Mindless snacking has now become mindful and healthy.
The snacks industry has experienced heightened competition as more and more brands are reshaping the way snacks are purchased and consumed.
Companies are now able to tap a big segment of their target audience, people who are health-conscious and are always on the lookout for guilt-free alternatives to regular snacks.
Now the question arises: is snacking still a guilty pleasure?
By utilizing email campaigns, you can reassure your audience that the answer is a resounding “No”.
These are some of the email marketing techniques you can use today:
- Be transparent with your product ingredients
- Offer subscriptions with appealing incentives
- Send informative and engaging content
- Add fun to your emails through gamification
- Showcase a variety of products
- Announce your product availability in retail stores
Let’s begin the indulgence!
Be transparent with product ingredients
As consumers become more obsessed with healthy diets, selling healthy snacks becomes paramount when brands want to set themselves apart.
To keep up with the trends, snack producers have responded with products to suit various wellness priorities (i.e. protein-rich snacks, sugar-free snacks, etc.).
How do you craft a good email with healthy eating in focus? Be transparent!
Surreal best exemplifies transparency in their email newsletters.
Across the food industry, consumers are more likely to choose healthy and tasty treats over tasty treats alone.
Surreal makes it evident that their cereals are healthy and delicious too. They use a comparison of their product versus old-school cereal, emphasizing their edge over this childhood favorite.
They share a detailed comparison table starting with their most important proposition, the 0-gram sugar component. The use of a table helps display the key nutrients in a clear, and easy-to-read format.
Surreal demonstrates that they know their target audience well by supplementing the copy with another catch - And if zero sugar wasn’t enough, it’s also high protein…, targeting protein lovers.
And oh, we love the humor they incorporate in this email, too.
Offer subscription with appealing incentives
Snack subscriptions have become increasingly popular as people search for convenient ways to eat between meals.
Since snacks are highly consumable products, customers opt for a convenient service to keep their pantry stocked without leaving their homes.
You can send emails to your customers to announce your subscription plan. However, chances are, your competitor brands are also doing the same.
Your email needs to stand out to make your offer more appealing to the customers.
Here’s one nice move from Chomps.
They present their subscription plan with an illustration. Without crowding the copy with a lot of words, they’re able to show the benefits of subscribing.
You can take a break from promotional emails once in a while.
Informative emails and gamification are two types of content you can try. We’ll tackle them in the following sections.
Send informative and engaging content
If you’re planning to mix informational emails with the usual promotions that you are running, recipes are the way to go.
Developing and sharing recipes is an excellent way to elevate your customer’s experience with your products. Show your customers that there are nearly endless ways to enjoy your snacks.
Here are some ways worth trying:
- Use an old recipe, something that is known to people, and present your snacks as a good ingredient to incorporate in the recipe.
Muddy Bites entices their audience with this popular recipe where they combine a cheesecake and their waffle cone.
What makes this email effective is the way they make it easy to follow the recipe (good for targeting busy homemakers who want to prepare a good snack in less time).
- Create your own unique recipe. It’s a good way to catch your audience’s attention and make them want to try it for themselves.
Chomps’ The Stick Series newsletter also provides an exciting way to try their products. Here, they share unique recipes to delight your taste buds.
- Try a collaboration with other brands such as a wine brand or other forms of refreshment.
Snow Days partners with Cann, a brand of non-alcoholic social tonic, to offer new ways of fun and complete snacking.
There are plenty of ways you can educate and engage your audience by providing relevant and valuable content they’ll love!
Guess what? These snack-related content are mostly likely to be shared with their friends as well, so it will widen your reach.
Add fun to your emails through gamification
Now, you’re interacting with your email subscribers. With efficient email gamification in place, they’re no longer a passive viewer.
Gamification is the process of including game mechanics in non-gaming realms (for instance, an email). The ultimate goal is to drive more engagement.
Doesn’t this email make you wanna play?
Surreal exhibits a fun way to hype their audience in this game they invented called “Hidden hoops”.
A few tips to consider when adding games to your emails:
- Keep your games interactive and provide some value to enhance your audience’s experience
- Make your email pleasant to look at by using creative imagery. GIFs are recommended too - they’re highly engaging and trendy.
- Make sure to communicate the mechanics clearly to avoid confusion. You don’t want to waste their time (and patience) trying to understand what they need to do, or they might just skip the game.
- Give achievable tasks. Of course, the game should make them feel good about themselves. Tasks that are too difficult to finish are not advisable.
- Lastly, rewards! Be creative in arranging ways to reward the participants. You can either tell them right away what’s in it for them (like the email example below). Or, let them discover the reward in the end.
Showcase a variety of your products
To enhance competitiveness, snack brands capitalize on product variety.
Most snack companies provide a wide range of flavors. It allows them to cater to different customer preferences while also increasing their chances of making sales.
Introducing newness to your product line keeps the audience's interest.
People have their favorite flavors. Let them choose playfully like Outstanding Foods does in this email.
To find the perfect snack for you, they associate a vacation spot to start your taste quest - a place where you will most probably bring snacks in.
The use of lively images and colors makes the diagram engaging.
By placing short questions like “Favorite Meal?” and “Feeling Hot Or Cold?”, they’re able to provide a copy that doesn’t consume much of the readers’ time.
It’s important to do so since they want the audience to reach the bottom of the email.
It’s where they get the resulting product based on their answers to each question presented above, with convenient “SHOP NOW” CTAs to lock in conversion.
Announce your product availability in retail stores
When shopping in a local grocery or convenience store, how often do you see snack items inside a shopper’s cart? Most likely, it’s very often.
That’s why product availability in retail stores is critical for both positive customer experience and sales.
You can use your newsletters to remind your customers that their favorite products are available in a store near them. The next time they shop at a local supermarket, they’re more likely to seek out your products.
Additionally, if your products are available in big supermarkets, this demonstrates that your products are as trustworthy and respected as other brands in the retail areas.
Muddy Bites, for instance, notifies their subscribers that you can now find them in the aisles of Raley’s, an American grocery and retail technology company.
Showing confidence in your product composition, hooking your audience with incentives, and providing a wide range of products and convenient access are some of the ways to delight your customers.
Since snacking is often considered an enjoyable activity, adding fun and excitement like games will delight your audience.
We hope these insights have made an impact on your email marketing plan.
Until next time!
