MARKETING
20 Great Examples of PowerPoint Presentation Design [+ Templates]
When it comes to PowerPoint presentation design, there’s no shortage of avenues you can take.
While all that choice — colors, formats, visuals, fonts — can feel liberating, it’s important that you’re careful in your selection as not all design combinations add up to success. We’re not saying there’s one right way to design your next PowerPoint presentation, but we are saying there are some designs that make more sense than others.
In this blog post, you’ll learn how to create an awesome PowerPoint deck and then see real presentations that nail it in exactly their own way.
What makes a good PowerPoint presentation?
A great PowerPoint presentation gets the point across succinctly while using a design that builds upon the point, and doesn’t detract from it. The following aspects make for a great PowerPoint presentation:
1. Minimal Animations and Transitions
Believe it or not, animations and transitions can take away from your PowerPoint presentation. Why? Well, they distract from the design you worked so hard on — and from your content, too.
A good PowerPoint presentation keeps the focus on your argument by keeping animations and transitions to a minimum. That said, you don’t have to eliminate them all. You can use them tastefully and sparingly to emphasize a point or bring attention to a certain part of an image.
2. Cohesive Color Palette
It’s worth reviewing color theory when creating your next PowerPoint presentation. A cohesive color palette uses complementary and analogous colors to draw the audience’s attention, emphasize certain aspects, and deemphasize bits of information that the audience might not need at a certain point in time.
3. Contextualized Visuals
An image does speak more than words. And it’s been proven that the human brain is wired to process visuals much faster than words. Take advantage of that by including graphs, photos, and illustrations that can help you build upon your point while keeping your audience’s interest.
Make sure you contextualize those visuals by explaining verbally why that image is there. Otherwise, it’ll be distracting to the audience and may potentially cause more questions than answers.
PowerPoint Design Ideas
It’s impossible for us to tell you which design ideas you should go after in your next PowerPoint, because, well, we don’t know what the goal of your presentation is. Luckily, new versions of PowerPoint actually suggest ideas for you based on the content you’re presenting. This can help you keep up with the latest trends in presentation design.
In PowerPoint 2016 and later, PowerPoint is filled with interesting boilerplate designs you can start with. To find these suggestions, open PowerPoint and click the “Design” tab in your top navigation bar. Then, on the far right side, you’ll see the following options:
Click the “Design Ideas” option under this Design tab, as shown in the screenshot above. This icon will reveal a vertical list of interesting slide layouts based on what your slides already have on them.
Don’t have any content on your slides yet? You can easily shuffle this vertical list of slide design ideas by clicking various themes inside the color carousel to the far left of the Design Ideas icon, as shown below:
As you browse and select from the themes shown above, the Design Ideas pane to the right will interpret them and come up with layouts. Below, we’ve included some of our favorite ones.
In case you’re curious, we’ve used Avenir as the font in the following PowerPoint design ideas.
Atlas (Theme)
Covering a more creative subject for a younger or more energetic audience? On behalf of PowerPoint, might we suggest the cover slide design above? Its vibrant red background and fun lines will appeal to your audience.
Madison (Theme)
This design doesn’t have the intensity of the first slide on this list, but it maintains a sense of informality that all PowerPoint presentations benefit from.
Parcel (Theme)
The color-blocked look in the design above sets a fun but relaxing tone for the audience.
Crop (Theme)
This PowerPoint design idea uses graphic elements such as lines and bars to give structure, contrast, and modern flair to your slides.
Badge (Theme)
We’re particularly fond of this PowerPoint design style. By using lines and contrasting elements — like a burst, as shown above — you add depth to your slides. This can help your content capture and hold your audience’s attention more easily.
If you’re not fond of the built-in PowerPoint design themes, you can always download a free PowerPoint template and input your content onto pre-made slide styles.
Let’s take a look at the best ones you can download below.
Creative PowerPoint (Template)
This presentation template uses bright colors and plenty of white space to convey a modern but fun design. Organic shapes and geometric lines and patterns provide an extra visual element to the slides, achieving depth and personality. Get it here.
Download These Templates for Free
Professional Style PowerPoint (Template)
These PowerPoint slides use more neutral colors and fonts to create a calm and elegant vibe. It also pushes the presentation creator to use quality images to convey their points. Get it here.
Download These Templates for Free
Data PowerPoint (Template)
This template uses a rounded font to draw sharp contrast with the lines and graphs that will populate the presentation. If you want to offer engaging visuals with number-crunching content, the slide design ideas in this template are a great choice. Get it here.
Download These Templates for Free
Simple PowerPoint (Template)
By pairing vibrant colors with pale ones, this PowerPoint gives an understated feel, which can draw attention to the content while still being visually engaging. Get it here.
Download These Templates for Free
Instead of a presentation, you can also create an infographic in PowerPoint to effectively capture your audience’s attention.
Good Examples of PowerPoint Presentation Design
To see some examples of the best PowerPoint presentation designs, check out the following decks.
1. “The Search for Meaning in B2B Marketing,” Velocity Partners
We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: We love this presentation from Velocity Partner’s Co-Founder Doug Kessler. Not only is the content remarkable, but the design is also quite clever. While each slide employs the same background visual, the copy in the notebook unfolds brilliantly through a series of colorful doodles and bold text. This gives the presentation a personal feel, which aligns with the self-reflective nature of the concept.
2. “You Don’t Suck at PowerPoint,” Jesse Desjardins
If the contrast used throughout this PowerPoint presentation design were a human, we’d marry it. This skillful presentation from Jesse Desjardins employs the perfect color palette: balancing black and white photos with pops of fluorescent pink, yellow, and blue. The cheeky vintage photos work to reinforce the copy on each slide, making the presentation both interesting and visually appealing.
3. “Accelerating Innovation in Energy,” Accenture
Balancing visual backgrounds with text isn’t easy. More often than not, the text is formatted in a way that winds up getting lost in the image. This presentation from Accenture combated this issue by combining shapes and graphics to create contrast between the text and the background. Well done.
4. “Visual Design with Data,” Seth Familian
When you’re tasked with presenting a lot of information in a little bit of time, things can get sort of messy. To simplify this type of presentation, it’s a good idea to use a visual agenda like the one shown above. This index clearly signifies the start and finish of each section to make it easier for the viewer to follow along and keep track of the information. The presenter takes it further by including an additional agenda for each exercise, so that the audience knows what they’re supposed to do.
5. “How to Craft Your Company’s Storytelling Voice,” MarketingProfs
Do you love these hand-drawn illustrations or do you love these hand-drawn illustrations? I mean, c’mon, this is amazing. Certainly, it would have been easier to generate these designs online, but this approach highlights MarketingProf’s commitment to investing the time and thought it takes to create an out-of-the-box piece of content. And as a result, this presentation stands out in the best way possible.
6. “Blitzscaling: Book Trailer,” Reid Hoffman
If you’re going to go the minimalistic route, take note of this PowerPoint presentation example from Reid Hoffman. This clean design adheres to a simple, consistent color scheme with clean graphics peppered throughout to make the slides more visually interesting. Overall there are no frills or unnecessary additions, which allows the informative content to take priority.
7. “Healthcare Napkins,” Dan Roam
This presentation dates back to 2009, but the design is still as good as ever. The colorful, quirky doodles help tell the story while also serving as an interesting way to illustrate data (see slides 20 and 21). For visual learners, this approach is much more inviting than a series of slides riddled with text-heavy bullet points.
8. “One Can Be Diverse: An Essay on Diversity,” With Company
This presentation employs both powerful images and modern typography to illustrate the point. While many of the slides contain long quotes, they are broken up in a way that makes them easily digestible. Not to mention all of the text is crisp, clean, and concise.
9. “10 Things your Audience Hates About your Presentation,” Stinson
his simplistic presentation example employs several different colors and font weights, but instead of coming off as disconnected, the varied colors work with one another to create contrast and call out specific concepts. Also, the big, bold numbers help set the reader’s expectations, as they clearly signify how far along the viewer is in the list of tips.
10. “Pixar’s 22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling,” Gavin McMahon
This presentation by Gavin McMahon features color in all the right places. While each of the background images boasts a bright, spotlight-like design, all the characters are intentionally blacked out. This helps keep the focus on the tips, while still incorporating visuals. Not to mention, it’s still easy for the viewer to identify each character without the details. (I found you on slide eight, Nemo.)
11. “Facebook Engagement and Activity Report,” We Are Social
Here’s another great example of data visualization in the wild. Rather than displaying numbers and statistics straight up, this presentation calls upon interesting, colorful graphs, and charts to present the information in a way that just makes sense.
12. “The GaryVee Content Model,” Gary Vaynerchuk
This wouldn’t be a true Gary Vaynerchuk presentation if it wasn’t a little loud, am I right? Aside from the fact that we love the eye-catching, bright yellow background, Vaynerchuk does a great job of incorporating screenshots on each slide to create a visual tutorial that coincides with the tips. He also does a great job including a visual table of contents that shows your progress as you go through the presentation (and aligns with the steps of content marketing, too).
13. “20 Tweetable Quotes to Inspire Marketing & Design Creative Genius,” IMPACT Branding & Design
We’ve all seen our fair share of quote-chronicling presentations but that isn’t to say they were all done well. Often times the background images are poor quality, the text is too small, or there isn’t enough contrast. Well, this professional PowerPoint presentation from IMPACT Branding & Design suffers from none of said challenges. The colorful filters over each background image create just enough contrast for the quotes to stand out.
14. “The Great State of Design,” Stacy Kvernmo
This presentation offers up a lot of information in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming. The contrasting colors create visual interest and “pop,” and the comic images (slides 6 through 12) are used to make the information seem less buttoned-up. Once the presentation gets to the CSS section, it takes users slowly through the information so that they’re not overwhelmed.
15. “Clickbait: A Guide To Writing Un-Ignorable Headlines,” Ethos3
Not going to lie, it was the title that convinced me to click through to this presentation but the awesome design kept me there once I arrived. This simple design adheres to a consistent color pattern and leverages bullet points and varied fonts to break up the text nicely.
16. “Digital Transformation in 50 Soundbites,” Julie Dodd
This design highlights a great alternative to the “text-over-image” display we’ve grown used to seeing. By leveraging a split-screen approach to each presentation slide, Julie Dodd was able to serve up a clean, legible quote without sacrificing the power of a strong visual.
17. “Fix Your Really Bad PowerPoint,” Slide Comet
When you’re creating a PowerPoint about how everyone’s PowerPoints stink, yours had better be terrific. The one above, based on the ebook by Seth Godin, keeps it simple without boring its audience. Its clever combinations of fonts, together with consistent color across each slide, ensure you’re neither overwhelmed nor unengaged.
18. “How Google Works,” Eric Schmidt
Simple, clever doodles tell the story of Google in a fun and creative way. This presentation reads almost like a storybook, making it easy to move from one slide to the next. This uncluttered approach provides viewers with an easy-to-understand explanation of a complicated topic.
19. “What Really Differentiates the Best Content Marketers From The Rest,” Ross Simmonds
Let’s be honest: These graphics are hard not to love. Rather than employing the same old stock photos we’ve seen time and time again, this unique design serves as a refreshing way to present information that’s both valuable and fun. We especially appreciate the author’s cartoonified self-portrait that closes out the presentation. Well played, Ross Simmonds.
20. “Be A Great Product Leader,” Adam Nash
This presentation by Adam Nash immediately draws attention by putting the company’s logo first — a great move if your company is well known. He uses popular images, such as ones of Megatron and Pinocchio, to drive his points home. In the same way, you can take advantage of popular images and media to keep the audience’s attention and deepen your arguments.
PowerPoint Presentation Examples for the Best Slide Presentation
Mastering a PowerPoint presentation begins with the design itself. Use the ideas above to create a presentation that engages your audience, builds upon your point, and helps you generate leads for your brand.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
MARKETING
Streamlining Processes for Increased Efficiency and Results
How can businesses succeed nowadays when technology rules? With competition getting tougher and customers changing their preferences often, it’s a challenge. But using marketing automation can help make things easier and get better results. And in the future, it’s going to be even more important for all kinds of businesses.
So, let’s discuss how businesses can leverage marketing automation to stay ahead and thrive.
Benefits of automation marketing automation to boost your efforts
First, let’s explore the benefits of marketing automation to supercharge your efforts:
Marketing automation simplifies repetitive tasks, saving time and effort.
With automated workflows, processes become more efficient, leading to better productivity. For instance, automation not only streamlines tasks like email campaigns but also optimizes website speed, ensuring a seamless user experience. A faster website not only enhances customer satisfaction but also positively impacts search engine rankings, driving more organic traffic and ultimately boosting conversions.
Automation allows for precise targeting, reaching the right audience with personalized messages.
With automated workflows, processes become more efficient, leading to better productivity. A great example of automated workflow is Pipedrive & WhatsApp Integration in which an automated welcome message pops up on their WhatsApp
within seconds once a potential customer expresses interest in your business.
Increases ROI
By optimizing campaigns and reducing manual labor, automation can significantly improve return on investment.
Leveraging automation enables businesses to scale their marketing efforts effectively, driving growth and success. Additionally, incorporating lead scoring into automated marketing processes can streamline the identification of high-potential prospects, further optimizing resource allocation and maximizing conversion rates.
Harnessing the power of marketing automation can revolutionize your marketing strategy, leading to increased efficiency, higher returns, and sustainable growth in today’s competitive market. So, why wait? Start automating your marketing efforts today and propel your business to new heights, moreover if you have just learned ways on how to create an online business
How marketing automation can simplify operations and increase efficiency
Understanding the Change
Marketing automation has evolved significantly over time, from basic email marketing campaigns to sophisticated platforms that can manage entire marketing strategies. This progress has been fueled by advances in technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, making automation smarter and more adaptable.
One of the main reasons for this shift is the vast amount of data available to marketers today. From understanding customer demographics to analyzing behavior, the sheer volume of data is staggering. Marketing automation platforms use this data to create highly personalized and targeted campaigns, allowing businesses to connect with their audience on a deeper level.
The Emergence of AI-Powered Automation
In the future, AI-powered automation will play an even bigger role in marketing strategies. AI algorithms can analyze huge amounts of data in real-time, helping marketers identify trends, predict consumer behavior, and optimize campaigns as they go. This agility and responsiveness are crucial in today’s fast-moving digital world, where opportunities come and go in the blink of an eye. For example, we’re witnessing the rise of AI-based tools from AI website builders, to AI logo generators and even more, showing that we’re competing with time and efficiency.
Combining AI-powered automation with WordPress management services streamlines marketing efforts, enabling quick adaptation to changing trends and efficient management of online presence.
Moreover, AI can take care of routine tasks like content creation, scheduling, and testing, giving marketers more time to focus on strategic activities. By automating these repetitive tasks, businesses can work more efficiently, leading to better outcomes. AI can create social media ads tailored to specific demographics and preferences, ensuring that the content resonates with the target audience. With the help of an AI ad maker tool, businesses can efficiently produce high-quality advertisements that drive engagement and conversions across various social media platforms.
Personalization on a Large Scale
Personalization has always been important in marketing, and automation is making it possible on a larger scale. By using AI and machine learning, marketers can create tailored experiences for each customer based on their preferences, behaviors, and past interactions with the brand.
This level of personalization not only boosts customer satisfaction but also increases engagement and loyalty. When consumers feel understood and valued, they are more likely to become loyal customers and brand advocates. As automation technology continues to evolve, we can expect personalization to become even more advanced, enabling businesses to forge deeper connections with their audience. As your company has tiny homes for sale California, personalized experiences will ensure each customer finds their perfect fit, fostering lasting connections.
Integration Across Channels
Another trend shaping the future of marketing automation is the integration of multiple channels into a cohesive strategy. Today’s consumers interact with brands across various touchpoints, from social media and email to websites and mobile apps. Marketing automation platforms that can seamlessly integrate these channels and deliver consistent messaging will have a competitive edge. When creating a comparison website it’s important to ensure that the platform effectively aggregates data from diverse sources and presents it in a user-friendly manner, empowering consumers to make informed decisions.
Omni-channel integration not only betters the customer experience but also provides marketers with a comprehensive view of the customer journey. By tracking interactions across channels, businesses can gain valuable insights into how consumers engage with their brand, allowing them to refine their marketing strategies for maximum impact. Lastly, integrating SEO services into omni-channel strategies boosts visibility and helps businesses better understand and engage with their customers across different platforms.
The Human Element
While automation offers many benefits, it’s crucial not to overlook the human aspect of marketing. Despite advances in AI and machine learning, there are still elements of marketing that require human creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking.
Successful marketing automation strikes a balance between technology and human expertise. By using automation to handle routine tasks and data analysis, marketers can focus on what they do best – storytelling, building relationships, and driving innovation.
Conclusion
The future of marketing automation looks promising, offering improved efficiency and results for businesses of all sizes.
As AI continues to advance and consumer expectations change, automation will play an increasingly vital role in keeping businesses competitive.
By embracing automation technologies, marketers can simplify processes, deliver more personalized experiences, and ultimately, achieve their business goals more effectively than ever before.
MARKETING
Will Google Buy HubSpot? | Content Marketing Institute
Google + HubSpot. Is it a thing?
This week, a flurry of news came down about Google’s consideration of purchasing HubSpot.
The prospect dismayed some. It delighted others.
But is it likely? Is it even possible? What would it mean for marketers? What does the consideration even mean for marketers?
Well, we asked CMI’s chief strategy advisor, Robert Rose, for his take. Watch this video or read on:
Why Alphabet may want HubSpot
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, apparently is contemplating the acquisition of inbound marketing giant HubSpot.
The potential price could be in the range of $30 billion to $40 billion. That would make Alphabet’s largest acquisition by far. The current deal holding that title happened in 2011 when it acquired Motorola Mobility for more than $12 billion. It later sold it to Lenovo for less than $3 billion.
If the HubSpot deal happens, it would not be in character with what the classic evil villain has been doing for the past 20 years.
At first glance, you might think the deal would make no sense. Why would Google want to spend three times as much as it’s ever spent to get into the inbound marketing — the CRM and marketing automation business?
At a second glance, it makes a ton of sense.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I and others at CMI spend a lot of time discussing privacy, owned media, and the deprecation of the third-party cookie. I just talked about it two weeks ago. It’s really happening.
All that oxygen being sucked out of the ad tech space presents a compelling case that Alphabet should diversify from third-party data and classic surveillance-based marketing.
Yes, this potential acquisition is about data. HubSpot would give Alphabet the keys to the kingdom of 205,000 business customers — and their customers’ data that almost certainly numbers in the tens of millions. Alphabet would also gain access to the content, marketing, and sales information those customers consumed.
Conversely, the deal would provide an immediate tip of the spear for HubSpot clients to create more targeted programs in the Alphabet ecosystem and upload their data to drive even more personalized experiences on their own properties and connect them to the Google Workspace infrastructure.
When you add in the idea of Gemini, you can start to see how Google might monetize its generative AI tool beyond figuring out how to use it on ads on search results pages.
What acquisition could mean for HubSpot customers
I may be stretching here but imagine this world. As a Hubspoogle customer, you can access an interface that prioritizes your owned media data (e.g., your website, your e-commerce catalog, blog) when Google’s Gemini answers a question).
Recent reports also say Google may put up a paywall around the new premium features of its artificial intelligence-powered Search Generative Experience. Imagine this as the new gating for marketing. In other words, users can subscribe to Google’s AI for free, but Hubspoogle customers can access that data and use it to create targeted offers.
The acquisition of HubSpot would immediately make Google Workspace a more robust competitor to Microsoft 365 Office for small- and medium-sized businesses as they would receive the ADDED capability of inbound marketing.
But in the world of rented land where Google is the landlord, the government will take notice of the acquisition. But — and it’s a big but, I cannot lie (yes, I just did that). The big but is whether this acquisition dance can happen without going afoul of regulatory issues.
Some analysts say it should be no problem. Others say, “Yeah, it wouldn’t go.” Either way, would anybody touch it in an election year? That’s a whole other story.
What marketers should realize
So, what’s my takeaway?
It’s a remote chance that Google will jump on this hard, but stranger things have happened. It would be an exciting disruption in the market.
The sure bet is this. The acquisition conversation — as if you needed more data points — says getting good at owned media to attract and build audiences and using that first-party data to provide better communication and collaboration with your customers are a must.
It’s just a matter of time until Google makes a move. They might just be testing the waters now, but they will move here. But no matter what they do, if you have your customer data house in order, you’ll be primed for success.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
MARKETING
5 Psychological Tactics to Write Better Emails
Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better.
I’ve tested 100s of psychological tactics on my email subscribers. In this blog, I reveal the five tactics that actually work.
You’ll learn about the email tactic that got one marketer a job at the White House.
You’ll learn how I doubled my 5 star reviews with one email, and why one strange email from Barack Obama broke all records for donations.
5 Psychological Tactics to Write Better Emails
Imagine writing an email that’s so effective it lands you a job at the White House.
Well, that’s what happened to Maya Shankar, a PhD cognitive neuroscientist. In 2014, the Department of Veterans Affairs asked her to help increase signups in their veteran benefit scheme.
Maya had a plan. She was well aware of a cognitive bias that affects us all—the endowment effect. This bias suggests that people value items higher if they own them. So, she changed the subject line in the Veterans’ enrollment email.
Previously it read:
- Veterans, you’re eligible for the benefit program. Sign up today.
She tweaked one word, changing it to:
- Veterans, you’ve earned the benefits program. Sign up today.
This tiny tweak had a big impact. The amount of veterans enrolling in the program went up by 9%. And Maya landed a job working at the White House
Inspired by these psychological tweaks to emails, I started to run my own tests.
Alongside my podcast Nudge, I’ve run 100s of email tests on my 1,000s of newsletter subscribers.
Here are the five best tactics I’ve uncovered.
1. Show readers what they’re missing.
Nobel prize winning behavioral scientists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky uncovered a principle called loss aversion.
Loss aversion means that losses feel more painful than equivalent gains. In real-world terms, losing $10 feels worse than how gaining $10 feels good. And I wondered if this simple nudge could help increase the number of my podcast listeners.
For my test, I tweaked the subject line of the email announcing an episode. The control read:
“Listen to this one”
In the loss aversion variant it read:
“Don’t miss this one”
It is very subtle loss aversion. Rather than asking someone to listen, I’m saying they shouldn’t miss out. And it worked. It increased the open rate by 13.3% and the click rate by 12.5%. Plus, it was a small change that cost me nothing at all.
2. People follow the crowd.
In general, humans like to follow the masses. When picking a dish, we’ll often opt for the most popular. When choosing a movie to watch, we tend to pick the box office hit. It’s a well-known psychological bias called social proof.
I’ve always wondered if it works for emails. So, I set up an A/B experiment with two subject lines. Both promoted my show, but one contained social proof.
The control read: New Nudge: Why Brands Should Flaunt Their Flaws
The social proof variant read: New Nudge: Why Brands Should Flaunt Their Flaws (100,000 Downloads)
I hoped that by highlighting the episode’s high number of downloads, I’d encourage more people to listen. Fortunately, it worked.
The open rate went from 22% to 28% for the social proof version, and the click rate, (the number of people actually listening to the episode), doubled.
3. Praise loyal subscribers.
The consistency principle suggests that people are likely to stick to behaviours they’ve previously taken. A retired taxi driver won’t swap his car for a bike. A hairdresser won’t change to a cheap shampoo. We like to stay consistent with our past behaviors.
I decided to test this in an email.
For my test, I attempted to encourage my subscribers to leave a review for my podcast. I sent emails to 400 subscribers who had been following the show for a year.
The control read: “Could you leave a review for Nudge?”
The consistency variant read: “You’ve been following Nudge for 12 months, could you leave a review?”
My hypothesis was simple. If I remind people that they’ve consistently supported the show they’ll be more likely to leave a review.
It worked.
The open rate on the consistency version of the email was 7% higher.
But more importantly, the click rate, (the number of people who actually left a review), was almost 2x higher for the consistency version. Merely telling people they’d been a fan for a while doubled my reviews.
4. Showcase scarcity.
We prefer scarce resources. Taylor Swift gigs sell out in seconds not just because she’s popular, but because her tickets are hard to come by.
Swifties aren’t the first to experience this. Back in 1975, three researchers proved how powerful scarcity is. For the study, the researchers occupied a cafe. On alternating weeks they’d make one small change in the cafe.
On some weeks they’d ensure the cookie jar was full.
On other weeks they’d ensure the cookie jar only contained two cookies (never more or less).
In other words, sometimes the cookies looked abundantly available. Sometimes they looked like they were almost out.
This changed behaviour. Customers who saw the two cookie jar bought 43% more cookies than those who saw the full jar.
It sounds too good to be true, so I tested it for myself.
I sent an email to 260 subscribers offering free access to my Science of Marketing course for one day only.
In the control, the subject line read: “Free access to the Science of Marketing course”
For the scarcity variant it read: “Only Today: Get free access to the Science of Marketing Course | Only one enrol per person.”
130 people received the first email, 130 received the second. And the result was almost as good as the cookie finding. The scarcity version had a 15.1% higher open rate.
5. Spark curiosity.
All of the email tips I’ve shared have only been tested on my relatively small audience. So, I thought I’d end with a tip that was tested on the masses.
Back in 2012, Barack Obama and his campaign team sent hundreds of emails to raise funds for his campaign.
Of the $690 million he raised, most came from direct email appeals. But there was one email, according to ABC news, that was far more effective than the rest. And it was an odd one.
The email that drew in the most cash, had a strange subject line. It simply said “Hey.”
The actual email asked the reader to donate, sharing all the expected reasons, but the subject line was different.
It sparked curiosity, it got people wondering, is Obama saying Hey just to me?
Readers were curious and couldn’t help but open the email. According to ABC it was “the most effective pitch of all.”
Because more people opened, it raised more money than any other email. The bias Obama used here is the curiosity gap. We’re more likely to act on something when our curiosity is piqued.
Loss aversion, social proof, consistency, scarcity and curiosity—all these nudges have helped me improve my emails. And I reckon they’ll work for you.
It’s not guaranteed of course. Many might fail. But running some simple a/b tests for your emails is cost free, so why not try it out?
This blog is part of Phill Agnew’s Marketing Cheat Sheet series where he reveals the scientifically proven tips to help you improve your marketing. To learn more, listen to his podcast Nudge, a proud member of the Hubspot Podcast Network.
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
Turkish startup ikas attracts $20M for its e-commerce platform designed for small businesses
-
PPC7 days ago
31 Ready-to-Go Mother’s Day Messages for Social Media, Email, & More
-
PPC7 days ago
A History of Google AdWords and Google Ads: Revolutionizing Digital Advertising & Marketing Since 2000
-
MARKETING5 days ago
Roundel Media Studio: What to Expect From Target’s New Self-Service Platform
-
SEO5 days ago
Google Limits News Links In California Over Proposed ‘Link Tax’ Law
-
MARKETING6 days ago
Unlocking the Power of AI Transcription for Enhanced Content Marketing Strategies
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 12, 2024
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google Search Results Can Be Harmful & Dangerous In Some Cases
You must be logged in to post a comment Login