Beginner’s guide to email marketing best practices
Most of us are already aware that email marketing is one of the most powerful tools a business can utilize to connect with customers, find new prospects, increase brand awareness, and drive conversions. What some people don’t know (yet) is what are precisely the best practices for email marketing.
Given the continued, demonstrable success of email marketing campaigns, there are very few businesses not taking advantage of this strategy. This means that it is harder than ever to stand out from the crowd.
If businesses want to run successful email marketing campaigns, they need to know and follow the best practices for email marketing. From subject lines and calls-to-action (CTAs), to personalization and optimization, here is all you need to know about best practices for email marketing.
How to send dramatically better emails with email marketing campaign best practices
If sending drastically better emails during an email marketing campaign was simple, you wouldn’t be reading this article. And while email marketing can, indeed, be tricky, sending better emails doesn’t have to be.
There are several important steps to take in relation to every email you send during a campaign. The first is to build out and segment your email list.
A segmented email list allows you to hyper-focus your targeting. As you know, email marketing involves sending targeted emails to specific lists of people who have opted in to receive the emails. A segmented email list allows you to further subcategorize the list, sending certain emails only to certain groups of subscribers.
This activity not only helps increase engagement, and improve the overall effectiveness of the campaign, but it allows for much more personalization – a feature of email marketing shown to boost customer engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
The next step is personalization. Armed with the specific information from your segmented email lists, you can address receivers by their first name, include their location, or compliment them on recent achievements or important steps in their career. Personalized emails have a much higher open rate than standard emails, and personalization should be considered a must when planning an email marketing campaign.
I’m willing to bet right now that you’re reading this article on a mobile device. If not, I’m almost sure you have got a mobile device within arm’s length. Given how much we use our phones, tablets, and other mobile devices, it seems like a no-brainer to optimize your marketing emails for mobile. And it is.
Mobile optimization includes using a responsive design, keeping emails concise and to the print, and including large calls-to-action with easy-to-tap buttons.
While we’re talking about CTAs, no marketing email is complete without one. You must include a clear CTA in every email you send with a link or button that takes the reader to your website or product landing page. CTAs are imperative when it comes to increasing conversions.
The final tip for writing better emails is to learn from your experiences. Test various versions of emails, track the results, and analyze the performance of different emails with varying subject lines, CTAs, language, and personalized features.
What are some of the best email subject line best practices?
Some features of marketing emails play a huge role in everything, right down to the open rate. Subject lines are one of these features. They are one single phrase that can be the difference between the success and failure of the email marketing campaign.
Let’s see what some of the best email subject line best practices are.
Keep it short and sweet
Your subject line needs to be short. Given the limited space in a subject line bar on any screen – and the significantly limited screen size on mobile devices – long subject lines will simply be cut off (or worse, ignored). Keep it short, keep it concise, and only pack the subject line with the most important information to grab the attention of the reader.
Make it personal
Just like the emails themselves, personalized subject lines have been shown to perform better than their standard counterparts. Including a name is vital, but you can go the extra mile by integrating another relevant piece of personal information you’ve gathered from your research.
Be concise:
Be clear about what the email contains, and try to be as specific as possible in the subject line. Don’t entice someone with false information, or misleading subject lines, as the reader may not only ignore your offer, but may take issue with the subject line not properly reflecting the content of the mail.
Avoid overused, spam-like words:
Don’t get caught in the trap of including “limited time”, “free”, or “today only” in your subject lines. These approaches do not work as well as some people believe, and are, more often than not, a one-way ticket to life in someone’s spam folder.
How can inSegment help your company benefit from some of the best practices for email marketing?
inSegment is a full-service digital marketing agency that can help your company benefit from some of the best practices for email marketing. The company’s abilities across lead generation, design, and content mean they are primed to conceive, craft, and run outstanding email marketing campaigns for partners.
