Best Email Marketing Practices for Sending Better Emails

Now the world is competitive that is increasing day by day. So, it’s easy for your message to get lost in the inbox. Over 280 billion emails are sent every day, waiting to be opened and clicked, but often unread. How to send better emails you can know these tips-best email marketing practices.

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With so much competition to get your email in front of your subscribers, it can seem overwhelming to invest time in an email marketing strategy. But before you write it off, know that commercial email has one of the highest ROIs of digital marketing tactics. For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you earn $ 38 back.

Worth taking a look at, right? Fortunately, there are plenty of tips to help you give your email marketing strategy a competitive edge. In this article, we’re going to talk about 11 tips. So you can start using it right now to increase your email and subscription conversion rates.

We make a list to The first thing.

• Build a strong subscriber list
• Choosing the right automation platform
• Keep your message short and sweet
• Create the perfect subject line
• Engage in dialogue with your audience
• Add social sharing to your emails
• Include a strong call to action
• Don’t overwhelm your followers
• Avoid the spam trap
• Don’t forget about mobile optimization
• Test, measure, and repeat

1. Build a strong subscriber list-Best Email Marketing Practices

No matter how strong your email marketing strategy is, if you don’t have a subscriber list, you will never reap the rewards. Email marketing, according to the Data and Marketing Association, offers an excellent return on investment – a 4300% return on your marketing investment.

To increase that ROI in a way that impacts your bottom line, you need to build, maintain, and grow your email subscriber list. So how do you start raking in the listings? Here are three easy starting points.

Start a blog

If you don’t have a blog yet, don’t think about it, do it. Marketers who use blogging to generate leads and signups see 97% more inbound leads on average than those who don’t blog. We can also vouch for this personally at Kinsta. Check out the SEO checklist we used to increase our traffic by 571%.

Just one of their blog posts brings in between 600 and 800 visits per day. That’s 600 to 800 chances of getting someone to sign up for your email list. Who doesn’t want a little more traffic?

Best Email Marketing Practices-Membership Forms

Add membership forms to everything. People won’t spend time looking for a “Subscribe” button. Bring theirs. Unbounce found that on-click pop-ups performed 1,147% better than their output pop-ups.

If you don’t want to do pop-ups, you can do what we do at Kinsta and add a sliding panel (as seen below) at the bottom of each post after a reader has scrolled 75%. It’s a little less intrusive but still very effective! Take a look at the different lead generation plugins you can use.

Best Email Marketing Practices-Social networks

Use social media to your advantage. Optimize your bio by including a link to your newsletter, consider posting an ad to link content, and distribute content on your social platforms. Nathalie Lussier increased her list to 3,000 subscribers with her first email discussion and marketing challenge on Twitter.

In this article, we share more tips on building lists: How to Build an Email Mailing List Quickly and Effectively (Proven Strategies)

Once you’ve built a large contact list, what should you do with it?

2. Choose the right automation platform

75% of email revenue is generated from automated email campaigns. It makes sense, right?

As your list grows, you can’t be a frenzied hamster on an endless wheel of manual emails. You have to automate if you want to scale up.

72% of marketers say automation is good for their organizational strategy and 78% of marketers say the benefits of marketing automation go directly to revenue.

So how do you make automation work?

First tip

When you gain a new customer or subscriber, make sure there is a process in place to send them a welcome email within the first 24 hours. It’s worth it.

Welcome emails generate an average of 320% more revenue than other promotional emails.

domino improved its open rates by 11% and increased its click-through rate by 23% just by optimizing its welcome emails.

Second tip

Consider breaking up longer emails into drip campaigns. The open rates for drip campaigns are 80% higher than for non-automated single-send emails, and the average click-through rates for drip campaign emails are three. times higher. Sony saw a 157% increase in clicks through its Sony Rewards club member loyalty campaign.

And Sony is not alone. There are a lot of companies that have used automation to skyrocket their growth. Monin, a gourmet flavored syrup brand, has used email automation to segment its customers between B2C and B2B as they need different marketing campaigns.

It worked. Monin’s Mother’s Day automated email campaign generated almost 40% of email revenue in one month. This is a 20% increase from the previous year.

Pelton sends welcome emails as soon as a customer purchases one of their stationary bikes or downloads the app.

Confused about which email marketing platform to choose?

Take a look at this list of recommendations. We are huge MailChimp fans at Kinsta.

Now that you know when and how to automate your campaigns, it’s time to start thinking about content.

3. Keep your message short and sweet

Almost half of the consumers say they receive too many emails. Think about your own inbox. It’s a constant struggle to sift through dozens of emails every day to get the information you want, isn’t it?

What do the readers want in your email?

Whereas blog posts and online articles can get away with a higher number of words. Your email readers don’t want to read a mini-novel. They want you to get to the point. Take the example of Postmates. After a brief introduction, they go straight to the reader’s benefit, followed by a clear call to action.

It wasn’t just about seeing which email had the highest open rate, but also determining which copy allowed a customer to take a specific action.

If you don’t think brevity matters, remember that the average adult’s attention span is less than eight seconds.

What’s the right slider for email length?

While not a universal metric, a recent Boomerang study found that marketing emails of 125 words or less had a response rate of around 50%.

Take a look at this example from Evernote. It’s short, sweet, and with a clear call to action. Readers can digest the message and the CTA in seconds.

Paypal also does a great job of using the image instead of text to convey the action. For example, this email is less than 40 words but expresses the simplicity of using Paypal for an easy payment experience.

4. Create the perfect subject line-Best Email Marketing Practices

If you get the wrong subject, the content doesn’t matter. You’ll never get the preview in your audience’s inbox. 47% of readers decide whether or not to open an email based solely on the subject line.

So how do you get your readers to open your post? One way is to practice the “benefit, logic or threat” method, which is simply to offer an obvious benefit, a “common sense” statement, or “don’t miss” content.

Email benefit-Best Email Marketing Practices

For example, Lonely Planet is offering a clear “profit” with the headline “Buy One Get One Free All Up To Friday” in that email. Readers benefit by clicking on the email for information about the promotion.

As an example of “logic”, take a look at this email from Barkbox. Their members clearly love their pets and are logically very likely to celebrate their birthdays. The subject line “Add Puppy Birthday Pie to Your April Barkbox” is a logical appeal to the main Barkbox audience.

Once you have identified your “hook” make sure it is short. Invespshows research shows that readers prefer short, personalized topics. Grammarly does this well with its “personalized advantage” approach.

It’s short and to the point, with the obvious advantage of offering helpful advice. And don’t forget to proofread all your emails before sending them.

Now that your topic is a work of art and your reader is eager to open your email, what’s next?

5. Engage in dialogue with your audience

We have already talked about the importance of brevity. This shouldn’t come at the expense of audience engagement, however. While marketers say a higher engagement rate is their number one priority when it comes to email marketing, they also admit that engagement isn’t an easy task.

How do you make sure your readers paying attention?

Give them a reason to interact with you after reading your email.

For example, you could try asking them questions. The human brain is plugged in with the desire to answer a question once it is asked. Even if you don’t ask a straightforward answer, a well-asked question leaves your mark in your reader’s mind.

Second, a link to the relevant content. It keeps your readers engaged with your brand. Pardot offers a simple tool to help you measure the engagement level of your email content to see if you’re hitting the target or leaving readers bored and confused.

Organizations are creative in their engagement strategies. Hammock’s marketing team conducted an experiment to increase engagement levels with their newsletter emails.

Instead of heavy content, they cropped, cropped the email into an “ideas email” instead of a newsletter, and “teased” deeper content instead. to throw everything at once.

It worked. They saw open rates increase by 48% with their new format. Now that you’ve connected and responded to your audience, it’s time to expand your reach.

6. Add social sharing to your emails

Make it easy for your audience to share your post, otherwise, they won’t. Emails with social share buttons have a 158% higher click-through rate than those without.

When thinking about the design, make it clear what your social sharing buttons are sharing. We all clicked on the “Share” icon to find links to something other than the content we were reading.

Take a look at this example from Salesforce. Social sharing buttons make it clear what is being shared and on which platforms.

80% of marketers say their social media sharing efforts have increased web traffic. This is an easy addition to your emails that adds value to your readers and your bottom line. Check out this email from Ballard’s (a European design store)

Each box has a simple and clean design with clearly stated benefits for each social sharing platform. You can also consider adding extensions to your blog to make it easier to share content between your site and your social platforms.

Speaking of clarity, have you asked your readers what actions you want them to take after reading your email?

7. Include a strong call to action

It needs to tell your readers what you want. Otherwise, they’ll never know. Every email needs a loud and clear call to action (CTA). Research shows that a CTA can increase your click-through rate by over 370%.

Email marketing does lend itself well to personalized CTAs (or what some call “smart CTAs”). In fact, HubSpot found that targeting a CTA for the benefit of the user-generated 202% more leads than generic CTAs.

CTAs come in different shapes and flavors. To commemorate its 20th anniversary, EasyJet, the airline, has launched an email campaign featuring warm accents that complement the brand’s signature orange color. CTAs tell a story to guide readers on their journey.

Of the 12,473,608 unique emails sent, open rates were “over 100%” higher than the average for EasyJet newsletters – with click-through rates 25% higher… [and] in all markets 7.5% of easyJet customers who received the fully customized version then made a reservation within 30 days ”.

Experiment with button styles and colors to see what your audience prefers, by performing a few simple A / B tests.

Once you’ve gained popularity through audience engagement and start seeing more conversions from your CTAs, it’s time to think about how often you can reach your subscriber list.

8. Don’t overwhelm your followers

One of the most difficult pieces of the email marketing puzzle is knowing how often to contact your subscribers. If you do too much, they will unsubscribe; if you do too little, they lose interest in your brand. It can also vary depending on the amount of new content you can share as well.

Most consumers prefer to receive a promotional email at least once a month, and 15% of consumers said they wouldn’t be bothered to receive one every day. The right cursor is probably somewhere in the middle, but it’s up to you to find it. It varies by industry, audience, and content. At Kinsta we send out our newsletter once a week.

You will need to monitor unsubscribe rates after each campaign and adjust your sending frequency accordingly. One way to find out how often your audience wants to hear from you is to simply ask them.

Take the example of the 730DC. The Washington DC-based volunteer organization knows its audience wants frequent updates on events and volunteer opportunities. As a result, they send out a daily newsletter. They also researched the best time of day to make sure their posts are seen by their target audience.

Still not sure how often to send emails? Benjamin Murray, Marketing Director of Peldon Rose, offers this advice :

Quality over Quantity – Email can be profitable, but that’s no excuse for not producing quality content to deliver to a targeted audience.

You should also give your followers the choice of how often they hear from you by turning on contact preferences, which are simply a way for your followers to tell you how often to email them.

This increases the likelihood that they will stay involved with your content and will make them less likely to unsubscribe if they have control over the number of emails they receive.

9. Avoid the spam trap-Best Email Marketing Practices

In 2003, the FTC passed CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing) regulations. The fact that marketers are included in a law that protects citizens from unsolicited pornography should tell you how serious people are when it comes to getting scammed.

The FTC site describes the rules in detail, and it’s worth reading to make sure you’re following the rules, but here are some of the simpler rules of thumb that will help you avoid being considered a spammer:

• Do not use all caps
• Avoid strings of exclamation marks (!!!!!)
• Don’t buy email lists
• Do not embed forms in your emails (use a link to these forms instead).
• Don’t include attachments in your marketing emails
• Avoid spam trigger words (free, guaranteed, no-obligation, etc.)
• Stay away from the red police
• Use the spell checker
• Do not fill your email with keywords
• Remember to give readers the option to unsubscribe.

For every 12.5 million emails that are flagged as spam, only one person responds. Talk about a bad return on investment. You don’t need to take your time or the risk. If you want to make sure you’re complying, use a tool like GlockApps to run your content through a spam checker.

There is nothing worse than carefully crafting an email, only to find that it went straight to your audience’s spam folder.

So you should also authenticate your emails when you add DKIM and SPF records. If you want to learn you need to check out our in-depth tutorial on how to authenticate your emails.

10. Don’t forget about mobile optimization

Mobile traffic overtook desktop computer traffic in 2016, and this trend is not slowing down. Email marketing consultant Jordie van Rijn suggests marketers :

“Design like you’re absolutely right, then optimize like you’re wrong from the start.”

In other words: when thinking about an email design, make sure you optimize it for your mobile users. Consumers prefer to buy from a site or mobile app. And, as a seller, you are expected to deliver a user-friendly, mobile experience that pushes the consumer all the way to the purchase funnel.

Sellers who don’t optimize both email and mobile homepage can scare off potential buyers – permanently. Up to 75% of emails are opened on mobile devices and 57% of users say they won’t recommend a brand with a poorly optimized mobile experience, let alone buy from them.

Still, need proof? Boxed sends weekly emails to its users. They saw a 133% increase in conversion to purchase by integrating deep links into their mobile app.

So, how do you ensure a good mobile messaging experience?

A few things to consider: reduce the size of images to avoid slow loading times. Some email channels (like Outlook) block the rendering of images. Use a tool like TinyPNG to compress the images so you don’t get stuck in the spam folder.

Second, increase the size of links and buttons in your email so that readers can easily select the ones they want on the first try. Fun fact: According to an MIT study, an adult index finger measures an average of 1.6-2 cm, which equates to around 45-57 pixels on a mobile device.

Don’t give mobile users the dreaded “sausage fingers” complex. Make it easy for them to click on whatever they want.

Finally, don’t forget to include a plain text version. Even if you’ve worked on your beautiful HTML design, some readers just prefer to read plain text.

If you are still not sure whether your content will translate seamlessly on mobile, use a tool like an Email on Acid.

After you’ve designed, optimized your mobile, and launched your first campaign, don’t forget to see how well it works for you.

11. Test, measure, and repeat-Best Email Marketing Practices

We’ve all heard the adage “what isn’t measured doesn’t get better”. Email marketing is no exception. Without defined metrics and ongoing monitoring, your results will eventually stagnate and you’ll wonder what went wrong. If your email platform has built-in A / B testing, which most are doing now, this is the place to start seeing what resonates best with your audience.

During his 2012 campaign, Barack Obama raised more than $ 690 million in donations, in part through his unwavering commitment to sending A / B tests by email.

You can track email metrics in Google Analytics using UTM tags. To view your campaign, go to the Acquisition> Campaigns section. Many email marketing tools also have the ability to automatically add UTM tags for you.

Whatever parameters you choose to measure, don’t do it just once. After changing your strategy, stop and measure again. An email marketing strategy should always be evolving.

Summary

There are nearly three billion email users worldwide, sifting through almost 300 billion emails per day. With a median return on investment of 122%, email marketing remains one of the smartest and most profitable tools available to marketing teams.

But if the average consumer receives more than 70 emails a day, marketers need to get creative to reduce inbox noise. Email marketing is not a lost cause. It’s an opportunity for the kind of creative and popular marketing that attracts a lot of people to the marketing arena in the first place.

The danger lies in complacency, which is simply sending cookie-cutter emails year after year without measuring success or planning for growth. As Kath Pay, the founder of Holistic e-mail Marketing puts it:

To see also-Why is it important to work on email marketing?

Email is a push channel, so we need to push it to work harder.

Carefully consider your email design, include clear calls to action, and constantly test and improve your campaigns. Email marketing will almost certainly increase your subscription rates and conversions if you follow these and other proven and true best practices.

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