Email Marketing Psychology: 7 Principles to Pique Customer Curiosity and Drive More Conversions

To get clicks, you gotta make your emails irresistible. The solution lies in email marketing psychology and its uses.

• Nice email design — check! 
• Compelling email copywriting — check! 
• Email optimization — check!

If you have done everything correctly and still don’t see results from your email campaigns, it could be because you are not using email marketing psychology the right way.

Consumer psychology is one of the biggest factors that influence your email open rates and conversions. Especially color psychology in email marketing can affect up to 90% of initial impressions.

You must understand how each email aspect impacts the recipient’s decision-making, including factors that encourage engagement, different psychological triggers, and effective psychological tips behind email marketing. And then draw inspiration from real-world brand stories.

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7 Psychological Principles Behind Email Marketing 

The email reading time has significantly dropped from 13.4 seconds in 2018 to 9 seconds in 2022. Hundreds of emails clutter your customers’ inboxes daily, leading to email fatigue. Despite the challenge, you still have to ensure your emails are interesting enough for your audience. This is where psychology principles come into play.

Core Email Marketing Psychology Principles

Effective email marketing involves a combination of these psychological triggers tailored to your specific brand goals. To understand what works best for your audience, you must know the motivating factors that encourage engagement.

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Psychology of Email Marketing: Factors That Influence Audience Engagement

Audience engagement in email marketing is influenced by various factors, such as:

Psychological Factor	Psychological Impact	Application
Relevance	People engage with content that’s more personal and relevant	Segment your email list based on customer demographics, behavior, and past purchase
Curiosity	Audience open emails based on subject lines, preview text, or the sender details	Craft intriguing subject lines and preview text. Use questions, cliff-hangers, or teasers to spark curiosity
Trust and credibility	People are more likely to engage with brands they trust	Build trust through consistent email sending schedule, sender name, and brand logo
Emotional connection	Emotional narrative urges users to think and increase the chances of participation	Connect with your audience on a personal level and include positive language about your brand
Timing and frequency	Timing affects customer attention and receptivity, and frequency can impact your brand perception	Find an optimal send time and maintain a balanced sending schedule to avoid overwhelming customers
Exclusivity	People are drawn to exclusive content and offers	Highlight exclusive offers, early access, or limited-time promotions to increase conversions
Gamification	Games and challenges tap into the human mind to achieve more rewards	Use quizzes, contests, or other interactive content to enhance creativity

Including these factors will help you create email campaigns that resonate with your audience and increase engagement. However, creating effective email campaigns involves understanding the different elements of your email campaign and how they persuade your customers. 

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Email Elements That Modify Customers’ Decision-making

If you have noticed different email open rates and conversions for the same email campaign, it could be because of differing elements and email content.

Maybe you’ve changed the images recently, or added a different color to your CTA buttons, which altered your customers’ thinking and approach. For example, a business changed its CTA button color from green to red, resulting in a 21% increase in conversions. 

are vital in influencing customers’ decisions.

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Color Psychology in Email Marketing

Colors can positively or negatively influence human behavior and also increase brand recognition. Brands that have solid colors in their logo are more memorable. For example, the red and white of Coca-Cola, the blue of Pepsi, or the bright white of Apple. 

Here’s a quick overview of how colors impact customer decision-making and perception:

Color	Psychological Impact	Application
Blue	Associated with trust, professionalism, and calmness	Blue is often used in corporate and financial industries to increase trust and credibility
Red	Evokes excitement, urgency, and passion	Useful for CTAs such as limited-time offers. Red color can also grab attention and stimulate action
Green	Linked to nature, growth, and wealth	Suitable for environment-friendly or health-related products
Yellow	Ideal for promoting positivity and grabbing attention	Used for highlighting important information or promotions
Purple	Associated with luxury, creativity, and sophistication	Effective for promoting high-end products or creating exclusivity around your products or services
Black	Associated with power	Often used by luxury brands because it can add power and elegance to products
White	Symbolizes purity, cleanliness, and simplicity	Creates a clean and minimalist look and can enhance other colors

Choosing a color depends on how you want people to perceive your brand. If your brand is more playful and quirky, choose trendy colors. Similarly, if your brand portrays elegance and luxury, go for dark, solid colors. 

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Visual Appeal and Design Psychology 

A well-designed email is a blend of visual appeal and functional design that aligns with your brand attributes. 

Even though you may not have design experience, various tools help you create great emails in minutes. 

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Placing Your Call-to-action Buttons The Right Way

Your CTA placement says so much about your email campaign metric performance. 

Knowing the audience’s focal movement can help you place your CTA in strategic locations. For example, customers usually read texts in a ‘Z’ pattern. This means placing your CTA nearer to the top left or bottom right will make it easier for customers to view and click on it.

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Email Copywriting: How Do You Move Your Audience to Take the Desired Action?

Your email copy can make people leave your email or take the desired action. It starts with your subject line, creating the first impression with your customer. Compelling email copy is a direct channel to capture audience attention and build lasting relationships.

Effective email copywriting is an iterative process that requires you to continually analyze your results, A/B test, and get regular customer feedback. 

While these are basic guidelines for producing clickable emails and making more sales, remember that the psychological triggers can vary with each email marketing campaign. 

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Psychological Triggers for Different Email Marketing Campaigns

Psychological triggers are stimuli or cues that influence human behavior, emotions, and decision-making by tapping into emotional and social psychology. Most often, your customers are unaware of these triggers in your email campaigns. When used properly, these triggers help incite specific responses from audiences, transforming them from lead to loyal customers.

Email Campaign Type	Psychological Trigger	Action to take
Welcome emails	Reciprocity	Offer a welcome discount, free resources, or exclusive content as a gesture for subscribers’ engagement
Promotional emails	Scarcity/urgency	Highlight limited-time offers, exclusive content, or flash sales to encourage immediate action
Abandoned cart email campaign	Loss aversion	Remind customers about the items they might lose if no action is taken
Re-engagement emails	Nostalgia	Use content that taps into past positive experiences and remind them about the value they once found in your brand
Educational/informational emails	Curiosity	Use compelling headlines, pose intriguing questions, and provide resources to increase knowledge and curiosity
Event/webinar emails	Fear of missing out (FOMO)	Emphasize the exclusivity and limited access to events or webinars
Survey or feedback emails	Sense of contribution	Help recipients make a meaningful contribution by highlighting that their opinions matter
Product recommendation email campaign	Personalization	Show customers that you care about their preferences by sending them relevant and personalized offers and products

Think about the nature of your email campaigns and audience type before using a psychological trigger. Tailor your approach based on the emotions and motivations you want to evoke with people, and then use the emotional triggers to keep your email subscribers engaged.

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What Are Emotional Triggers?

Emotional triggers are situations that evoke an emotion or a response from people. These emotions can be positive or negative and shape our thoughts, behavior, and decision-making process.

For example, some people buy products out of excitement, while others may make impulsive purchases. But in all these scenarios, people make decisions because of how they feel.

Psychological and emotional triggers together form the basis for psychological theories that elevate customer curiosity and engagement.

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5 Psychological Techniques/Theories to Persuade Your Readers

The art of persuasion involves changing people’s beliefs about something. Here’s a brief overview of influential theories to maximize customer interests.

1. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Cognitive dissonance theory is when people believe in one thing but act completely opposite to it. Or they could believe in two contradictory things and are forced to make a linear decision. 

Cognitive resonance theory can be beneficial in email marketing when used correctly. Use these ideas and techniques to put this theory into practice:

Aspect	Strategy	Best Practice
Highlight inconsistencies	Identify gaps in the recipient’s current behavior and your desired outcome	If they looked at a product but haven’t purchased it, send reminders to let them know what they are missing
Encourage small commitments	Start with small, easy to accomplish commitments	Encourage users to commit to small actions like signing up for newsletters or downloading a resource
Showcase consistent brand values	Emphasize brand values that align with recipient’s beliefs	Highlight shared values and beliefs
Use post-purchase rationalization	Encourage positive post-purchase experiences	After purchase, follow up with emails to let customers know they have made the right decision

The key to using cognitive dissonance theory in email marketing is to guide users to resolve their inconsistencies and align their beliefs. Practice transparency and ethical models to increase trust and credibility in your brand. Take a look at the example below.

Grove Collaborative uses cognitive dissonance theory to tell customers that they need to complete the purchase to finish the action they started. When combined with powerful email copy, this theory can move your audiences to take the desired action because they want to increase their satisfaction levels.

2. The Zeigarnik Effect 

Studies have discovered that people remember unfinished tasks better than completed ones. Zeigarnik’s theory can be used in email marketing to increase curiosity and make people finish a task. For example, let’s assume your subject line reads like this:

“Discover the importance of email marketing with these….”

This is a classic example of the Zeigarnik effect, where our minds are wired to find out the missing parts of the sentence. This practice piques customer curiosity, boosting open rates and click-through rates.

Here’s an example of the Zeigarnik effect in practice:

Streamable cleverly uses ellipses (…) to capture the audience’s attention. When your recipients don’t know the next item on the list, their minds immediately push them to explore the option. This can increase curiosity and make them quickly open your emails.

3. Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Also called ‘frequency illusion’ or ‘recency bias’, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is a cognitive bias in which a person learns something new and seemingly encounters that information everywhere.

For example, if you read about ”Email marketing principles” and your friend suddenly talks about the new email marketing platform they have been using. 

The Baader-Meinhof theory relies on selective attention — you only focus on what you feel is important. Secondly, confirmation bias is when you constantly hear or see the same thing, your brain tells you that the concept has gained popularity and is worthy of your attention.

Check out the example:

My Mind wants to give its users more space to think without being pushy. The above email example is one way to train recipients’ minds to improve their lives and confirm that their thought patterns are right. 

4. The Von Restorff Effect

Also known as the ‘Isolation Effect,’ this theory proves that an item that stands out from its surroundings is more likely to be remembered. This effect can be strategically used in email marketing to make certain elements or messages more memorable to recipients. 

Applying the Von Restorff effect in your email marketing can make your campaigns more memorable, ultimately increasing the likelihood of your audience engaging with your future campaigns.

Allset uses a neon green background to convey the message effectively. They also use a contrasting color further down, encouraging the user to invite more friends to participate.

5. The Decoy Effect 

The Decoy effect explains that when people are in between choosing two items, an addition of the third item can alter perceptions of the first two. In simple words, an introduction of a less attractive offer influences the choice between two or more options, leading users to make a decision they might not have otherwise made without the decoy. 

Use the following tactics to apply this theory:

Aspect	Use it this way
Pricing tiers	Present multiple pricing options with a middle tier option – it may be slightly more expensive than the basic option but with fewer functionalities than the premium. The decoy encourages customers to choose the premium option with all the features and functionalities
Feature comparison	When promoting different products or services, introduce a less attractive offer to highlight the perceived value of the highest-paid option
Bundle deals	Create premium value bundles and introduce a decoy with a less favorable mix or fewer items
Content access levels	For subscription-based services, use a less appealing add-on feature that makes premium add-on features look great for the pricing

LiveChat uses the decoy effect in the following example:

LiveChat introduces its starter plan by highlighting it as the main offer. Even though there are two other options, users are more likely to choose the highlighted offer due to the decoy principle.

Despite the use of these theories and psychological principles, your email marketing results may vary based on various factors, such as — your email deliverability, email send time, and segmentation strategy. 

We recommend working with an email service provider to use the right methods and tools to tap into human behavior.

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How Campaign Refinery Can Help You Tap Into Customer Psychology 

Email marketing psychology is highly effective when done right — we understood the undertones of customer psychology and created a platform that resonates with your audience. 

And in harmony with the right features, it can help you greatly achieve your desired results. Powerful email automation, easy segmentation, unique engagement rewards feature, and a stellar analytics dashboard refine your email marketing strategies for higher conversions and can place you among top senders.