Email marketing is a simple and affordable way to keep clients or followers engaged. It is also an excellent method to drive conversions. Read this article to learn how to prepare a successful email campaign.
Email marketing best practices
There are many best practices to follow in email marketing. I have selected five, which I believe are the most crucial to be successful.
First of all, it is essential to create a great subject line to encourage recipients to open your email. MailChimp recommends no more than nine words, one emoji and three punctuation marks (MailChimp, 2020). It is also worth to focus on recipient benefit in the subject line and start with action-oriented verbs (Allen, 2019). Moreover, communicating urgency and using numbers in the subject line are effective email marketing practices, especially when promoting a special offer or sale (Allen, 2019).
One of crucial best practices in email marketing is following the rules for electronic marketing. According to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), you must have the consent of the recipient before sending your marketing email (Data Protection Commission, 2020). Moreover, you must give subscribers a clear way to opt-out of future emails by including a link that says explicitly “Unsubscribe” in the footer of your emails. These and more rules can be found on the Data Protection Commission website.
Another best practice is to personalise the email greeting. Greeting email recipients with first names immediately grabs the attention of each reader (Vaughan, 2019). MailChimp is one of many marketing tools that allows configuring the greeting of your email campaign automatically. You can use audience merge tags to personalise the “To” field before sending your campaign.
One of the critical best practices in email marketing is also email customisation. Segmenting your email list and adjusting your message to the audience will give you the best results (SendGrid, 2020). For example, a pet shop owner can segment email streams according to latest purchases or type of purchase (for cat/dog/hamster, etc.) and send a personalised discount coupon.
Another best practice is planning & making email marketing schedule. It is vital to find and stick to a consistent time (Lister, 2020). This way, your subscribers can expect your email in their inbox at the usual time, and you can plan your content. However, if you have special offers you don’t have to stick to your schedule – you can send additional emails as soon as you have new promotion.
Email marketing mistakes to avoid
One of the worst practices, on the other hand, is buying email lists. Sending marketing emails to clients who don’t know you can result in a lot of spam complaints and damage to your brand (Bourn,2014). Marketing emails should be sent only to people who want to receive them. This is also the way to get conversions as you are targeting people who are really interested in your business offers/blog articles.
Another bad practice is sending emails without proof checking. Marketing email full of spelling and grammar mistakes affects the sender’s credibility. It not only looks unprofessional but can also be associated with fraud or phishing efforts and in consequence, affect deliverability rates and sales (Marini, 2011).
You should also always remember about including a call to action in your email. Call to action is guidance what your subscribers should do next – visit your blog, Instagram page or shop now. Your call to action should be easy to find. You can use bright colours, bold text, or large buttons to display it prominently (Hurley, 2020). You should also be concise and use action words, like “buy now” or “browse now”. Focus on one call to action in your message and repeat it more than once.
If you are not utilising email marketing yet, start today! Follow best practises and check your campaign results regularly to achieve success in email marketing.
Reference list
- Allen O. (2019) ‘19 Tips to Write Catchy Email Subject Lines [+ Examples]’ HubSpot [online]. Available at https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/improve-your-email-subject-line
- Bourn J. (2014) ‘11 Email Marketing WORST Practices’ BournCreative [online]. Available at https://www.bourncreative.com/email-marketing-worst-practices/
- Hurley S. (2020 ‘14 Email Marketing Mistakes You Need to Avoid’ OptinMonster [online]. Available at https://optinmonster.com/email-marketing-mistakes/
- Lister M. (2020) ‘15 Non-Negotiable Email Marketing Best Practices’ B2C [online]. Available at https://www.business2community.com/email-marketing/15-non-negotiable-email-marketing-best-practices-02273300
- Mailchimp (2020) ‘Best Practices for Email Subject Lines’ MailChimp [online]. Available at https://mailchimp.com/help/best-practices-for-email-subject-lines/
- Marini M. (2011) ‘How to Kill an Email Marketing Campaign: Typos and Grammatical Errors’ ClickMail [online]. Available at http://clickmail.com/whitelist/2011/09/09/how-to-kill-an-email-marketing-campaign-typos-and-grammatical-errors/
- SendGrid (2020) ‘24 Email Marketing Best Practices Tips for 2020’ SyneGrid [online]. Available at https://sendgrid.com/resource/email-marketing-best-practices-tips/
- The Data Protection Commission (2020) ‘Rules for electronic and direct marketing’ The Data Protection Commission [online]. Available at https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/organisations/rules-electronic-and-direct-marketing
- Vaughan P. (2019) ‘17 Email Marketing Best Practices That Actually Drive Results’ MailChimp [online]. Available at https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23965/9-email-marketing-best-practices-to-generate-more-leads.aspx