An email multipart series is a fantastic marketing strategy. However, one of the crucial considerations when developing a multipart series is anticipation. Anticipation increases when done properly subscribers not only waiting for the next email, but it also raises open rates and engagement. This article explores how anticipation influences subscriber engagement and outlines how to best use it via multipart emails.
What is Anticipation in Email Marketing?
Email marketing anticipation is the expectation and excitement surrounding incoming emails. If subscribers anticipate an upcoming message, eager to learn more because the last email contained some valuable, educational, or entertaining information, they’ll be more inclined to engage with future correspondence. Email Warm-Up plays a foundational role in ensuring those emails land in the inbox where they can build that anticipation, rather than being lost in spam folders. Anticipation relies on basic psychology. People like resolution. Stories that leave people hanging create interest and drive them to seek conclusions and resolutions. Playing off this expectation through clever storytelling across a series of emails can exponentially grow engagement and the effectiveness of subsequent campaigns.
The Psychology of Anticipation
Anticipation is rooted in a psychological understanding called the “open loop.” Throughout life, people endure countless stories, and sometimes there are holes left in their experiences. The desire for closure allows people to seek open loops in their lives to improve understanding. Thus, email marketers exploit this psychological phenomenon but for good! They create open loops on purpose through teasers, partial messages, and cliffhangers, intentionally so that people need to reach out afterward or follow up via the next email for resolution.
Using Story Arcs to Create Anticipation
One of the best ways to create anticipation is through multi-segmented stories. All stories have an arc, the beginning is the exposition, the middle includes stories and developments, and the end is the conclusion. This emotional engagement between writer and reader/emailer and subscriber creates a desire to learn how one story ends as they have to consume each segment to get the wholeness of it. Each email becomes like a chapter from a book, with just enough information to keep people engaged and ready for what’s to come.
How Cliffhangers Can Be Used
Cliffhangers can be effective moments of anticipation if used sparingly over an email series. For example, ending an email on a literal cliffhanger makes the subscriber want to read more or at the very least, puts them in a more inquisitive state to continue receiving emails. The best cliffhangers suggest forthcoming content or information that would be useful, without giving everything away. When these techniques are used sparingly over an email series, it fosters engagement and turns prospects into customers.
Use Timing and Frequency of Emails to Anticipate
Use timing and frequency of emails to anticipate how people may respond. If people see too many emails within a month/quarter, they’ll feel overwhelmed and disengaged. If they don’t see enough, they’ll forget about the brand by the time it gets sent. The perfect balance with some audience feedback and analytics tracking along the way comes close to anticipated engagement with email since everyone is getting what they need, when they need it.
Anticipation Can Be Personalized
Anticipation can be personalized for an email series. If something is relevant to the subscriber, they’re more likely to want to anticipate it. Thus, with data-driven decision-making, brands can choose certain content for certain subscribers based on historical relevance of interest and use, showing this subscriber why they should care about the anticipation of what else is to come. Whether it’s a sneak peek of what’s to come, a recommended section based on past purchases or email interactions, or even a personal narrative that draws them in, the more they feel connected personally, the better.
Enhancing Anticipation by Explicitly Teasing Future Value
One way to enhance anticipation is to explicitly tease future value. When people know they will have access to content in future emails and that content feels relevant and worthwhile they will become even more excited to learn more and continue down the email series path. Teasers, sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes offers, and bonus gifts that are short yet valuable freebies all serve to remind the subscriber that down the road, there will be new info, exclusive offerings, and new learns to be had. By reinforcing the value a few steps down the road over and over again, marketers help get subscribers invested and ensure that people remain engaged for the duration of the effort.
Enhancing Anticipation by Being Intriguing But Not Too Mysterious
There’s a fine line between successfully using anticipation by being intriguing and being too mysterious. While it’s fun to spark excitement about signing up for new content down the road, sometimes people can be overwhelmed if they’re not provided enough information. Transparency is critical even if not giving away too much about what’s to come ensures trust and security. If subscribers feel confident that what they are going to get is worthwhile, anticipated, and worth their time, they will be more likely to remain engaged and invested through the process.
Enhancing Anticipation by Using Design to Promote Multi-Part Email Campaigns
Design works to enhance and build upon anticipation especially in multi-part email campaigns. Branding, visual continuity, and aesthetics allow a series of emails to feel more cohesive which bolsters anticipation. If it looks like an email will be similar to the email before it or if designs give hints at what’s to come thematically or topic-wise down the line, it creates an incentive for subscribers to pay even closer attention. Anticipation can be built through visual elements, adding an experiential layer to email marketing.
Assessing and Adjusting for Success
The best way to ensure your anticipatory email series works is to constantly assess and evaluate. Keeping track of open rates, click rates, and subscriber behaviors over time will help you discover what’s ideal. The more you know your audience, the better you’ll be able to adapt content, timing, tone, and level of personalization. Gradual adjustments over time will suitably ensure you keep up with the anticipation and make changes for more engaged subscribers down the line.
Increasing Anticipation with Engagement Opportunities
When subscribers have the chance to engage with your emails, the anticipation grows even further. Quizzes, surveys, polls, and little tasks give subscribers an opportunity to be part of the process and help them feel like they’re part of a bigger community striving for the same goals. Engagement from subscribers not only fosters anticipation but also ensures that interest will be sustained. The more invested they are, the more they’ll want to see more from you, and the more effort they’ll put in to make it happen.
Increasing Anticipation with Social Proof
One of the best ways to generate buzz about your multipart email series and create a desire for more later on is to utilize social proof within your messaging. This can be testimonials or reviews from those who have received it already, providing social proof that not only is your multipart email series legitimate but that it has value beyond expected. This welcomes new readers even more as they see what others have to say about similar experiences, and if you use social proof throughout the series, it makes them crave more. It also puts them on a fast track to other recommended values because they’ve already seen the value from other people.
Furthermore, using social proof especially in multipart series is crucial to mention because it allows for parts of the series to be discussed later on in the multipart opportunity. By providing snippets, teasers, specific verbiage, or titles that may be included later on, you give others the ability to build their interest. Even if they have not received yet what is coming down the road, they will want to and now have a reason to as you have established the value of each piece and multipart series exclusively through their own findings and the findings of others who want to receive each piece. When people see that others are excited about an upcoming email they have yet to receive, they will be excited about it too. Ultimately, success begets success and social proof like this does not only help justify your content but places people in an emotional and psychological capacity to await more.
Leveraging Exclusive Previews and Early Access
Subscribers are given sneak peeks and exclusivity to early access, which naturally inspires exclusivity and anticipation. Who doesn’t want to be number one? Receiving behind-the-scenes peeks, selected sneak previews, or early notifications of new services/products helps subscribers feel valued and appreciated. They’re ahead of the game with such niche access to your brand. Such feelings foster good connections that only improve a subscriber’s emotional response to and connection with the brand.
Subscribers are likely to connect better with a brand for more extended periods of time when they feel like part of an exclusive club with access to certain things that aren’t yet available to others. Access also serves as a great motivator. When someone receives something before others, they are intrigued enough to want to learn more or investigate. Therefore, consistently providing exclusive content or information gives subscribers a reason to want to remain on the list, as they’ll always want to learn what’s next as soon as they are given access.
Finally, exclusive previews allow subscribers something that they may not receive otherwise through more standard marketing efforts. They love the inside access; they become intrigued by what’s to come, what’s launching, what’s going on, what’s active. Not only does it engage them quickly, but it sets up subscribers for long-term loyalty, appreciation, and trust in how you share your brand with others. Thus, when you inspire anticipation through exclusive previews, those who receive them are more likely to appreciate and ease future communications/offerings for subsequent interactions.
Conclusion: Leveraging Anticipation for Sustained Engagement
Anticipation as a characteristic of series, especially with installments, works wonders for subscribers in interest, engagement, and loyalty because it acknowledges and satiates a human need for closure. When subscribers look forward to the next installment, they become engrossed and engaged readers rather than passive consumers of what they are given. Thus, the psychological triggers of anticipation transitional moments of opens and closes, the emotional catharsis associated with a build and a release through suspense enable marketers to create planned sections with purpose and a focus on engagement for the reader.
Therefore, storytelling is critical; great stories keep subscribers interested independent of need. Well-crafted narratives or cliffhangers, well-placed story sets, developed characters or morals in educated multi-part emails hold subscriber interest. Cliffhangers allow an engaged reader to rely on suspenseful transitions or purposeful gaps that generate curiosity and make them want to know what happens next in the following part.
Yet anticipation doesn’t come just from curiosity; it comes from knowing what’s going on. Thus, transparency is critical to ensure just the right amount of suspense and incremental hints that guide without giving too much away. While it’s appropriate for marketers to keep some of the intrigue and suspense about production unclear to establish anticipation, it’s equally important for them to be transparent on what value will be gained so subscribers know it’s worth the wait and that their engagement will be rewarded not for gimmicky reasons but for value in the end.
Finally, numerical assessments and adjustment options make anticipation available more than once. Open rates, responses from subscribers, click-through rates, and additional feedback allow marketers to determine what’s successful and what’s been met with discontent. Those who quantitatively gauge their series early on will benefit from remediating minor areas of concern early on so that anticipation isn’t merely a flash in the pan but a continuous opportunity for success. If anticipation transcends buzzword hype, it’s a great email marketing tool, for it fosters engagement and loyalty across the board for successful campaigns.