NJEmail marketing is an essential tool for any business. It's a great way to stay in touch with customers, keep them updated on new products or services, and increase sales.
However, if you want your email marketing campaigns to be effective, you need to follow some basic tips.
In this post, we will discuss 31 essential tips for effective email marketing!
🟢 Solid email marketing strategy
Before you even start creating your email marketing campaign, you need to have a solid strategy in place.
This means knowing who your target audience is, what kind of content you want to include in your emails, and how often you want to send them. Without a clear strategy, it will be very difficult to create an effective email marketing campaign.
So, take the time to develop a solid email marketing strategy before you start sending out any emails. ⌛
🟢 Use a reliable email marketing software
In order to create and send your marketing emails, you need a reliable email marketing software.
There are many different software options out there, but not all of them are good.
So be sure to do your research before settling on one, as using a bad email marketing software can do more harm than good.
🟢 Welcome emails
Your welcome email is the first email that new subscribers will receive from you. It's important to make a good first impression!
Your welcome email should be friendly and helpful. It should also give new subscribers a quick overview of what they can expect from your emails.
When it comes to email open rates (percentage of subscribers who open a specific email out of your total number of subscribers), welcome emails have a 91.43% open rate and average four times the open rate and five times the average click-through rate of a standard email marketing campaign. (Campaign Monitor)
🟢 Create quality content and add value
The content of your emails is extremely important.
If you're just sending out a bunch of sales pitches, people are going to quickly get tired of reading them and they'll eventually stop opening your emails altogether.
Instead, focus on creating quality content that provides real value to your readers, provide solutions to their needs.
This could include helpful tips, interesting articles, exclusive coupons, or anything else that you know they'll find useful.
🟢 Keep your emails short and sweet
People are busy, and they don't have time to read long emails.
So, when it comes to email marketing, less is usually more.
Keep your emails short and to the point and focus on delivering one clear message.
If you try to cram too much information into your emails, you're likely to lose people's attention and interest. 🥱
Learn from Apple:
🟢 Keep your subject lines short and to the point
Your subject line is one of the most important elements of your email, so it's important to keep it short and to the point.
Ideally, your subject line should be no more than 50 characters, and it should clearly state what the email is about.
If you can't sum up what your email is about in a few words, you might want to consider reworking your content so that you can.
One-word subject lines work well too.
🟢 Use a clear and concise sender name
When people see your email in their inbox, the first thing they're going to notice is the sender's name.
So, it's important to use a clear and concise sender name that will let people know who the email is from at a glance.
Ideally, your sender name should be your business name or the name of a person within your company.
Avoid using generic sender names, such as "info" or "sales," as these are likely to be ignored or treated as spam.
This Litmus survey shows that a sender name actually has the biggest impact on whether someone will open your email:
🟢 Personalize your emails
Personalizing your emails is another great way to make them more effective.
You can personalize your emails in a number of ways, such as adding the recipient's name in the subject line or body of the email or including information that is relevant to their interests.
Personalization can help improve open and clickthrough rates, so it's worth taking the time to do it right.
Below are some stats reinforcing the importance of email personalization from Startup Bonsai, Campaign Monitor and Social Media Today:
🟢 Use a consistent email template
Using a consistent email template can help improve the look and feel of your emails and make them more recognizable.
Having a consistent email template also makes it easier to track which emails are getting the best results.
If you're not sure where to start, there are plenty of email templates available online (like these from Campaign Monitor), that you can use as a starting point.
Plain text emails work well too, sometimes even better than fancy ones.
🟢 Use attractive visuals
People are visual creatures, so using attractive visuals in your email marketing campaigns can be a great way to improve their effectiveness.
Just make sure that the visuals you use are relevant to the email's content and that they are placed appropriately so that they don't interfere with the message you're trying to get across.
Also, be aware that too many images can make your email look like spam and could result in it being filtered into people's junk folders.
Pinpointe research findings recommend that it’s best to keep the text to image ratio in emails at 4:1.
We think this ratio makes sense.
Plus, some email clients block images by default, so your message might not be seen by some of your subscribers unless they manually choose to allow images in their email client.
🟢 Make your call to action (CTA) clear and visible
CTA is the most important part of your email, so you need to make sure it's clear and visible.
Your CTA should be placed prominently in your email, and it should be easy to spot and understand.
Avoid using CTAs that are too long or complex, and make sure to test different CTAs to see which ones get the best results.
🟢 Include P.S.
P.S. lines are often overlooked, but they can be a great way to add a personal touch to your emails and make them more effective.
P.S. lines also give you an opportunity to include additional information or a call to action that you didn't have room for in the main body of your email.
Just make sure that your P.S. lines are relevant to the email's content and that they don't come across as being too salesy.
Some people will skim through your main email content, but read your P.S. line, so make it count!
P.S. And P.S. lines simply look cool 😛
🟢 Keep your email list clean and up to date
One of the most important things you can do to ensure your email marketing campaigns are effective is to keep your subscriber list clean and up to date.
This means removing any invalid or inactive subscribers from your list, and regularly verifying the accuracy of the remaining addresses.
This will help ensure that your emails are delivered to the right people and improve your chances of getting them opened and clicked.
There are also email list cleaning services to specifically improve your email scrubbing efforts.
🟢 Try segment-based approach
Another important email marketing tip is to segment your list properly. This means sorting your subscribers into different groups based on their interests, needs, or other criteria.
By segmenting your list, you can ensure that each email you send is relevant to the people reading it and more likely to get opened and clicked.
Marketing segmentation (including email marketing) is an essential tool for any business.
Segmented email campaigns produce 30% more opens and 50 percent more click-throughs than untargeted email campaigns.
Sending all emails to the entire list (without segmenting) is usually not an effective way of doing email marketing.
🟢 Offer instant gratification to increase sign ups
People love getting something for free, so offering a freebie in exchange for people's email addresses is a great way to increase sign ups.
Just make sure that the freebie you're offering is relevant to your business and that it's something that people will actually want.
Also, make sure that your freebie is immediately accessible after people sign up so that they don't get frustrated and unsubscribe.
🟢 Send emails at the right time
There's no magic time to send emails, but there are certain times that tend to work better than others.
In general, Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to be the best days to send emails, while mornings and afternoons tend to be the best times.
However, it's important to test different times and days to see what works best for your audience.
For example, Brian Dean of Backlinko recommends 11 AM EST because:
- at this time people on the East Coast and in Europe are at work
- by 11 AM they’ve already cleared out their morning inboxes meaning your email has better chances of getting noticed
Source: CoSchedule
🟢 Use marketing automation where needed
Email automation can help you save a lot of time while still delivering high-quality, personalized emails to your subscribers.
Most email marketing platforms offer automation functionality, so take advantage of it!
Once you've set up your automation, you'll be able to set up triggers that will send emails automatically based on certain conditions, such as when someone subscribes to your list or when they make a purchase.
🟢 Use A/B testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a great way to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
A/B testing involves sending out two different versions of an email to see which one performs better. For example, you could test different subject lines or different calls to action to see which one gets more people to click through to your website.
AB testing example from Mailerlite:
🟢 Don't forget about mobile devices
With more and more people reading emails on their mobile devices, it's important to make sure that your emails are optimized for mobile. 📱
This means using a responsive email template and keeping your email messages short and to the point (so they are easy to read on any mobile device).
According to one survey, 42.3% will simply delete non-optimized emails, while just 11.3% will read it anyway.
🟢 Don't forget about ad blockers
More and more people are using ad blockers these days, which means that your pop ups and other email opt-ins might not be seen by some of your potential subscribers.
There are some methods you can use to avoid this issue, such as implementing an ad blocker detection tool on your website. These tools will help identify when someone is using an ad blocker and then display a message asking the user to whitelist your site.
Statista data shows that ad blockers’ penetration increased from 15.7% in 2014 to 27% in 2021 in the US alone.
But the most effective approach here would be diversifying your opt-ins. For example, in addition to using a pop up, you could also include an opt in form at the bottom of your blog posts or in the sidebar. Opt-ins can also be included in text content as links. Ad blockers normally won't block your links, meaning that you'll still be able to collect email addresses even if someone is using an ad blocker.
🟢 Don't forget about a proper unsubscribe link
While you obviously want people to stay subscribed to your email list, you also need to make it easy for them to unsubscribe if they want to.
Include an unsubscribe link in every email you send out and make sure that it's easy to find. Users are paying attention to this type of minor details.
🟢 Test emails before you send them
Before you hit the "send" button, it's a good idea to test your email to make sure that everything looks the way it's supposed to.
Most email marketing platforms offer a preview feature that lets you see what your email will look like on different devices.
🟢 Landing pages are important
When people click on a link in your email, they should be taken to a landing page that's relevant to the email's content.
A good landing page will be
- relevant
- focused
- and easy to use
🟢 Re-engage subscribers when needed
If you have people on your email list who haven't engaged in a while, don't hurry to give up on them.
Give your email subscribers another chance!
It's a good idea to try to re-engage them.
You can do this by sending them a special offer or doing something else to try to get them interested in your emails again.
🟢 Use all available traffic channels to get more subscribers
There are many different ways to get new email subscribers. In addition to website traffic, you can also use social media, paid advertising, and even in-person events to grow your list.
The more traffic channels you use, the more likely you are to get new people in your email list. So don't limit yourself to just one or two channels - be sure to try out a few different ones!
🟢 Be cautious with promotional emails
Promotional emails can be a great way to promote your products or services. However, they can also be a turn-off for some people.
If you're going to send promotional emails, be sure to keep them relevant and targeted. And, as always, make it easy for people to unsubscribe if they want to.
🟢 Try to provide exclusive content
Provide exclusive content to your subscribers that they can't find anywhere else. This is an important component that could make your email marketing special.
Exclusivity is precious. Give your subscribers a real reason to stay subscribed!
🟢 Keep an eye on your analytics
Email marketing is useless if you're not keeping an eye on your analytics.
Make sure you're tracking things like open and clickthrough rates. This will help you to identify which emails are performing well and which ones need to be improved.
There are plenty of email marketing platforms that offer good analytics tools, so make sure you're using one of them.
Below, is the list of the 15 most important email metrics that will enhance your email campaign’s performance:
- Bounce rate
- Delivery rate
- Deliverability rate
- Spam rate
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Click-to-open rate
- Conversion rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- List growth rate
- Return on investment
- Read rate
- Reply rate
- Submission rate
- Email clients share
🟢 Test new strategies
Don't be afraid to experiment with your email marketing.
Try new things and see what works best for your audience.
There is no one perfect way to do email marketing, so find what works best for you and stick with it.
🟢 Encourage replies and communicate directly with your subscribers
Make sure you're encouraging people to reply to your emails.
Successful email marketers know that the best way to build a relationship with their subscribers is to communicate directly with them.
This can be done by offering something relevant in exchange for their feedback or by simply asking them a question.
Also, make sure you're actually responding to the people who do reply to your emails. Nothing will turn people off more than sending them an email and then never replying to their reply.
If you want to signal that your business is trustworthy and approachable, one of the best things you can do is establish direct contact with your users. This way, users will see that there is a real person(s) behind your brand who are open and friendly.
🟢 Review your overall email marketing strategy from time to time
As with any marketing strategy, it's important to review your email marketing strategy from time to time.
Even the most successful email marketing campaigns need to be tweaked and improved from time to time. As your business grows, your email marketing should grow with it.
So, take some time every few months to sit down and review your email marketing strategy.
See what's working and what's not and make changes accordingly. The landscape of email marketing is constantly changing, so you need to keep up with the latest trends and best practices.
🟢 Hire an email marketing manager if needed
Email marketing is a full-time job. If you're not able to dedicate the time and resources necessary to do it properly, then you can consider hiring an email marketing manager.
This of course depends on the resources available to you. If you're a small business or a one man show, then it might not be practical to hire an email marketing manager. But if you're a larger business, then it might be something to consider.
Freelancers and email marketing service providers could be another option if your resources are limited.
🟢 Conclusion
Email marketing can be a great way to grow your business, but it's not easy.
Email marketing is one of the best performing among all marketing strategies and can indeed help you grow business. Email marketers who use the email marketing tips and strategies mentioned above are sure to see their marketing efforts pay off.
Email marketing requires time, effort, and dedication but it is worth it.
If you're serious about it, then make sure you're using these essential email marketing tips listed on this page.