Email marketing best practice is what we would refer to as fundamental guidelines to use when creating email marketing campaigns. Email marketing is a competitive business – just look at how congested your mailbox is right now – so it pays to build better.
This means putting the reader, your subscriber, at the heart of your campaign. By producing high-quality, spam-free emails, you will generate better results than engage prospects and drive more business to your website.
In this blog, we will be covering the key best practices when it comes to email marketing. Make sure to bookmark this blog so you can refer to it every time you plan to send an email campaign.
Nurture and Protect Your Subscribers
The most important factor when it comes to email marketing campaigns is your subscribers.
You have spent all that time and money attracting them into your funnel so do not let that go to waste by neglecting them.
Email campaigns live and die from healthy open and click-through rates. If you are sending sporadic emails, your subscribers will lose engagement with your brand. Likewise, if you bombard them with emails, they will simply hit that unsubscribe button.
A good habit to get into is reviewing your subscribers who have not opened an email over a period of time and removing them from your main list. You can then decide to either completely remove them or push them into a re-activation campaign. Whatever you decide to do, the result will be a report that accurately shows just how well your emails are performing with those who are actively engaged with your brand.
Less Clutter, More Clicks
Look at your email right now. Does it look clean, or cluttered?
How your email looks reflect your brand. That is why we recommend sticking to two fonts or typefaces with sizes between 10-point to 12-point.
This email marketing best practice prevents readers from becoming distracted and instead gets them to focus on the core message. You will also have created an email that can be read on all devices too – perfect for the modern era.
Keep the main message and call-to-action above the fold.
If you want to capture the attention of your subscribers, then make sure the main message and CTA are above the fold. This is the space that is visible to the reader before they scroll down.
While it is true that subscribers are used to scrolling, every piece of research points to the highest area of interest being above the fold.
As we mentioned before, email marketing is competitive. Your subscribers are bombarded with messages every minute of the day. They will simply scroll down and decide if they are interested in one or two seconds.
Place your message and CTA above the fold. It is the first thing your recipients will see once they open your email, therefore increasing your conversion rate.
Personalize Every Email Campaign
If you are not personalizing every email campaign that you send, then you are missing a trick.
To your subscriber, opening an email that reads “Dear Sir/Madam” comes across as disengaging straight away.
Every email marketing tool can introduce personalization by merging the fields from your data into the email content as standard. Your subscribers know this too.
Therefore, personalizing the greeting of your emails with your contacts’ first names grabs the attention of each reader right away.
How wide are your email templates?
Without getting too technical, if your email template is wider than 650 pixels then it will not show up correctly in your subscriber’s inbox.
This is a painful experience for any subscriber and, rather than scrolling across the screen, they will simply hit delete and move on.
All that hard work curating the perfect message will be lost. Keep your email templates to around 500 to 650 pixels wide for easier readability, better conversions, and an overall better user experience.
Subject lines are key to driving open rates
Choosing the right subject line, such as an incentive, offer, or interesting headline, can drastically increase open rates.
Indeed, experimenting with different subject lines via A/B split testing is perfect to identify what types of subject lines work best with your audience.
However, it pays to be selective. If every email has the same offer-based subject line, then your audience will start to lose interest.
Finally, the 5-second test.
This is one of our favorite ways to test the effectiveness of an email campaign.
Before you push the button, send a copy of the email campaign to someone outside the business. Ask them if they can tell you, within 5 seconds, what the purpose of the email is.
If they can, then that is great. You have created an engaging email.
If not, ask them what was confusing to them, and re-evaluate the content, layout, call to action etc. This might be extra work, but it will pay off in the long run.
In summary – how to develop email marketing best practice
There are a lot of new tools at a marketer’s disposal that are getting attention these days. But email marketing has stood the test of time regarding its influence on your users. This old, reliable, and faithful tool can really ensure you get the most out of your marketing initiatives.
However, as we mentioned before, your subscribers are bombarded with messages every minute of the day. To stand out, it is imperative you focus on quality rather than quantity. Make sure your email campaigns are optimized for the reader and have a clear call to action.
Finally, consider how your email campaigns can establish authentic relationships with your subscribers. For instance, the 80/20 rule: 80% value/informational and 20% sales, is a good guide to follow. This approach will build a nurturing pipeline before the urgent, sales-led messages are distributed to drive instant engagement.
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