Blog Post | Jan 09, 2024
5 Valuable Email Marketing Best Practices
Email Marketing is a stalwart method for reaching customers, but best practices continue to evolve as digital marketing opportunities grow. This post looks at five best practices that will help your company most effectively use email marketing.
Email marketing continues to be a powerful way to reach customers and generate or convert leads. In fact, salesforce reports that 93% of those surveyed said that email is their primary channel for engaging with companies. And a 2022 study by Litmus found that the ROI on email marketing can be as high as $36 for each dollar invested.
Remain top of mind and enjoy the many advantages of email marketing by adhering to best practices and crafting messages that instantly draw the audience in. Below are five best practices to help guarantee that your company emails are a “must-read” for customers.
Write Enticing Subject Lines
The subject line is your first opportunity to draw readers into your content. Make it interesting, personal, clear and direct.HubSpot reports that nearly 31% of marketers have found that including special offers or promotions in the subject line have led to higher click-through rates.
Keep your subject lines short; between 30-50 characters is a proven sweet spot. If you can and it is relevant, include an element of urgency in your subject lines. This motivates readers and boosts click-through rates. Test the use of time-sensitive words like “now” or “last chance,” give a deadline, or create a feeling of scarcity.
Personalize Your Email Message
Incorporate any audience data you have into your emails by addressing the message to a specific person and tailoring content to reflect that person’s interests or past behaviors. Customers are far more likely to open and read something that seems to be written just for them.
Personalization lets you connect directly with your audience by using relevant details to communicate your message. You can personalize an email at various levels from the subject line to the salutation, images and special offers. The value of personalization is that it improves metrics like ROI and engagement, increases open rates and lifts sales. Together these benefits improve your reputation with customers and build loyalty around your brand.
Write Engaging Copy
Once your recipients have opened your email, you want them to continue to read it—so make it easily scannable by breaking up copy with visuals, using subheads, staying on topic and keeping copy brief.
Your language should be straightforward and jargon-free. Remain customer-centric by focusing on the audience and their needs rather than yourself, your company and why you are the best choice. Consider what matters most to you when making a purchase: how a product or service meets your needs, not the company selling it to you. Also, focus on the benefits to the customer (the “what’s in it for them” of your offerings) instead of a dry list of features.
Tell a Good Story
Humans relate to memorable stories; we retain them for far longer than we will a sales pitch. Replace typical sales pushes with a narrative that connects your brand or product to the end customer. Storytelling creates emotional connections with prospects and customers by motivating them to act, impacting loyalty and building relationships.
You can tell your story in several ways: through words alone or by combining copy, video and/or pictures to create content that resonates with customers. Consider sharing a customer journey, success story or other account that will help turn a message into an experience.
Close Out with a Strong CTA
Your call-to-action needs to be direct, strong, compelling and urge the customer to act. If you’ve drawn the reader in with your subject line and storytelling, you want to finish big with a prompt that urges them to take the next step in your email campaign—this may be to click for more details, to submit their personal information or to test drive a product.
The CTA language should be precise and actionable, encouraging the customer in just a few words. Some companies have found that CTAs in the first person resulted in a significant increase in clicks, so try modifying your language to encourage customers to “try my free trial” instead of “try a free trial.” And, again, this is a natural location for creating urgency by setting a designated timeframe for customer action.
While the marketing field is more crowded with possible outreach opportunities than ever before, email marketing has remained a tried-and-true way to reach audiences. If you want to continue to use this low-cost, low-risk tool, try these best practices for getting the most out of your initiatives. We can help!
Remain top of mind and enjoy the many advantages of email marketing by adhering to best practices and crafting messages that instantly draw the audience in. Below are five best practices to help guarantee that your company emails are a “must-read” for customers.
Write Enticing Subject Lines
The subject line is your first opportunity to draw readers into your content. Make it interesting, personal, clear and direct.HubSpot reports that nearly 31% of marketers have found that including special offers or promotions in the subject line have led to higher click-through rates.
Keep your subject lines short; between 30-50 characters is a proven sweet spot. If you can and it is relevant, include an element of urgency in your subject lines. This motivates readers and boosts click-through rates. Test the use of time-sensitive words like “now” or “last chance,” give a deadline, or create a feeling of scarcity.
Personalize Your Email Message
Incorporate any audience data you have into your emails by addressing the message to a specific person and tailoring content to reflect that person’s interests or past behaviors. Customers are far more likely to open and read something that seems to be written just for them.
Personalization lets you connect directly with your audience by using relevant details to communicate your message. You can personalize an email at various levels from the subject line to the salutation, images and special offers. The value of personalization is that it improves metrics like ROI and engagement, increases open rates and lifts sales. Together these benefits improve your reputation with customers and build loyalty around your brand.
Write Engaging Copy
Once your recipients have opened your email, you want them to continue to read it—so make it easily scannable by breaking up copy with visuals, using subheads, staying on topic and keeping copy brief.
Your language should be straightforward and jargon-free. Remain customer-centric by focusing on the audience and their needs rather than yourself, your company and why you are the best choice. Consider what matters most to you when making a purchase: how a product or service meets your needs, not the company selling it to you. Also, focus on the benefits to the customer (the “what’s in it for them” of your offerings) instead of a dry list of features.
Tell a Good Story
Humans relate to memorable stories; we retain them for far longer than we will a sales pitch. Replace typical sales pushes with a narrative that connects your brand or product to the end customer. Storytelling creates emotional connections with prospects and customers by motivating them to act, impacting loyalty and building relationships.
You can tell your story in several ways: through words alone or by combining copy, video and/or pictures to create content that resonates with customers. Consider sharing a customer journey, success story or other account that will help turn a message into an experience.
Close Out with a Strong CTA
Your call-to-action needs to be direct, strong, compelling and urge the customer to act. If you’ve drawn the reader in with your subject line and storytelling, you want to finish big with a prompt that urges them to take the next step in your email campaign—this may be to click for more details, to submit their personal information or to test drive a product.
The CTA language should be precise and actionable, encouraging the customer in just a few words. Some companies have found that CTAs in the first person resulted in a significant increase in clicks, so try modifying your language to encourage customers to “try my free trial” instead of “try a free trial.” And, again, this is a natural location for creating urgency by setting a designated timeframe for customer action.
While the marketing field is more crowded with possible outreach opportunities than ever before, email marketing has remained a tried-and-true way to reach audiences. If you want to continue to use this low-cost, low-risk tool, try these best practices for getting the most out of your initiatives. We can help!