Email Marketing Is Not Dead: 10 Best Practices for Success

Paige White

Email Marketing Is Not Dead: 10 Best Practices for Success

Marketers send billions of emails across the world every day. These campaigns can play a key role in improving customer engagement, raising conversion rates, and growing revenue -- but only if you have the right email marketing strategy.

Over the years, we’ve discovered a few key facts:

Emails with personalized subject lines are opened about half the time.
Sending at least three “abandoned cart” emails results in significantly more orders than a single email.
Adding videos and images can dramatically increase click rates.

Here are a few more effective email best practices to help you get the most bang for your marketing buck:

Segment Your Emails

Consider such factors as location, engagement level, and customer type to accurately segment your emails. For first-time customers or customers who have never made a purchase, you can also include first-time discounts. For customers who have made multiple purchases, segment them for a customer loyalty program or showcase your appreciation and promote products that complement previous purchases.

Update Your Contact Database

Some contacts won’t ever open your emails or will unsubscribe from your email campaign. Keeping the least-engaged recipients on your mailing list can ruin your open rate and make your campaign numbers look worse. It's best to analyze the quality of your campaigns against your loyal recipients. Regularly remove contacts who haven’t engaged with your emails for a certain period of time.

Drive Action with Email Subject Lines

Use different writing formats to craft your subject lines. In addition to a personalized subject line, other effective ones include those that generate curiosity, provide an offer, communicate scarcity or use statistics. Make sure your subject line is clear, concise, and compelling, and don't oversell your email content. Once you write a subject line, run A/B tests with different versions of it to understand what works for your audience.

Send Emails at the Right Time

Optimal timing can vary by industry, but Tuesdays and Thursdays are generally good days for email campaigns. (Avoid sending emails over a weekend.) Ideally, you’ll want to conduct a few tests and see what works best for you. Transactional emails, such as a confirmation email, should be sent as soon as a purchase is made.

Use Content Best Practices

To get the attention of your audience, use personalized emails with contacts’ names. The email copy should be compelling and relevant to your brand. It also should make a convincing argument to act promptly by putting important information upfront and the details “below the fold.”

Keep paragraphs short and concise with bullet points or headings. Use formatting options strategically to highlight text and bold phrases to draw attention. Incorporate images or videos to add value to your email and encourage engagement.

Position Your Logo Correctly

Customers instinctively look for your logo on the upper left side of the email, where most websites place logos, so keep this in mind as you design your emails. It’s also acceptable to put your brand logo in the center, right above the email content. Branding the header is essential, as it reminds readers that the email has come from you and it’s authentic.

Make It Mobile-Friendly

About half of marketing emails are opened on mobile devices, so it’s imperative to employ an optimized, responsive email design that enables consumers to read the email on their phones without any issues. Most marketing automation platforms and email service providers make it easy to design mobile-friendly emails by selecting an option to automatically optimize for mobile or by selecting a responsive template.

Link Emails to Landing Pages

Your landing page should be consistent with your email design and content. The look and feel of the email should be in sync with that of the landing site to build trust. Use analytics to determine the success rate of engagement to a specific landing page.

Use Effective CTAs

After customers read your email, you want them to click/tap on a button or link that takes them to your website. To avoid confusion or distraction, focus on only one primary call to action (CTA) in each campaign.

Your CTA should be noticeable and stand out. Testing and analytics can help you determine which CTA types (buttons, images, or text) and colors prompt the best response rates. It can also be a good idea to repeat the CTA two or three times in the email in various formats and at strategic locations.