Twenty-second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The current study endeavors to uncover the diverse range of strategies utilized in contemporary marketing information emails to influence their target customers and engage them effectively. It also assesses whether significant differences exist among these strategies. We used a mixed methodology involving both descriptive quantitative and qualitative data analysis on a corpus of 800 emails encompassing over a million words, spanning the years between 2020 and 2021. Drawing from Aristotle’s theory of persuasion, we tailored a compendium of 15 persuasive strategies. Our categorization of persuasive strategies within each email is guided by our predefined operational definitions and categorization criteria serving as the classification criteria. The findings unveil that the most commonly employed persuasive strategies are offer, reasoning and logic, and authority, while the least utilized ones are bandwagon, contrasting and romantic strategies. These findings serve to demonstrate the profound significance of persuasive strategies in business communication, particularly within the realm of information emails. As the findings of our study provide valuable insights into the most frequent persuasive strategies, they play a pivotal role in crafting persuasive and impactful marketing messages. Illuminating the underlying mechanisms and strategies that drive this process in marketing emails enhances our understanding of how marketers can effectively utilize persuasion strategies to forge strong connections with their target customers and influence their behavior. We recommend businesses, as well as education and training sectors, incorporate the diverse range of our proposed persuasive strategies.