Best Practices for Email Marketing

Email marketing is still the most effective marketing channel, leaving behind newer marketing channels like social media. 

Data suggests that the number of email users increases every year, making it is a great way to generate more leads for your business and build a community for your brand. This is why email marketing should be the key pillar of your strategy. 

Serving a purpose in the buyer journey, emails can be promotional or informational. You can announce special offers, new products, sales or discounts with a clear call-to-action (CTA) through promotional emails. 

Informational emails are typically company announcements, newsletters, etc. Imagine your company reached a milestone or there are some issues with shipping, the best way to reach your contacts at once is through an email. 

But if you’re confused about where to begin, that’s absolutely normal. We’ve put together a list of best practices for email marketing to spruce up your emails. 

Well, the reason behind this is two-fold. First is the GDPR. These regulations restrict marketers to send emails to unsubscribed consumers. 

Secondly, there is no point in sending emails to a person whose contact you bought rather than an interested customer through a previous interaction. You will see the results drop instantly. 

Following the previous point, it is equally important to review your subscribers and remove the ones who haven’t engaged with your emails for a long time. We know it could be extremely satisfying to see a huge senders list, but sending out emails to non-engaged users will affect the open rate.

The key is to analyse your campaign quality against your loyal customer base.

How often do you come across an email that reads, “Dear Member”?

Terms like members, subscribers, VIP or others should be for internal use. Using a personalised greeting gets the attention of the reader right away. And you don’t need to write 50 names and send out 50 emails manually anymore. Marketing tools help configure the greeting and automatically send the emails to the names on your list. 

Want to increase your open rates? Include the offer in your subject line. 

“Free shipping”, “$25 off on your first purchase” or “Earn referral bonus” are examples of some incentive focussed subject lines that could work wonders. 

Great practice for subject lines is to keep it between 30 to 50 characters. Why? Email services often cut off lengthy subject lines and your readers won’t be able to read it fully without opening it. 

You aren’t writing a story in the subject line; create a sense of urgency for them.

If your user has to scroll down to find the main message and CTA of your email, chances are you’ve already lost him. 

Research suggests that 57% of the time is spent on above-the-fold content which is the information that’s visible to readers before they scroll down. To increase your conversion rate, the first thing your recipient should see is the main message and CTA. 

41% of marketers said they use email signatures for branding and visibility. 

Even if you are sending an email to all contacts in the database on behalf of your company, it should include a signature of a specific person. The reason for this is to there is a human behind the email. People tend to read emails more when they see it is from a person rather than the marketing team. 

The chances of a customer making a purchase goes up 34% when logos are included. The best way to leverage it is to include your company logo in the email signature.

Your webpage should match the emails – headline, copy, and look. Consistency is the key to email marketing. 

The look and feel of your emails shouldn’t be far different from your other assets like the website, landing page, social ads, etc. Not only does it help build your brand visibility, but it also increases trust in your customers. 

What is the point of your email marketing campaign if your customers can’t even interact with you when you send them promotional materials? Personally, I don’t even bother to open emails with the words “no reply” or if the sender’s address is noreply@xyz.com. 

As previously mentioned, your customers are far more likely to open an email when they see it is from a human being. Marketing tools allow you to set automated emails from a specific email address. Set it to your first name to give your emails a human touch. 

There you have it! You can use the above practices to add a competitive edge to your email marketing campaigns. 

Marketers today have many channels to promote their business, but the challenge is learning how to prioritise your efforts for the best results. 

Want to prepare an email marketing campaign for your business? Contact us to learn more.