Email marketing is unquestionably one of the best digital marketing strategies. What if I tell you that you can increase your marketing profit by following some simple tips? Today I’m going to show you how you can skyrocket your email click-throughs and open rates to improve your digital marketing ROI. By following these 10 email marketing best practices, you can build a long-term relationship with your audience, generate more leads and conversions.
Let’s get started!
1. Welcome Emails
Welcome emails are critical to your business. They help you develop a first impression, set the right tone, and improve customer engagement.Welcome emails, or confirmation emails, are sent to your audience when they sign up or subscribe to your blog, make a purchase, or register for an event.
Research shows welcome emails have higher open and click-through rates. According to a study by Experian, welcome emails have 57.8% higher open rates than other types of promotional emails. And again, when it comes to clicks, welcome emails outperform others.
By sending automated welcome emails to your customers, you can not only acknowledge and thank them but also get confirmed opt-ins. This saves you from sending emails to invalid addresses, reduces the bounce rate, and keeps your email list clean.
BONUS TIP: Whenever possible, personalize your welcome emails by including the contact first name in the subject line and the email text. Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates.
2. Create Strong Subject Lines
Turn that meh moment to wow with strong subject lines. Like it or not, your audience will judge you based on what and how you craft your subject lines. So take a moment to understand buyer psychology.
47% of consumers say that whether they open an email or not solely depends on the subject line. And 69% of them mark emails as spam based on the subject lines.
The best way to write strong subject lines is to personalize them, make them conversational, and interesting. It’s also helpful to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity, as most people suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out).
As noted above, you always want to remember that personalizing the subject line can help improve the click-through-rate up to 22.2% percent.
And keep the subject line short—between 17 to 24 characters.
BONUS TIP: Want to really stand out in your contact’s inbox? Use an emoji in your subject line. Companies who use emojis in their email subject lines have a higher open rate of as much as 56% over companies who don’t.
3. Avoid the Spam Box
How many times have you wondered if there was a magical way to prevent emails from going to the spam box? According to reports, marketing emails alone are responsible for 70% of spam reports.
Email marketing takes a lot of effort to be successful, and you surely don’t want your emails to land the spam folders or be reported. To avoid the spam box, follow these tips:
Don’t send emails to people who never subscribed. That means buying email lists is a strict no-no. Many email service providers don’t allow sending emails to audiences who haven’t given their consent. Moreover, sending emails without consent means a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act resulting in a hefty penalty.
Avoid misleading subject lines. As mentioned before, subject lines alone decide if your email goes to the spam box or not. So write the subject lines thoughtfully.
Avoid spammy words in the email. Words like “buy now”, “act now”, “call now”, “order now”, “promotion”, “urgent”.
Avoid too many and unnecessary emojis, punctuation in the subject lines.
Don’t use all caps.
BONUS TIP: If you really want to avoid having your emails go to spam, try sending a text version along with HTML. Sending only HTML is a common cause of getting routed to the spam folder, so make sure you set up your emails to send in the MIME format (HTML & Plain Text).
4. Track Email Metrics
You cannot fix what you don’t know is broken. That’s why it is so important to track your email marketing metrics. By tracking and monitoring the right metrics like the click-through-rate and open rate, you will know if your email marketing strategy is working or it needs further improvement.
To be able to do that, you need the right tool like AWeber. AWeber is one of the best and most trusted email marketing software that helps with tracking, automation, and more. They use tracking pixels to get you accurate reports.
Your emails will generate the best value by regularly evaluating the reports, taking action on them, and improving the ROI.
BONUS TIP: To take your tracking even further to develop a well-rounded digital marketing strategy, tie your email metrics into your Google Analytics account. Google Analytics enables you to set up multiple conversion goals, track them, and integrate with most email marketing platforms.
5. Choose the Right Email Frequency
Every business is unique, and so is the right email frequency. What’s working for a B2B company may not be the right choice for a B2C organization. So before jumping to a conclusion, I suggest you carefully monitor email performance and evaluate how your audience responds to your emails.
You don’t want to overwhelm your customers with too many emails, nor do you want them to completely forget about you because you haven’t been consistent with sending emails.
According to a report, 33.33% of marketers choose to send weekly emails to their audience.
37% of B2B and B2C businesses send 2-3 emails per month. So, as a rule, you want to make sure you are touching your contacts at least 2x per month via email to stay top-of-mind.
BONUS TIP: A few ways you can stay consistent with your email marketing efforts is to set up a monthly newsletter that goes out on the same day of each month. Or, whenever you publish a new blog post or release a new podcast, send an update to your list and let them know!
6. Check Your Sender Reputation
Don’t confuse email deliverability with email delivery. Email delivery means if the recipient’s server successfully delivered the emails or failed to do so because of invalid addresses or some other reasons. While email deliverability means if your emails land in the inbox or somewhere else like the spam folder.
And much of this can depend on your sender reputation or IP reputation. Several factors are used to create your reputation, including the quality of the contacts you are sending to, the level of engagement recipients show, the volume of emails sent, and the quality of the content in your emails.
Research shows that 1 out of 5 emails never make it to the inbox. As a good practice, always test your cold emails, promotional, and marketing emails using the right tools and check the email deliverability score.
BONUS TIP: A few things to avoid to keep your sender reputation solid would be misspelled email addresses (that bounce when sending), using purchased email lists, failing to clean your email list and discard those that are not engaging, not being consistent with how often you send email to your list.
7. Write Engaging Email Text
Your email is receiving good open rates, but you’re not able to generate conversions. If this sounds familiar, the problem can be with the email text.
Email copywriting is indeed a time-intensive process, and it can take up a sizable chunk of your day. To make sure your audience appreciates your hard work and engages with the copy, pay attention to the following points:
No one likes to talk to a robot. Write content that is conversational, informative, empathetic.
Make the first line impressive. That’s your chance to establish a bond with your customers, don’t waste it.
Align the email body with the headline. Discuss the same topic as in the subject line.
BONUS TIP: To encourage interaction and engagement in your emails, include a call-to-action (CTA). This could be anything from having them click a link to read a blog post or download a new resource. Whatever you choose, make it irresistible by ensuring it’s something of strong value for your audience.
8. A/B Test Emails
A/B testing is simply the way to create more than one variant of an email and send them to separate audience groups to understand which variant gets better results. A/B split testing your emails is a great way to evaluate and improve email marketing performance.
Without A/B testing, you can still monitor performance, but you’ll probably never know why some emails get more open rates while some fall flat. I strongly recommend split testing your emails if you’re serious about improving conversions and audience engagement.
BONUS TIP: When using A/B testing in your emails, only test one factor at a time. Typically testing your subject line or call-to-action provide the best insights into how to improve your emails.
9. Handle Email Unsubscribes Like a Pro
Whether you’re sending cold emails or newsletters to confirmed subscribers, the CAN-SPAM law requires you to allow the recipients a way to unsubscribe and opt-out from receiving emails if they choose to do so.
When your audience unsubscribes, make sure that you collect their feedback. Ask them why they’re opting out. This data can help you understand if your email marketing strategy is on the right path or needs improvement. Additionally, you could offer them a way to update preferences and ‘opt-down’ versus opt-out, which could mean less frequent emails or emails only pertaining to specific areas of your business.
BONUS TIP: Use your opt-out page as an opportunity to strengthen the relationship with your contact – and maybe they won’t leave you! Use creative text or humor that fits your branding to reengage the user. Here are some great examples.
10. Thank You Page Strategy
Whether your audience is opting in or out, creating a great “Thank You” message can make a positive experience. A thank you page is often a stand-alone page that acknowledges the decision of your customers and helps you improve the brand reputation.
A great thank you page has elements like a confirmation message, site navigation options, offers and promotions, and much more. Smart marketers also take the opportunity to ask for referrals through thank you pages and generate more business. Using humor is another way to craft great thank you pages.
BONUS TIP: Want to deepen the relationship and start building trust faster with your new contacts? Share something personal about your company and team and set expectations for how often they’ll hear from you.
Email marketing is a great way to communicate with your audience, nurture leads, and generate profit for your business. If you want to maximize the returns and create a positive brand experience, make sure to follow the email marketing best practices discussed above and start repeating the benefits.
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