Email marketing is a powerful tool that can help businesses reach a wide audience with minimal effort. However, email marketing is not without its challenges.
In order to maximize the effectiveness of utilizing email, it’s important to be aware of email marketing best practices. This includes understanding how to properly utilize email campaigns, crafting engaging content, and using strategies to avoid spam filters.
By following best practices, you can better ensure that your email marketing campaigns will be successful.
Why Email Marketing Is Important
Before we get into best practices, let’s touch on why email marketing is so important for your business.
Even in the vast digital landscape of today, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to reach customers. Unlike other forms of marketing, email allows businesses to directly target specific individuals with custom messages.
Additionally, email is an inexpensive way to reach a large audience, making it an ideal choice for small businesses and startups.
Perhaps most importantly, email marketing can be highly effective in building relationships with potential and current customers. By regularly sending helpful information or exclusive offers, businesses can create a loyal customer base that is more likely to make purchases.
This is why we strongly believe email marketing should be an essential part of any business’s marketing strategy.
Email Marketing Automation Best Practices
Email marketing automation does the heavy lifting for business owners by following up with leads automatically in real time. In order to utilize email automations, you first need an email autoresponder.
An email autoresponder is a software that can be used to send a response to an email message or to send a series of email messages. Email autoresponders are often used by businesses to respond to customer inquiries, or to send follow-up messages or updates on new products and services.
Autoresponders can be set up so that they send an immediate response, or can send responses after a certain amount of time has passed. They can also send customized responses to prospects based on the actions a prospect does or does not take.
Customized Email Marketing
Customized email marketing is a technique that involves sending customized messages to prospects based on their individual behavior.
For example, if a prospect opts into a mailing list, they might receive a series of customized emails that provide more information. Alternatively, if a prospect does not take any action, they might receive a different email that encourages them to do so.
If a prospect clicks on a link in an email, an autoresponder can be used to send them a customized message with more information about the specific product or service they’re interested in based on which link they clicked on.
Customized email marketing allows businesses to provide a more relevant and personal experience for each individual, which can lead to better conversions and higher customer satisfaction rates.
While this is a very effective way to nurture prospects and turn them into customers, anytime you’re using email marketing and autoresponders there are a number of best practices that should be followed.
Email Marketing Best Practices To Avoid Spam
When it comes to email marketing, the number one thing you want to avoid is having your emails marked as spam. In order to do that, follow these best practices:
Use “Seasoned” Email Addresses For Bulk Campaigns
Sending bulk campaigns means that you’re sending emails out to a large group of people. Never do this without seasoning your email address first. To “season” means to warm it up.
To do this you start by sending a small number of emails from that address and then gradually increase the number of emails you send per day. This builds the email address’ credibility, which will make it less likely to get marked as spam.
Avoid Using Images
While using images can be visually appealing, there’s a high probability that they will trigger spam filters.
Email Marketing Subject Lines
You can write the greatest email in the world, but if your prospect doesn’t open it then it’s completely useless. This is why having a compelling subject line is critical.
Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when crafting subject lines:
Avoid Spam Trigger Words
Using certain words in your subject line can trigger spam filters. Avoid using words that may appear to make exaggerated claims or that sound suspicious or unethical.
Examples of these trigger words include:
- Anything to do with money: “money back”, “profit”, “cash”, “price”, “credit”, “$$$”
- Be careful with special offer words: “act now”, “giving away”, “guarantee”
- Superlatives: “once in a lifetime”, “you will not believe your eyes”
Split Testing
Always split test subject lines. Craft at least two different subject lines for each email and track which one receives the highest open rate. Then test the winner against a new subject line. Do this testing against a small portion of your list, then when you identify the ‘winner’ roll out the campaign to the full list.
This is a great way to continually improve open rates.
Best Practices For Email Marketing Design
Your email marketing design doesn’t need to be over the top for it to be effective. Here are best practices to keep in mind:
Stay On Brand
Use your brand logo and colors in your email design. It should always be clear to your readers who the email is from.
Keep It Simple
As we previously mentioned, images and other elements can trigger spam filters, so keep your email design very clean and simple.
Readers also have short attention spans so make sure your email copy not only piques their interest from the start, but is also concise and to the point.
Mobile Friendly
81% of emails are opened on mobile devices. This means it’s critical that your emails are mobile friendly. Always send a test email and view it on a mobile device before sending to prospects.
Email Marketing CTA Best Practices
Without a proper call to action (CTA), recipients of your email are unlikely to take desired actions such as clicking through to a landing page or making a purchase.
Make Your CTA Clear
Your CTA should provide a clear and concise way for recipients to know what you want them to do next. It also helps to focus recipients’ attention on the most important part of your email.
Use Enticing Language
While “Click Here” is a commonly used CTA, it isn’t a very enticing one. Here are a few examples of more exciting CTA’s:
“Get 50% Off Today”
“Shop Our Collection”
“Show Me How”
“Learn More”
Size And Placement
Make sure that your CTA’s stand out from the rest of the text and that they are easy to click on.
Email Marketing KPIs
Any business that wants to succeed with email marketing needs to be tracking certain key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs will provide valuable insights into whether or not your email campaigns are effective, and can help you identify areas that need improvement.
Some of the most important email marketing KPIs include deliverability rate, open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate. Most email autoresponders will track this data for you so you can easily view these stats.
By monitoring these KPIs on a regular basis, you can make sure that your email marketing efforts are driving results. If you’re not seeing the results you want, don’t be afraid to experiment with different strategies until you find what works best for your business.
Questions About Best Practices Of Email Marketing?
Following the best practices outlined in this article will help you avoid common mistakes and get the most out of your email marketing campaigns.
However, if you find that you still have questions or are interested in outsourcing your email marketing, we would be happy to help you.
Here at The Alchemy Consulting Group, we specialize in email marketing and helping our clients nurture prospects and convert those prospects into paying customers. Contact us today at 877-978-2110 or email us at gordon@thealchemyconsultinggroup.com.
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