Email Marketing: Best Practices for Success

You may not know this, but email has been a channel used by marketers for nearly as long as the internet has been around. Even nowadays, email marketing is certainly still an effective and extremely successful tactic, when executed properly. Therefore, certain mistakes can hinder success. 

We are here to help you understand email marketing better and learn how to use it effectively. So, let's dive in! 

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a type of digital marketing where businesses send newsletters or promotions to subscribers through email.  

Furthermore, email marketing enables businesses to deliver personalized and relevant material directly to a target audience. It is cheap, easy to monitor, and provides useful information for evaluating marketing campaigns. This makes it an important tool in modern business strategies. 

Benefits of Using Email Marketing 

• Builds relationships   

• Increases brand awareness   

• Promotes your content   

• Generates and nurtures leads   

• Market your products and/or services 

Best Practices

Build Your Own Contact List

Creating your own contact lists is the first step towards effective email marketing. Therefore, we recommend never purchasing mailing lists, as they are a waste of your time and energy.   

Sending unnecessary emails to strangers can squander their time and affect the reputation of your company. Instead, to collect email addresses from website visitors, you should use sign-up forms on your website. Also, gated content is another useful tool for encouraging users to give you their information.   

Send a test email to yourself first
   

There are various email templates available to use when creating email campaigns. Send yourself a test email first to ensure that your email templates are fully optimized.   

In this manner, you will be able to view the email in your inbox. This method helps check if images are distorted or if text is easy to read. Basically, by sending a test email to yourself, you may identify and work out any flaws.   

Since a large percentage of people view emails on mobile devices, try viewing it there as well. Failing to optimize for mobile can result in a subpar user experience and reduced engagement. 

Do Not Spam

Sending out too many emails at once might result in high unsubscribe rates, yet sending out too few can make people forget about your company. So, find a balance between email frequency and timing by analyzing the behavior of your audience.   

Add a CTA to All Your Emails

Getting your subscribers to read your emails and take the appropriate action is the goal of email marketing. Therefore, you must use a call-to-action to point them in the direction of whatever action you want them to take.   

Always make sure your call to action is clear and easy to spot, since this will help subscribers know what to do next. The call-to-action (CTA) should highlight how your material is designed.   

Many marketers would rather place the call to action at the bottom. However, to determine which CTA placement yields the greatest results for you, you will have to conduct your own testing.   

Segment and Personalize Your Emails 

Any marketer with experience in email marketing will tell you that the secret is personalization. It often makes the difference between an email campaign that succeeds and one that fails.   

Make your messaging more engaging by adjusting it to different target segments according to their interests and past interactions with your company.   

Emails that are directly addressed to the recipient have a higher opening and reading rate. For this reason, it is a good idea to include as much personalization in your emails as you can. Even a minimal degree of customization can be achieved with email automation tools.   

Leverage A/B Testing to Optimize Your Emails 

Don't skip out on using A/B testing, as it's a great method to make your emails better and more effective so you can obtain the greatest results. A/B testing allows you to test anything, including CTA placements and subject lines.   

You essentially create two versions of your email by sending one to half of your subscribers and the other to the other half when you conduct A/B testing. Then you evaluate which one performed better.   

This is a tried-and-true method practically all marketers employ. You don't have to carry out this task by hand; in fact, A/B testing is a feature that many email marketing systems these days have. Thus, all you need to do is utilize it and consistently optimize your emails.   

Write Compelling Subject Lines

One cannot stress the importance of subject lines in email marketing. They aid a user in selecting whether to open an email. For this reason, having a catchy subject line is essential to increasing email opening rates.   

Some pointers we have for this are to keep it brief and direct. With so many people checking their emails while on the go, it should be short enough and easily readable from a mobile device. In fact, MailChimp recommends “no more than 9 words and 60 characters.”   

Keep it relevant as well; the recipient should be able to understand from your email what to expect. Additionally, avoid using spammy terms like "offer," "marketing," "sale," etc., as users may respond negatively to them.   

Lastly, use terms that create a positive emotion in people, as these will encourage them to open the email.   

Clean Your Email List Regularly

Deliverability and engagement metrics can be enhanced by routinely deleting inactive members from your email list. If you pay for each email sent, that helps as well by saving money.   

Analyze Performance and Adjust if Needed

After launching your initial campaigns, it's necessary to assess their effectiveness. By delving into your email marketing analytics, you will be able to make more informed decisions that will improve your company's revenue, appeal to readers, customers, and subscribers, and support your efforts for the rest of the organization.   

Establishing KPIs is the first step in analyzing the success of your email marketing efforts. When assessing the success of your email marketing campaign, there are four important criteria to consider. Deliverability, open rate, clickthrough rate (CTR), and unsubscribes are a few of them.   

Your KPIs are impacted by a variety of factors, so determining which changes to your emails will have the most impact will require some trial and error.   

Ready to Get Started?

Now that you are aware of all the expert guidance listed above, you can use it to your advantage for your email marketing initiatives. Improve the return on investment of your email marketing campaigns by implementing these tactics.   

Need further assistance from a marketing professional? Our team is here to implement and drive your own email marketing campaigns. Contact us today!