Email Marketing Best Practices

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing tactics to engage with customers, as well as build new relationships and generate leads. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 87% of marketers use email marketing to distribute their content organically. It allows you to personalise your message to your target audience, allowing you to build your database to continuously maximise engagement. However, it’s essential to follow best practices. In this article we explore strategies to help you increase open rates, engagement, and conversions that drive business growth, as well as avoid common pitfalls.

Subject lines and pre-headers

A gripping subject line and preheader are arguably one of the most important parts of your email, as it leads your audiences to either open your email or delete your email. In fact, 64% of recipients make a decision to open emails solely based on subject lines. (Barilliance, 2021 ). Take a look at our top 3 tips below to help you drive open rates:

1. Personalisation. There are many ways you can personalise your subject line or preheader. For example, using the recipient’s name or location can make the email feel more relevant and crafted for their specific needs. You can also include content that is specific to the contact, such as recent purchase. This makes recipients feel valued. 
2. Keep it concise. Many people read their emails on tablets or mobile devices, so keeping the subject line and preheader short allows the reader to get the information they need as quickly as possible. People tend to switch off from wordy and lengthy content.
3. Ask a question. This can help to draw readers in as it gives readers a reason to open your email. It also creates a sense of intrigue. However, it’s important that the content of your email gives the reader the answer, otherwise it is unlikely they will open your email again.
4. Avoid using spammy words. If you do use words such as “free” or “limited time”, make sure you are using the words in context. 
5. Create a sense of urgency. This can help to grab the recipient’s attention and reiterate the importance or time-sensitivity of the message. Emails that incorporate a sense of urgency have a much higher open rate than those that do not.

Segmentation & personalisation

As you start to email your customers, you can start to track what they are engaging with. This can help you to improve your strategy based on this information. Once you have the data, you can begin to segment your audience based on specific interests and engagement so that you can personalise your emails. Here are some ways you can segment your data:

• Customer or non-customer. For non-customers, you can create a programme to nurture these people in order to eventually convert them into customers. For customers you can create a programme to upsell them.
• Demographics (age, gender, job title, function, industry, company, education, interests, etc)
• Behaviour (customer loyalty, purchasing behaviour, engagement level, etc)

Email segmentation helps you to personalise your email to meet the needs of different groups within your audience. By doing so, you can boost conversion rates, increase open rates, improve your click through rates, reduce the number of unsubscribers, avoid the spam filter and boost customer engagement. Take a look through Adobe’s guide on how to segment your emails.

Optimising content

Content is kind when it comes to email marketing. As well as providing a compelling reason to open your email through the subject line and preheader, the content of your email should be optimised to help you engage readers and drive conversions. 

1. Start with an eye-catching headline. This is the first thing that people will see, so you need to ensure it’s interesting, informative and concise. 
2. People often forget to prioritise mobile responsiveness when emails are built on PC. The majority of emails are seen on mobile so it’s important that you use single-column layouts, clean fonts and responsive designs.
3. Ensure call to actions (CTAs) are clear in the email. If your goal is to encourage readers to take action, try to use creative language and include urgency and intrigue.

A good example of this is an email campaign that encompasses these elements from Under Amour. They use a short but powerful heading which provides a sense of inclusivity. It also has two clear CTAs so customers know exactly what to do.

Frequency and timing

When it comes to frequency and timing of your emails, it usually depends on numerous tests to understand the optimum time and frequency for maximised engagement. However, we recommend that sending an email two to three times per week seems to be the peak stat. As you build your database, you can also let your audience decide how often they would like to be contacted, which is a great way to keep in contact with your customers on their terms. 

It’s important to get the balance right, because sending emails too frequently can irritate your audience, but not sending them frequently enough might cause them to forget about you. It sounds counterproductive, but it’s also important to offer clear unsubscribe options. There’s nothing worse than wanting to unsubscribe from an email, but struggling to do so because you are hit with a list of options and pages to get through to do it. Making it easy for users to unsubscribe is more likely to gain their trust, and you may be able to contact them again at a later stage. 

A/B testing can also help you to compare the performance of two emails sent at different times to see which one received the most engagement and open rates. It’s important to conduct regular A/B tests as your users are always changing, and their personal circumstances may have changed too. For example, a user who may have experienced a recent heartbreak may not want to hear about Valentine’s Day anymore, so it’s important that you constantly offer your audience the option to not hear about certain seasonal events and key dates.

Conclusion

The perfect email marketing strategy is one that requires testing, learning and constant adapting. Segmentation can help you to personalise your emails to help you achieve your marketing goals, and choosing the right content and email frequency is key to retaining your customers as well as generating new ones.