copy is easy to scan and read with a good amount of whitespace.
You can add customized images to different emails to show that each email is treated as a unique communication with the customer.
Answers to common questions – Bottom
2. Link to read further
This is an important one even though I mentioned it in the above point. The button appears at the beginning and at the bottom of the email to make it convenient for the audience to go to the logical next step – which in this case is to read more about insurance.
By adding the buttons twice in your email, especially if it’s long, you emphasize where you want readers to go next. This can be the FAQ section, a product page, a blog post, etc. based on what you think is the next step in the funnel.
1. Personalization
The personalization in the email can be made better by adding the customer name at the top and adding a signature of a person at the end of the email. This humanizes the brand and makes the email more conversational and friendly.
2. What customers can expect from social links
One thing missing from the email that exists on the Turo site is the reason why customers should go to the social links. The website clearly states that the links are to talk to Turo.
Instead of simply adding social links to your emails, you can guide the customers better by mentioning what they can expect to find or do on your social profiles. This can be to see what others are saying, see your posts about product instructions, to contact you, etc.
The two major things that captured my attention were the large image at the top with the topic of the email, and the large headings for the questions. By mentioning that the topic of insurance is “in a nutshell” right at the top, I expect to get the gist of it through the email without going anywhere else. This makes it more likely for the audience to scroll down and read the email.
The second big part of grabbing attention is the large font used for the questions. It makes the questions stand out, and the email easy to scan.
The email from Turo was sent to me before I completed a transaction on their marketplace. Since it was a new app that I had just installed, I had not had time to go through all the details before closing it. This email answers a question that is commonly asked and one that I had thought about, but had deferred getting an answer to at a later time.
By sending an email with a brief summary of questions that your customers frequently ask, you make it convenient for the customer to receive the answer, show that they’re not alone in wondering about the question, and build trust by being upfront about the answer. This also shows that you’re willing to engage with customers and welcome their questions.
If you already have a frequently asked section on your site, you can link to it so that customers can see answers to other questions.
What types of emails do you send customers before they purchase your products? Please tell us in the comments below.
