Email Marketing Best Practices for sending better emails (In-Depth Guide)
With all the competition the chance to get your email to your readers It can be tiring to spend time on an email marketing strategy. Before you decide to write off the idea, keep in mind that marketing via email is among of the most profitable ROIs from online marketing strategies. If you invest a dollar on marketing via email, you stand to make $38 in return.
It's worth another look, right? There's numerous tips available to you give your email marketing strategies an edge over your competition. In this post, we'll talk about 11 tips you can start immediately to improve your email conversion and subscribers' rates. First thing is first -- you'll need a list.
- Make a Proficient Subscriber List
- Pick the Correct Automation Platform
- Make your message short and sweet
- Craft the Perfect Subject Line
- Engage Your Audience
- Include Social Sharing in your email messages
- Include a Strong Call to action
- Do not overwhelm your subscribers with too many options
- Stay clear of Spam Trap Spam Trap
- Never Forget Mobile Optimization
- Testing, Measuring, and Repeat
1. Develop a strong subscriber list
Whatever your email marketing strategy is without a subscriber list, you'll never enjoy the benefits. Marketing via email, as per the Data and Marketing Association, has a huge ROI -- to the tune of a 4300% return on your marketing investment.
In order to increase the return on investment in a manner which will benefit the bottom line of your business it is essential to create, nurture and grow your subscriber base. What are the best ways to begin making those sign ups? Three easy spots to begin.
Launch A Blog
Our email list is often the primary source of visitors to our content on the day it's published and gives us a means to place our articles to our most avid readers. Buffer. Buffer
Just one of their blog posts gets about 600 to 800 views per day. This is 600-800 possible chances to convince someone to join your mailing list. Do you really need more traffic?
Opt-in Formulas
Include opt-in form forms on every item. They won't be searching for the "subscribe" button. Let them know. Unbounce has discovered that on-click pop-ups performed 1,147 percentage better than exit pop-ups.
Social Media
Make use of social media to your advantage. Improve your bio with an email link, consider running an ad that links to your content, and offer the content away via your social media platforms. Nathalie Lussier grew her email list by 3,000 people with her first Twitter chat as well as an the email marketing challenge.
After you've compiled a hefty contact list What should you do to make use of the list?
2. Select the Best Automation Platform
75% of the email revenues is generated through automated email campaigns. That's logical, isn't it?
When your email list gets bigger and you're not in a rush on an endless wheel of emails that you have to manually send. Automate your workflow if you want to scale. 72 percent of marketers affirm that automating is beneficial to their organizational strategy and 78% of marketers say that the advantages of marketing automation contribute directly to revenues.
What can you do to put automation to work? The first step is to gain an additional subscriber or customer Make sure that a system has been set up to notify them of their thank you email within the first 24 days. This is worth your time. The welcome emails bring in 320% more revenue in comparison to other promotions.
Domino improved open rates by 11% and the click-through rate by 23 percent simply by optimizing their welcome email.
Second, you should think about splitting longer emails into drip campaigns. The open rates of drip campaign emails are 80% higher than non-automated, one-time send emails, and the average click-through rates for drip campaign emails are three times greater. Sony saw a 157% increase in click-throughs by distributing their drip-campaign to Sony Rewards loyalty club members.
Peloton delivers welcoming emails shortly after a user buys one of their bikes stationary or downloaded the application.
Brad Olson, Peloton's SVP of Member Experience, speaks to real ventures about how they cultivate emotional loyalty with their onboarding emails.
Not surprisingly, the open rate of Peloton welcome emails is the greatest at the beginning of our welcome sequence. In order to capitalize on the initial surge of interest the first two welcome emails to promote the behaviors most correlated with longevity and engagement (i.e. adhering to our Facebook community and downloading our Peloton iOS app). Brad Olson Brad Olson
Now that you know when you should automate your marketing campaigns, it's time to start thinking about the what content you'd like to create.
3. Make Your Messages Short and succinct
Nearly half the people who use it says they receive excessive emails. Think about your own mailbox. It's an ongoing struggle to sort through hundreds of emails every day to get the information that you're looking for, don't you think?
Tanner McGrath, lead product manager at Postmates said to eMarketer:
The study wasn't only about finding out the emails with the most open rate, but about determining which copy enabled customers to take particular step.
If you don't think brevity is important, remember your attention span of an average person is just 8 seconds. What's the ideal in terms of length for emails? It's not an all-inclusive metric, a recent study by Boomerang found that marketing emails with 125 words or less had a response rate of around 50 percent (that's well above average).
Take a look at this sample from Evernote. It's sweet, short and has a clear call to action. It's easy for readers to absorb the information and CTA within a matter of seconds.
Paypal has also done a fantastic job of using imagery instead of copy to evoke action. As an example, this email has less than 40 words but conveys the simplicity of making use of Paypal for an easy payment experience.
Once you've trimmed the content to the right size, it's time to draw your readers' focus.
4. Craft the Perfect Subject Line
If you get the title wrong, it's a matter of content doesn't matter. The subject line will never make it beyond the first preview that appears in the email inbox of your target audience. 47percent of readers make the decision to click on an email based solely on the title.
So how do you entice the readers to read your email? Another option is to employ the "benefit logic, benefit or danger"method, which is simply offering an obvious benefit or such as a "common sense" assertion or "don't leave out" kind of material.
As an example, Lonely Planet offers a unique "benefit" that reads "Buy one, get one free on everything until Friday" in this email. Readers benefit by clicking on the email to get information about the sale.
As an example of "logic," look at this message of Barkbox. They clearly have a passion for their dogs and are very likely to celebrate birthdays. The subject line "Add the birthday cake of your pup to the April Barkbox" is a logical appeal to the core Barkbox audience.
What's an example for a "threat?" Take a glance at the email sent by SXSW. The threat, in this instance, is the anxiety of not being able to register by the deadline. This type of subject line is to create urgency with your reader.
The subject line is a work of art and your recipient can't wait to open the email, What's next?
5. Engage with Your Audience
We've already discussed the importance of conciseness. However, it shouldn't come at cost of engagement with the audience, though. While marketers say that a higher engagement rate is their top email marketing priority but they admit that engagement is no easy task.
What can you do to ensure your subscribers are reading your emails? Offer them an incentive to interact with you after they finish the email.
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As an example, you could ask your children questions. The mind of the human being is connected with the desire to be able to answer questions when it is given. Even if you're not seeking a specific answer, a well-placed question can establish your name within the brain of the audience.
Second, make sure you link to relevant information. Your readers will stay entertained by your company. Pardot offers a simple tool that helps you measure the interaction level of your email content and determine whether your content is delivering on the promise or leaving them bored and lost.
Organizations are getting creative with ways to engage customers. The Hammock marketing team Hammock ran an experiment in order to improve participation levels in the newsletters they send out.
Instead of heavy content, they trimmed, reframed the email to be an "idea message" instead of a newsletter. They also "teased" deeper content instead of throwing it all out at once.
It was successful. They saw an 48% rise in the number of open times with their new format. Now that you're engaging with your audience and they're responding to you, it's time to broaden the reach of your message.
6. Add Social Sharing to Your Emails
Make it easy for your customers to spread your message or else -- they won't. Social sharing buttons in emails come with an 158% higher click-through rate than those without them.
When you're thinking about the design, make it perfectly clear what your social sharing buttons are actually sharing. Every time we've clicked the "share" icon, only to discover it's a link to something other than what we were just going through. Take a look at this sample taken from Salesforce. Social sharing buttons clearly state what is being shared, and which platforms.
For clarity Have you asked your readers what actions you would like them to do following the reading of your message?
7. Make a strong call to Act
If you're not telling the readers what you're hoping for, they'll never know. Every email needs a strong clearly-defined call-to-action (CTA). The research shows that using a CTA will increase rate of clicks up to 370 percentage.
Email marketing lends itself well to personalized CTAs (or the so-called "smart CTAs"). In actual fact, HubSpot found that targeting the CTA on the person's interests generated 20 per cent more leads over generic CTAs.
CTAs come in many different forms and flavors. For the 20th anniversary celebration, easyJet, the airline issued an email campaign made up of warm accents complement the brand's signature orange color. The CTA's story is told that guides readers as they follow their travels.
Of the 12,473,608 unique emails, the open rate "were higher than 100 percent greater than average easyJet newsletter. It also had an increase of 25 percent in click-through rate ...[and] across all markets, 7.5 percent of easyJet customers who received the personalized version of the newsletter went on to book a flight within the next 30-day period."
Explore button styles and colors to see what your audience prefers, through running easy A/B tests.
When you see traction in increasing engagement from your customers and you begin seeing more conversions coming from your CTAs It's the time to consider when to send out emails to your subscribers.
8. Be careful not to overwhelm your subscribers.
One of the most challenging parts of the marketing via email puzzle is knowing the right frequency to contact your subscribers. If you send too many emails or they will unsubscribe. Reach out too little, and they become disinterested in your brand. It might also vary depending the amount of new content your actually able to share and.
The majority of consumers would prefer receiving an email with a promotional message at least every month. 15percent of respondents claimed they wouldn't be irritated by getting one every day. The ideal place to be is somewhere in between however it's up to you to discover the sweet spot. The exact formula varies based on industry, audience, and contents. We send out our newsletter each week on a regular basis.
It is important to track the rate of unsubscribes after every campaign and adjust your send frequency in line with the results. One way to know the frequency your customers want to be contacted by your company is to simply inquire your audience to sign up.
Take 730DC, for example. This Washington DC-based organization for volunteers recognizes that its members want regular updates on events and volunteering opportunities. As a result, they send a daily newsletter. The company also conducted research on the ideal time of day to ensure their messages are seen by their intended audience.
Still unsure how often to mail? Benjamin Murray, the Head of Marketing for Peldon Rose, offers this suggestion:
Qualitative over Quantity Emails can be cost-efficient, but it's no excuse to not produce quality content to give to an audience that is specifically targeted.
It is also important to offer your customers the option about how often they hear from you. This can be done by setting up contact preferences and are means for your users to inform you of how often to email them.
It improves the chances of them staying engaged your content, and will make them less apt to select "unsubscribe" if they have control of the amount of email messages they receive.
9. Stay clear of from Spam Trap
In 2003 in 2003, the FTC approved in 2003 the Controlling the Harm of Unsolicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) regulation. The fact that marketers are included in a law that ensures that citizens are protected from spam should tell you how serious people are about getting spammed.
- Use only capital letters.
- Avoid strings of exclamation points (!!!)
- Don't buy email lists
- You shouldn't include forms within your emails (link to the forms instead)
- Do not attach attachments to your marketing emails
- Do not use spam trigger phrases (free assurance, guarantee, without obligation, etc.)
- Avoid red fonts
- Make sure you spell-check your spelling
- Do not overburden your emails with key words
- Don't forget to give readers the choice to opt-out
For every 12.5 million emails that are flagged as spam, only one person replies. Talk about a lousy ROI. It's not worth your time or the risk. If you'd like to be certain that you comply to the rules, make use of a software like GlockApps to put your information by a spam detector.
Nothing can be more disappointing than carefully crafting an email, only to find out the email went directly to the spam folder of your target audience.
10. Make sure you are aware of mobile optimization.
Design like you are absolutely right, then optimize like you were wrong at the beginning.
Put simply: as you consider the design of your email, make sure you optimize the layout for mobile-friendly users. People prefer buying on mobile devices, whether it's a website or app. And, as a retailer they expect you to provide a mobile-friendly shopping experience to help the customer through the buying funnel.
Retailers who don't properly optimize both the email and the landing page on mobile could turn potential customers away for good. As high as 75 percent of emails are read on mobile devices. five-seven percent of users claim that they would not recommend a brand with an unoptimized mobile user experienceand even less, to purchase their products from them.
Still need proof? Boxed sends its users weekly deals emails. The company saw an increase of 133% in conversion into purchases when they added the deep link to their mobile app.
How can you guarantee a great mobile email experience? There are a few points to take into consideration minimize the size of images in order to avoid slow loading times. Certain email services (like Outlook) block images from rendering. Utilize a tool such as TinyPNG to compress images down to ensure that you do not end up in your mailer's spam folder.
Secondly, increase the size of the buttons and links in your emails so that readers are able to easily select the ones they want on the first try. Fun information: according to an MIT study the average adult's index finger has 1.6-2 cm on average, which equates to about 45-57 pixels on a mobile device. Don't give mobile users the dreaded "sausage fingers" difficult. Let them know how easy it is to choose what they want.
Lastly, don't forget to provide the plain Text version. If you've spent a lot of time working on the gorgeous HTML layout, some users simply prefer to read in plain text. If you're still not certain if your content will translate smoothly to mobile devices, try a tool like email on acid.
Once you've created, mobile optimized and launched your first campaign, don't neglect to see how hard it's working for you.
11. Measure, Test, and Repeat
We've all heard the adage "that that which doesn't measure can't be improved." Email marketing is the same. With no defined metrics or consistent tracking, your results will eventually stagnate, and you'll be left wondering which of your decisions went wrong. If your email platform includes A/B testing built in that is the norm today, it's a great way to begin to discover which messages resonate with your customers.
In the 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama raised over 690 million dollars in contributions, in part, because of his determination to email A/B testing.
Whichever metrics you decide to gauge, don't do it once. If you tweak the strategy, you should stop and measure again. The strategy for marketing via email should be evolving.
Summary
There are almost three billion users of email worldwide, who go through nearly 300 billion email messages per day. With a median ROI of 122%, marketing via email remains among the best, most cost-effective tools available to marketers.
However, if an average user receives over 70 emails each day, email marketers need come up with innovative ways of cutting through the inbox noise. Email marketing is not an end-of-the-road. It's an opportunity for creativity and local marketing that has attracted many people to the marketing field at all.
The risk is the smugness of mailing out generic emails year after year , without measuring success or planning for the future growth. In the words of Kath Pay is the co-founder of Holistic Email Marketing puts it:
Email is a communication channel that is push which is why we have to make it more effective.
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