Marketing is the process of raising awareness and persuading others to act. That process can be outbound or inbound, pushy or subtle–and every degree between. Attraction marketing is a collection of marketing methods that favor inbound, subtle pulls over outbound pushes. But what does that look like in practice? What exactly is attraction marketing and how can your brand use its methods to build your customer base and increase revenue? That’s what this article is all about.
I love learning about space and the universe and am a great admirer of Carl Sagan. It’s because of his passion for teaching others about the cosmos and his skills as a marketer.
A marketer?
Yes. His work inspires me to dream of the stars and of attracting more customers to my brand. It’s the epitome of relationship marketing.
I guess I’d better explain what I’m talking about.
Sagan, who died in 1996, was a highly regarded astronomer, astrophysicist, and cosmologist. During the 1950s, he consulted with NASA regarding the development of the US space program. Later he taught at Harvard and Cornell universities. But that’s just part of his story.
Sagan wanted to share his passion for planetary science beyond the closed doors of the space program or in university classrooms.
And he did.
Sagan became famous as “the astronomer of the people.”
How did he do it?
Sagan delivered interesting, engaging, inspiring content about his passion for the universe to others. Sagan and a team of co-creators developed a 13-episode television program called Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
This program, which first aired on PBS, is one of public television’s most-watched series and introduced entire generations to the wonders of the universe. Five-hundred million people in 60 different countries viewed his Cosmos series.
Who wouldn’t want those metrics?
Sagan’s work inspired other scientists to create programming aimed at drawing people to the field of science, too.
Bill Nye, one of Sagan’s former students, and popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson both credit Sagan for inspiring them to create programs to share science with the public.
Informing and inspiring through content that delivers value. That’s attraction marketing.
Now, I can’t guarantee that your content will generate as many views as the Cosmos series. But I can tell you that attraction marketing will help you grow awareness, generate more leads and build loyalty for your brand.
Are you ready to explore the possibilities of attraction marketing? Let’s launch!
What is attraction marketing?
Attraction marketing is a marketing methodology aimed at drawing prospects to your brand by providing them with valuable information, entertainment, or experiences.
When engaging in attraction marketing, the enticements used to draw people to a brand are usually offered for free. In exchange for providing website visitors, email subscribers, and event guests something of value, the company gains their attention, trust, appreciation, and loyalty.
Attraction marketing is also a tool for awareness and education.
Sharing valuable content or experiences that introduce your brand to consumers can position your product or service as a potential solution for a future need.
When paired with lead generation tactics such as email sign-up forms or referral programs, attraction marketing draws prospects into your sales funnel.
Like all forms of marketing, attraction marketing serves the objectives of your business.
This methodology is distinguishable from other marketing strategies by its emphasis on delivering value first and for free.
Attraction marketing is the opposite of push marketing or outbound methods that reach out to prospects and demand their attention.
Cold calling, cold emailing, and other uninvited contacts with consumers are not attraction marketing. Likewise, print, radio, television, and digital ads that are intrusive or interrupt people aren’t attraction marketing.
Where outbound or paid marketing tactics are often intrusive, attraction marketing is unpresuming. People find the results of your attraction marketing efforts when they want and need to because you make these resources freely available.
Fundamental principles of attraction marketing
- Communicating authentically.
- Building relationships with customers.
- Providing value freely.
- Solving audiences’ pain points.
- Using positive persuasive techniques over those that prompt negative emotional responses.
- Prioritizing quality over quantity (with regard to both customer acquisition and content production).
- Attracting audiences instead of pursuing them.
⚠️ Don’t confuse attraction marketing–the methodology–with The Attraction Marketing Formula, a popular course created by Ferny Ceballos and Elite Marketing Pro. The course applies attraction marketing methods to network-based businesses.
How does attraction marketing differ from other marketing strategies? (Or does it?)
Attraction marketing is called by other names and is closely related to several other marketing strategies.
This can lead to a lot of overlap when identifying different methodologies and tactics. Plus, over time, marketers tend to merge their favorite methodologies and keeping track of what each one is called isn’t a top priority.
The purpose of a marketing message, how it is presented to an audience, and how that audience perceives it are all relevant when categorizing a tactic as attraction marketing or something else.
Any tactic or activity that draws people to your brand and helps them choose to purchase from you when they are ready can be categorized as attraction content.
Inbound marketing is the digital division of attraction marketing
Some experts refer to attraction marketing as a form of inbound marketing. Others consider attraction marketing and inbound marketing to be the same. Whether you consider them the same may depend on your brand’s channel mix.
Inbound marketing tactics are usually limited to digital content and events. Attraction marketing may occur in the digital or physical world and increasingly takes place in the hybrid, phygital world.
Both attraction and inbound marketing use content to generate interest in a brand, provide value to consumers, generate positive emotions and build long-term relationships. The methodologies are rooted in interest-driven, people-first strategies.
Like other attraction marketing tactics, inbound marketing combines proactive tactics such as publishing value-adding content that is available when a potential customer needs it.
By allowing consumers to direct their own journey, inbound marketing fulfills peoples’ desire for autonomy and instant gratification.
How content (attraction) marketing attracts people to your brand
Content marketing, attraction marketing, and inbound marketing are sometimes used interchangeably to describe methodologies that use non-sales content to attract people to a brand, build awareness and nurture leads, and sustain brand loyalty.
Providing useful information that answers people’s questions and positive experiences that build connections between consumers and your brand by applying attraction marketing principles strengthens every stage of your marketing funnel, from awareness to advocacy.
The content your brand produces as part of an attraction strategy may be inspiring, funny, informational, entertaining, or all of these.
While content marketing generally refers to value-adding assets, not all content is attraction content, though. That would keep things too simple for us!
As with most marketing methods, content may be designed to push or pull (or do both).
A four-part framework for characterizing marketing content
Content marketers sometimes distinguish the types of content they produce by categorizing them as attraction, authority, affinity, and action content. However, each of these types of content may play a role in an attraction marketing plan.
- Attraction content is a broad category that includes any content that aims to entertain, engage, inform, or otherwise draw people to a brand.
- Authority content is informative or editorial and demonstrates a brand’s expertise. This is your brand’s appeal to logic content and may include how-to guides, reports, and analysis or thought leadership content.
- Affinity content appeals to emotions with content that communicates your brand’s personality, values and how its products enhance customers’ lives.
- Action content asks for the conversion. This content should not be the first thing a website visitor encounters if you use an attraction marketing strategy. But, at some point, even an attraction marketer needs to say what they want with a call to action.
📧 SEO app Ahrefs’ email delivers authority content in the form of expert advice and curated content. The message (pictured below) also directs subscribers to the brand’s blog, where they can continue to learn and explore.
📧 The email below from dried meat brand Stryve does an excellent job of communicating the brand’s personality to subscribers while also offering valuable information and entertainment. This colorful email includes “fascinating facts,” a giveaway contest, and links to feel-good content on websites not owned by the brand.
How are attraction marketing and relationship marketing related?
Relationship marketing encapsulates the “know, like, trust” model of sales and marketing. This model is founded on the principle that people buy from those they know, like, and trust.
Attraction and relationship marketing share many of the same principles, such as freely giving value and focusing on quality over quantity. But relationship marketing isn’t limited to only attraction methods.
A relationship marketing strategy will often include both push and pull strategies, including outbound sales calls, automated or triggered email sequences, and one-to-one interactions.
Traditionally, relationship marketing was the domain of individual salespeople—they got to know their prospects and customers and nurtured long-term relationships (and customer loyalty) with them.
In modern applications, brands can engage in relationship marketing as well. Content marketing, including email marketing to subscribers, is core to modern relationship marketing strategies.
Permission marketing’s place in the attraction marketing bundle
In a 2008 blog, Seth Godin defined permission marketing as “the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.”
This definition limits permission marketing to a few channels such as email and SMS, following an opt-in by the recipient.
Attraction marketing and permission marketing share in common that both emphasize audience choice. Consumers choose what content they will consume, whether they are drawn to it or opt-in to have it delivered to them.
Attraction marketing, however, isn’t limited to opt-in channels. Plus, not all emails and SMS campaigns are built around attraction content.
Like traditional ads, your email messages can aim to attract through value-adding content, enhance your brand image, or spur a conversion action. Many emails do all these things, which makes classifying them a little difficult.
(I’ll explain how you can implement attraction marketing as part of your email marketing program and share some examples of attraction marketing straight from the Ongage Team’s inboxes. later in this article.)
Is attraction marketing the same as organic marketing?
In the world of digital marketing, most of your organic efforts will involve some type of attraction content. This may include value-adding content published on your website or engaging social media posts your brand makes. But not all attraction marketing is purely organic.
A subscription-based email campaign, for example, isn’t typically classified as organic marketing. Similarly, a promoted in-person or virtual event, interactive experience or brand sponsorship may be attraction marketing but not fully organic.
Image marketing versus attraction marketing: What’s the difference?
Broadcast commercials, billboards, and digital ads are intrusive, non-permission-based marketing tactics. But not all paid ads are conversion-focused. Many of these brand communications are informational or entertaining.
Are these non-pushy ads attraction marketing?
Close. But not quite.
Sponsored programming, advertorials, commercials, or other marketing efforts that don’t promote a company’s products or services are called image marketing. An example of image marketing is Honda’s series of commercials that promote its brand slogan, “The power of dreams.”
Like attraction marketing, image marketing campaigns are intended to inform and inspire. Unlike attraction marketing, though, consumers don’t have a choice of when or where they’ll see image marketing ads.
Now that you know what attraction marketing is and is not, let’s look at why you should include attraction marketing in your marketing plans.
What are the benefits of using attraction marketing to promote your brand?
Every marketing method has pros and cons, and attraction marketing is no exception. However, in the modern marketplace, many people begin their buyer’s journey independently.
Prospective customers are becoming aware of wants and needs and investigating solutions through online and offline resources and their personal networks.
Additionally, ad-blocking technology and ad-free video streaming services enable consumers to avoid intrusive marketing tactics.
Companies must go where consumers are already searching for answers and find ways to draw consumers to their brand to be a part of the conversation. Attraction marketing is critical to this process.
A fully developed attraction marketing benefits brands by:
- Drawing people who are already curious about a product or service or in search of a solution to the brand’s owned properties. When attraction content is calibrated to serve the needs and solve the pain points of an organization’s ideal customer, it generates high-quality leads that are more likely to convert.
- Enabling people to become familiar with a brand and control the pace of the relationship. Prospects can learn about a business’s values, products, or services and the experience it delivers without feeling pressured to make a purchase. This self-guided discovery facilitates the development of those all-important know, like, and trust factors.
- Triggering a natural reciprocity response in the people who enjoy the brand’s content or find it useful. One of the principles of persuasion described in Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, the reciprocity principle proposes that when a person (or brand) does a favor for someone, that someone feels obligated to reciprocate—doing something for the giver in return.
❕ Check out How to Become an Email Copywriting Master to learn more about reciprocity and the other principles of persuasion.
- Lowering customer acquisition costs (CAC) and increasing customer lifetime values (LTV) by supporting a full funnel marketing strategy. When your customers become repeat customers and brand advocates, you gain more new customers and revenue at a lower cost.
Full funnel marketing engages with consumers at every stage in their buyers’ journeys and places an emphasis on customer satisfaction, retention, and advocacy. Attraction marketing contributes to this strategy by delivering value-adding content at every stage in the buyer’s journey, creating positive customer experiences and long-term relationships that reduce customer churn rates.
- Improving brands’ name recognition, reputation, and memorability. Producing authentic, engaging, helpful, or inspiring content improves the impression consumers have of a brand and contributes to people’s awareness of the brand.
Content that generates positive emotions like relief at having found the answer to a question, a sense that a company “gets us,” or happiness because a brand’s content made us smile, creates positive experiences that make consumers more likely to remember your brand fondly.
Awesome! Attraction marketing gets people to like you, want to buy from you, and tell their friends to buy from you, too.
Eh, everything has its good and bad, right?
What are the cons of using an attraction marketing strategy?
One reason a brand might not choose to deploy an attraction marketing program is that it requires a content strategy and content.
Companies that employ attraction marketing tactics must invest time and money upfront to use attraction marketing effectively.
The brand must understand its value proposition and its values and those of its ideal customer to create content that will attract them.
Then the organization has to create, publish and distribute a body of content that is great enough to pull people toward it.
You know, like a planet of content—not just a little asteroid.
A related risk is that the company won’t accurately identify its ideal customer’s interests and pain points or that its content will fail to hit the mark. This happens sometimes.
When a brand publishes attraction content, it is released into the world, free for anyone to find and consume. If the content attracts too wide an audience, the business may expend resources serving people who will never become customers because they aren’t qualified leads.
You can mitigate the risks of casting too wide a net by:
- Creating different tiers of content for consumers at different stages in their journeys. Content that engages a wider audience can benefit brands by building awareness and word-of-mouth promotion. However, it’s important to focus the bulk of your efforts on creating content that inspires your best leads to take the next step in their journey.
- Carefully crafting your content to appeal to your target audience. This is why it is essential to understand who you want to attract before you turn your brand’s magnetism up on high.
- Screening the prospects your content attracts before you move them forward to more resource-intensive stages in your sales funnel. For example, a double opt-in message or preference center will help you screen out subscribers who may have signed up to download a specific ebook but aren’t interested in your brand for the long term.
Finally, attraction marketing often involves creating content that appeals to emotions as well as logic.
Sharing customer testimonials, community involvement resources, and revealing the company’s position on social or political issues are all effective attraction marketing methods. There’s a risk that this type of content can cause some consumers to decide that they don’t like or trust your brand, though.
A generic ad that offers a selection of products at a specified price doesn’t carry the same risk as content that defines a brand’s personality.
How to use attraction marketing to make people gravitate toward your brand
Before you can implement attraction marketing techniques for your brand, you have to figure out what makes your brand attractive and who you’d like to attract.
You won’t increase revenue if your efforts don’t attract qualified leads, and not every brand fan is ready, willing, or able to become a customer.
Define the following critical elements before you build your attraction marketing campaign:
- The objectives for your attraction marketing program. These objectives should align with your overall marketing strategy and your organization’s general business objectives. A brand that is entering a new market or has limited awareness in its ideal market will have different priorities than one that is more mature.
Use a situational analysis to identify your top marketing needs and gaps in your sales funnel that attraction marketing can fill.
- Your value proposition and key differentiators. Not every piece of attraction content will reveal the answer to “What’s in it for me?” directly, but it should always facilitate its discovery. Clarify your value proposition so that you can infuse your attraction messaging with this information.
When sharing value-adding (and value-revealing) content with your audience, you’ll also want to take advantage of the opportunity to tell them why they can’t get what you offer from anyone else.
What are your differentiators?
Once you’ve identified what makes your products or services special, weave this information into your attraction content. Use articles or other content types to highlight your product’s unique features and benefits.
- Your ideal customers and target audiences. Attraction marketing assets often attract audiences outside your ideal. However, the better you’ve defined your ideal customers and audience, the easier it will be to create content that draws their attention specifically. This may involve narrowing the scope of the information you share or focusing on each of your target segments’ most distinctive characteristics.
Who are the people who most want or need what you offer, and what sets them apart?
Look at your existing customer data housed in your CRM or elsewhere to identify specific attributes. Also, investigate why your ideal customer and/or existing customers need your product. Try to identify what job your product or service helps people do or the problem it helps them solve.
Does their outdoor sportswear need to withstand extremely cold climates? Are they looking for a productivity tool that integrates with a specific type of software? Do they need a meal prep service that caters to special dietary needs?
In addition to looking at consumer research and your proprietary customer data, building buyer personas can help you gain a better understanding of who your ideal prospects are.
- Your marketing distribution channels. Reaching audiences with content that gets their attention and makes them want to learn more about your brand can happen in a lot of different ways and across a lot of different channels.
Choosing your distribution channels involves considering both your customers’ preferences and your brand’s capabilities. For instance, an experiential display at SXSW might be an amazing and effective way to engage with your ideal customer, but not every brand can make it to the big show.
Start your analysis by identifying your current marketing channels. Then determine whether those channels are effective for reaching your desired audience and suitable for attraction marketing campaigns.
In addition to choosing where you place your attraction marketing content, you will also need to define the outbound channels and methods you’ll use to promote your content (if any).
Will you use paid search to generate traffic to your blog or rely solely on organic search results? Will you place digital or traditional ads to point people to your attraction content?
- Your messaging strategy. With knowledge of what your organization uniquely offers, who will benefit from learning about your brand, a plan for where you’ll find and communicate with those people, and why you want to reach them, you’re ready to define your content strategy.
What will you tell people about your products or services that will lead them to choose your brand when they are ready to make a purchase?
Answer this question for each of your top targeted segments and for each stage in your buyer’s journey, subtly by supplying them with the information they need when they need it.
I’m not talking about just “facts and figures” information, either.
Your attraction messaging should include appeals to logic and emotion. Sometimes what people need to know is, “Does this brand represent the values that matter to me?” or “Do my peers like this product?” or even, “Do I like this product?”
7 popular methods for executing attraction marketing campaigns
Attraction marketing is considered an inbound strategy because it draws people toward your brand. However, distributing content for attraction marketing initiatives may (and should) employ a combination of methods across your brand’s owned and third-party channels.
Top ways brands engage and attract consumers across channels include:
🧲 Publishing content on your company’s website
Blogs and other articles hosted on a company’s website top the list as one of the most familiar types of inbound nurture content. Whitepapers, ebooks, and other content that can be downloaded also enable brands to tell prospective customers their full story.
The article you’re reading right now is an example of blog attraction content. Digital one-pagers describing a product’s features and benefits, testimonial pages, downloadable guides, FAQs, and other content hosted on your websites present a galaxy of opportunities to nurture prospective customers and retain existing ones.
Whole Foods shares the brand’s values and mission on a feature page on its website. Visitors who want to learn more about reducing food waste and sustainability can click through to read other content produced by the brand.
🧲 Publishing branded and user-generated content on your social media accounts
Social media is also a popular channel. With new platforms and innovative ways to communicate on existing platforms popping up regularly, brands seeking to connect with B2C or B2B audiences can’t overlook social media.
Businesses use social media to inform and educate consumers about their products or services, their general industry, and social issues related to the brand’s values. Social media channels are also an excellent vehicle to share content about an organization’s community and culture and develop social proof through promoting user-generated content.
In this LinkedIn post, Elise Dopson of Peak Freelance shares a clip from a recent Q&A session discussing how freelancers can prepare themselves for a recession.
Haus Labs helps followers find their makeup foundation shade with a how-to post on Instagram, complete with a video demonstration.
🧲 Distributing content via video hosting sites and video-format social media platforms
Audio and video distributed on social media/webinars/podcasts puts a real person behind the message your organization is sharing. Video and audio content was popular before the pandemic. But the use of virtual presentations has skyrocketed post-pandemic.
The podcast series, Powered by Purpose, is produced by consumer goods giant Procter and Gamble.
The series introduces listeners to the people behind the brand and others who are making a difference and serving as a “Force for Good, Force for Growth” in the world the brand explains in its blog.
Webinars and virtual conferences replaced many in-person events and enabled brands to share value-adding content during live sessions and repurpose the same content for on-demand viewing or as clips shared on social media.
Along with paid and in-person events, Nature Research and its co-sponsors draw viewers from across the scientific community with free virtual conferences addressing recent innovations and issues in the science community.
🧲 Giving away free trials, samples of products, services, experiences, or branded swag
Free trials, samples, and previews are a positive way to introduce people to your brand and discover its value for themselves. Your concept of a freebie is probably shaped by your experiences or what your company offers, but the category is really pretty broad.
In-person, a free taste of ice cream or sample snacks being distributed in a warehouse store are examples of attraction marketing. Online free trials or previews may take the form of a freemium model for an app or a free light subscription to a publication.
Ecommerce stores often include a free trial-sized product with their customers’ orders to facilitate cross-selling. The idea behind giving something away free is that consumers who enjoy the free version may later convert to paying customers.
“Try before you buy” can be a challenge when you’re shopping for new window treatments. SelectBlinds eases shoppers’ burden by letting them order up to 15 product samples to examine in person.
🧲Hosting permanent and temporary brand activations, pop-ups, or experiential events
Brand experiences that allow consumers to decide whether they’ll participate or not are a type of attraction marketing. Brand activations and brand experiences can take place online or offline or as hybrid events with in-person and digital components.
Roblox’s metaverse is a popular virtual activation destination. Dove is using the platform to extend its Dove Self-Esteem Project message to new audiences.
In September 2022, the hygiene and skincare brand announced the launch of a free game, Super U Story “the world’s first video game specifically designed to equip younger girls with the tools they need to help combat negative self-esteem.”
Dove’s free online game, Super U Story, is designed to boost young girls’ self-esteem building powers.
Some brand activations, such as pop-up stores, also serve as direct sales channels. But many others are intended solely to deliver positive experiences that create buzz and build goodwill. In our omnichannel world, most brand activations will distribute some digital content before, during and after the activation, even for in-person events.
The Peacock TV Playground at SXSW is just one of many colorful, interactive experiences brands brought to this high-traffic event. (Activation created by and images from Madefirst.com)
🧲 Offering tutorials, classes, and workshops that encourage people to explore your products and services
Virtual or in-person workshops that cover topics of interest to a brand’s ideal customer or show them how to use its products or services. Classes take conferences and webinars up a notch by delivering actionable insights to attendees.
Brands may show their support and care for their customers by offering classes or workshops that help people develop their careers or gain new personal skills. More targeted courses, such as a cake decorating class hosted by a brand that sells home baking equipment or supplies, show people how to use the business’s products.
Craft tool brand Cricut supports successful onboarding with a series of free workshops for users at every level. Shoppers considering a purchase may register for a workshop to see how the tools work before they buy.
🧲 Sending email and SMS campaigns that deliver relevant, valuable information at the just right moment
Email (our favorite) is an efficient way to communicate one-to-one with existing and prospective customers at scale via personalization.
Email can travel almost anywhere and serve as a gateway to lead your audience to other channels and content. Brands use email to share value-adding content directly and to tell subscribers about the value-adding content they can find on the brand’s website.
It’s also a vital distribution channel to inform people about online and offline events such as brand activations, webinars, podcasts, and other attraction marketing activities.
I’ll share some awesome examples showing how you can use email to deliver attraction content to your audiences at the end of this article. But here’s a sneak peek.
Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing brand with an international presence, uses email to share its corporate activities aimed at supporting sustainability.
This email features several of Uniqlo’s sustainability initiatives, shares images of its community members and invites subscribers (who can get to Soho on time) to a denim repair workshop, offering lots of value before introducing a few shopping links at the end of the message.
Uniqlo customizes the email with a preheader link to the brand’s sustainability page, where consumers can learn even more about the brand and its customer community. Email subscribers in the US are taken to the Uniqlo USA Sustainability page instead of the brand’s English-language but Japan-based page.
Here’s how the content set comes together.
I dunno, I think US website viewers might be missing out. Is that a cat? 🐈
SMS provides companies with another one-to-many channel of communication. Use SMS marketing to send time-sensitive updates and alerts to your subscribers, promote events such as pop-up activations or classes, and other value-adding messages.
Now, as promised, here’s how to use email marketing to attract and engage prospective customers, promote your other attraction marketing initiatives and build customer loyalty.
12 examples of attraction marketing emails that pull consumers closer
📧 Moonshot invites subscribers who share the brand’s passion for sustainability to join its virtual book club.
What does this message do to attract people to the brand?
The email takes a personal approach. Moonshot’s founder Julia appears in the sender name, and she includes a personal invitation for subscribers to join the Moonshot Book Club.
She also encourages readers to reply to the email and share their thoughts about the club and climate issues.
The content of the email isn’t about Moonshot but about the club’s first featured book and includes excerpts from an interview with one of the book’s authors. Drawing subscribers to the brand’s website is a link to the full text of the interview.
📧 Online coding course provider One Month links subscribers to the answer for a FAQ.
Sharing value-adding information with your subscribers doesn’t have to be complicated. This email message goes with plain-text formatting vs. an HTML one, leaning on the human touch with an empathetic, personable tone.
Subscribers who click through can find the answer to the featured question by reading the blog or watching a video.
📧 L’Oreal uses email to promote a live TikTok with the docs event to introduce a new product.
This colorful email from skincare brand L’Oreal invites subscribers to learn about the benefits of its latest product, Pure Vitamin C, from TikTok influencers and physicians, the Dermadoctors.
What’s the attraction? Live interaction with influencers, authority to back the brand’s claims, and a chance to meet other L’Oreal (and Dermadoctors) fans.
📧 Lazy Oaf sends an email packed with personality and entertaining content.
You might expect an online publisher or B2B brand to send email newsletters that don’t include a “Shop Now” CTA at the end, but this collection of entertaining odds and ends is from clothing retailer, Lazy Oaf.
The email shows off the brand’s distinctive personality. The big draw though, is the featured article: an interview with singer Remi Wolf who wears the brand’s gear.
📧 Zen Media charms subscribers with an introduction to a real person.
This friendly, conversational email message from Zen Media’s CEO, Sharma Hyder puts a face with the B2B marketing and PR agency’s brand.
Sent from Sharma herself, the email includes a personal note to subscribers and offers her insights on a current marketing trend plus a link to a video that offers more details.
This brand isn’t afraid to let their CEO’s personality shine, which gives the email and video a personal feel.
📧 Formlabs invites subscribers to put its product to the test.
Sometimes you have to see and touch a product to believe that it’s all the producer says it is. Formlabs recognizes this potential objection and addresses it by sending new subscribers an invitation to order their free sample of its special purpose, industrial 3D printing resin.
The brand also invites subscribers to learn more about this resin and its benefits in an informational blog on Formlabs’ website.
As added attractions, this email is sent from and signed by a real person. Also, the copy signals that the brand listens to its customers by noting that its recommendations are based on customer feedback.
📧 Zembula sends email subscribers an invitation to attend its free webinar (and some extra value-adding content).
If you’re like me, you get a lot of webinar invites in your inbox. A lot. And, while I know that these webinars offer me a chance to gain valuable information, I have to admit that the email invites can be a little boring. Plus, if I’m super-busy (which is always), there’s a good chance I’ll delete the email as soon as I see the word “webinar” in the subject line.
Nonetheless, emails are one of the best ways to get the word out when you have a webinar scheduled or available on demand. Zembula’s email attracted me because it does more than just tell me about an upcoming webinar.
The email itself adds value with several different types of content, including a “we can relate” GIF, links to the brand’s recent blog posts with summaries, and some personal photos of the team’s latest adventures.
This combination of informative and personal helps build connections between the brand and its subscribers.
📧 Waves Audio educates with every email.
Recognizing that its high-tech audio solutions take some high-tech knowledge to use, each Waves Audio newsletter includes something that adds to subscribers’ knowledge.
Content variations include how-to guides, product explanations, and advice from experts. The newsletters also include a link to the website.
Sometimes, the newsletter features a promotion prominently. But subscribers can count on finding value-adding information every time they open a Waves Audio message.
📧 Generation Love uses show and tell to make customers want to buy.
How can an email that is filled with images of your products be attractive content and not promotional? When you’ve used those images to create a guide that shows subscribers how to use your products.
That’s what Generation Love did in this email newsletter that demonstrates several clothing combinations to help shoppers choose the pieces that suit their style.
📧 Wild Birds Unlimited shares timely content with a purpose.
Wild Birds Unlimited Nature Shop knows that its subscribers are friends to wild birds.. As migration season arrives, the brand shares a guide with email recipients to help them care for and protect their wild feathered friends.
The message not only adds value but also demonstrates the brand’s value-alignment with its customers.
📧 SelectBlinds helps customers make the perfect selection.
Visitors to the SelectBlinds website can order free samples of its window blinds to help them pick the perfect finish for their windows.
The brand greets new email subscribers with a welcome email that includes a video guide for selecting blinds and emphasizes the free trial offer.
SelectBlinds welcomes new email subscribers and overcomes objections with a free samples offer, a how-to video, and a reassuring guarantee.
📧 Miki House engages email to promote offline activation.
Digital native consumers don’t view their online and offline worlds as separate. Marketers shouldn’t either.
Let your customers know what’s happening at your local stores through email and other digital communications and provide more reasons for them to stay in touch with your brand.
Miki House invites local subscribers to attend an in-person event in this email blast with all the details about a happening-now pop-up event.
Follow these attraction marketing tips for out of this world results
As you prepare your attraction marketing strategy, keep the fundamental principles of attraction marketing in mind. Look for ways to add value and create positive experiences for your prospects and customers at every stage in their journey.
Respect your audience’s privacy and preferences. Let people come to you rather than interrupting them and demanding their attention. Use an omnichannel approach to make it convenient for people to find the information you’re sharing.
Your content should always be likable and personalized when possible. Focus on messaging that is relational, not transactional. People prefer brands that treat them as human beings, not numbers.
This is where email can give your attraction marketing an extra edge.
By creating templates that incorporate dynamic email content, you can personalize messages for each subscriber while still distributing your content in bulk.
Remember that building your brand’s reputation and credibility takes time. But also remember that losing that credibility can happen fast if you attempt to manipulate or deceive your audience. Don’t use false urgency or scarcity messages to push people to act.
Focus on creating quality content over distributing huge quantities of low-value content. Carefully evaluate not only the information your content conveys but also the way in which it is conveyed.
- Are you optimizing your content for each distribution channel?
- Is your content accessible and inclusive?
- Are there other ways that you can remove friction and add delight to your marketing efforts?
How do you know if your attraction marketing plan is working?
A brand’s success at attraction marketing is measurable through email engagement metrics, growth and revenue data, consumer perception of the brand, and comparisons of the brand’s reputation to those of competing brands.
Net promoter scores, sentiment analysis and evaluation of whether consumers know, like and trust a brand are all relevant to determining whether you’ve been successful at attraction branding.
Drawing people to your brand requires a consistent, coordinated effort that uses all your marketing channels and persuasive skills.
Once you’ve engaged a new website visitor and converted them to an email subscriber, don’t lose their attention.
Make sure your emails follow best practices for preview text, providing subscribers will all the information they need to make that click. If your emails aren’t read because they land in the spam folder, follow these tips to understand how to prevent your emails from reaching the spam.
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