While email marketing strategy may not get the attention other avenues of marketing get, it’s still a vital and excellent way to foster leads, build brand awareness, and convert more clients and customers. The fact is, you’re more likely to stay top-of-mind if you have a regular stream of communication with your email list. All the emails in the world, however, won’t help boost your business if they’re ineffective.
To help you kick off your next campaign on the right foot, we’re taking a look at email marketing and the best practices to get notice.
Email Marketing Best Practices
Email has become the predominant way for potential clients and customers to stay informed about the brands and products they care about. Each day, millions of email campaigns make their way into inboxes with news, offers, and tips. Each of these emails works to maintain a relationship while growing your email list to drive traffic and, ultimately, conversions.
How do you get people to open your emails, though? Users make a split-second decision about whether or not to open an email, meaning your window of opportunity to grab their attention is extremely slim. To counteract this and give your campaigns the highest amount of success, it’s critical that you implement email marketing best practices for every campaign you send such as:
- Establishing a consistent frequency for sending emails
- Try various sending times
- Don’t use a “no-reply” email address
- Plan ahead for special dates and holidays
- Grab attention in the subject line
- Set up an automated drip campaign
- Have clear CTAs
- Optimize preview text
Email Campaign Frequency
Fostering the relationship between your brand and your email list is essential for driving traffic and increasing conversions. To optimize the success of your email campaigns and get your brand notices, the first on our list of email marketing best practices is setting a regular frequency. You can’t expect your email list to not hear from you for months on end and then follow through as you send random newsletters or updates. Instead, setting up a regular frequency keeps these leads consistently warm to your communication and helps keep you top-of-mind.
Data shows that 2 to 5 emails per month is optimal for getting your emails noticed and opened. Consider teasing your next campaign towards the end to engage your audience early and maximize the potential they’ll explore your next email, as well.
Try Various Sending Times
Next up on our list of email marketing best practices to get noticed is scheduling your email campaign for delivery at the optimal time. This can take a little trial and error. The typical rule of thumb was Tuesday, 10am as the best time to send emails in years past. The issue with that is that it became common knowledge and suddenly inboxes were filled at 10am and the effect was not only lost, but practically reversed.
Instead of delivering when everyone else seems to be, play around with different delivery times to see which garners the best engagement rates and make that your new normal. You don’t have to stick with it forever, either. Consider retesting your times every so often to adjust as needed to the most optimal current delivery time for your audience.
Don’t Use “No-Reply” Email Addresses
If email marketing best practices center around personalization and engaging with your audience, then using “no-reply” email addresses is clearly a bad idea. Having these emails takes away the personal nature of communicating with the people on your email list and makes it feel more generic.
In addition to the brand trust and personalization factors, you also need to stay in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act which says you shouldn’t be sending emails from “no-reply” addresses regardless. Doing so can increase the risk of being caught by spam filters or blocked from delivery at all.
Plan Emails for Special Dates and Holidays
We can’t talk about email marketing best practices and leave out planning ahead for special dates like holidays. Holidays and special dates can be some of the biggest marketing opportunities for companies. Making sure you’re communicating throughout special dates and holiday seasons gives you the chance to share special offers.
Pro Tip: Create holiday templates early to avoid putting it together last-minute. Save time and beat your competitors out!
Grab Attention in the Subject Line
Continuing on with email marketing best practices comes the subject line. A good subject line is absolutely essential for maximizing how many people open your email. Boring subject line? Trash. In fact, one simple email marketing strategy is the curiosity gap subject line.
A curiosity gap is providing the reader with enough information to hook their attention, but stopping before giving away all the information to require their follow up action. Put into use for email marketing best practices, this could be like referencing tips inside, but not giving away what they are. Make your subject line count and see how it changes the game for your email marketing strategy.
Set Up Automated Drip Campaigns
While email marketing is a powerful tool, it doesn’t have to be a time-consuming one all the time! Some email marketing best practices digital marketing professionals follow include automating tasks like an introductory drip-campaign to actively engage with new subscribers without having to manually create and send otherwise time-consuming tasks. Drip campaigns are the perfect opportunity to provide an initial offer, introduce your subscriber to your brand, and engage with them on a personal level to warm the lead without being spammy.
Have Clear CTAs
You won’t find a list of email marketing tips without addressing the need for clear Calls-to-Action (CTAs). Clear CTAs direct your readers in a concise way, persuading them to take the action you want. Unclear verbiage or giving too many choices may result in taking the wrong action, even unsubscribing from your list. In addition to presenting your desired action clearly, you should also strive to keep your main CTA above the fold for optimal visibility.
Optimize Preview Text
Last, though not least, on our list of email marketing best practices is optimizing preview text. Making the most of your email preview text can go a long way to improving your engagement. In fact, one report showed that using a preheader in your email campaign can result in upwards of a 22% boost in both open and click rates. So try crafting clever preview text to enhance the effectiveness of your next email campaign and see the result it makes.
As you can see, there are lots of email marketing best practices to help get you noticed and increase engagement. Finding ways to personalize your campaigns while offering high-quality content goes a long way to establishing and maintaining a loyal subscriber base. Play with delivery times, stick to a regular email schedule, and be concise to see the improvements in your next campaign.
