Mastering Email Marketing: Top Tips For Success

Email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses looking to connect with their audience, build relationships, and ultimately drive sales. That all important know, like and trust factor. 

With emails you are entering their private space and when done correctly can be one of the most effective channels in your marketing toolbox. According to Statista few if any other channels can compare with email marketing’s average return on investment (ROI). In a late 2022 poll, around half of marketing professionals surveyed reported a two times improvement rate in their email marketing campaigns' ROI, leaving no doubt why e-mail has maintained its claim to fame for decades.

However, the key to successful email marketing lies in adopting best practices to ensure your emails are well-received and effective. In this blog post, we'll explore some top tips for email marketing success.

1. Choose An Email Marketing Platform

To run email marketing campaigns you need a proper email marketing platform like one of the below.

• MailChimp
• Active Campaign
• Flodesk
• MailerLite
• Klaviyo

You should not run your email marketing from Outlook or Gmail. The above providers are recommended because they can help with deliverability (so your emails don’t end up in spam folders), list management, segmentation of audiences, automations, email sequences, personalisation, setting up templates and email design and remaining GDPR compliant.

Some providers offer a limited service for free but as you get more subscribers and are looking for more complexity, you will have to pay for the service.

2. Check Account Settings

Once you are set up on an email marketing platform you will need to check you account setting so emails will send with ease. Check the help section on your platform to find out how to do the following:

• Verify domain
• Subscriber settings
• Email notifications: if you get notified when someone joins your email list
• Who it comes from: your name as it appears in someone’s inbox. Keep this consistent and recognisable
• Import subscribers from elsewhere: adding existing subscribers to your email list

 
3. Build A Quality Email List

The basis of successful email marketing is a high-quality email list. Ensure that your subscribers have opted in willingly, and regularly clean your list by removing inactive or unengaged contacts. A smaller, engaged list is more valuable than a large, uninterested one.

You need to be proactive in how you grow your email list. Try the following:

• Create a landing page on your website to sign-up to your mailing list. Link to it from your social media profiles and your email auto signature
• Pin a social media post to the top of your profile inviting people to join your mailing list
• On your social media stories share the fact your newsletter is out, how to subscribe and what it contains. Add a question sticker asking people to enter their email address to sign-up
• Run Facebook lead ads. Create an ad enticing people to exchange their email address for a piece of valuable content, such as a PDF download, special offer or discount. More advanced email platforms like Active Campaign make it easier to do this
• Advertise your email list at other customer touch points like business cards, receipts, post-purchase emails. QR codes can be good to link people to your sign-up page

Facebook Lead Ad

Remember you own your list. Email marketing is not a third party platform like social media. If anything goes wrong you still can contact people on your list. Download your list onto your desktop every so often so you have it, should anything happen to your email marketing provider. Password protect it and delete previous copies to keep yourself compliant.

Once you start emailing your list, allow subscribers to easily manage their email preferences, including opting out / unsubscribing. Respecting their choices enhances your credibility and helps maintain a positive sender reputation.

Familiarize yourself with email marketing laws, such as CAN-SPAM (in the United States) and GDPR (in the UK). Ensure your email campaigns are compliant with these regulations.

Never send anyone an email or add them to your list without the recipient’s consent.

 4. Valuable Content

Your email content should provide value to your subscribers and aligns with their interests and needs. To start off, it’s a good idea to set up a regular newsletter template and start sending to your audience on a regular basis. This can be set up easily in your email marketing platform.

Keep content short and easy to skim read. Use subtitles and short paragraphs. Even one sentence long paragraphs are fine. 

Here are some suggestions for content for your emails:

• Informative / educational articles that link to more information or blogs on your website
• Helpful tips / FAQs
• Product updates
• How to guides
• How / what to buy from you
• Customer / staff stories
• Behind the scenes
• Milestone celebrations/ achievements
• Entertaining stories
• Exclusive discounts
• Events
• Seasonal content
• Community / charity

Be efficient and repurpose content (text and images) from other sources such as social media and your website. It is OK to repeat yourself from time to time as it takes people on average, seven times to hear the same marketing message before taking action.

Be strategic about what you put in emails. If people see value in what you are doing they will buy from you. Have a sales mindset as you are doing this to generate income.

5. Craft Compelling Subject Lines

The subject line is the first thing your recipients see, so make it compelling. Use action words, ask questions, and create a sense of urgency or curiosity. A well-crafted subject line can significantly boost your open rates. It may seem obvious, but the subject line should relate to the content of your email

Don’t use capitals or Exclamation Marks. Avoid words like FREE as this can trigger spam filters. The length should be around 30 characters so it doesn’t get cut off on mobile.

6. Use Eye-Catching Visuals

A picture is worth a thousand words. Incorporate eye-catching visuals, such as images and videos, to make your emails more engaging and to break up text. File sizes should be under 100KB to ensure fast loading times.

7. Clear Call to Action (CTA)

Every email should have a clear and compelling CTA. It's a good idea to highlight them in a clickable button, like in the below image. Whether it's "Shop Now," "Learn More," or "Subscribe Today," your CTA should guide your subscribers on what to do next. Also put the CTA as a hyperlink once in the text of your email.

Ideally have only one CTA per email so the reader does not get confused. Or if there are a few sections to your email, one CTA per section.

 8. Personalization & Automations

Personalized emails get better results. Use subscribers' names - “Hello Kerry,” at the start of the email and segment your list based on their preferences and behaviours. Tailor your content to their interests, and you'll see higher open and click-through rates.

Many email marketing providers now facilitate automations which you can set up in advance. Start off using a welcome sequence template.

For example, once someone signs up to your email list they will automatically receive an email saying thanks for joining. Two days later they will get another email telling them a bit about your business. One day later they will receive a discount code for your online shop. This is all set up in advance by you, so it runs automatically in the background.

Examples of other email sequences you can set up are below. Your email marketing platform should have templates that you can populate and use:

• Recover abandoned carts
• Celebrate customer birthdays
• Find new contacts with Facebook Lead Ads
• Send emails to customers who view products on your website
• Ask for customer reviews when someone has bought from you
• Collect post-purchase feedback from customers
  
  

9. A/B Testing

Experiment with different email elements like subject lines, sender names, content, and call to actions (CTAs) through A/B testing. This data-driven approach helps you identify what resonates best with your audience. You email marketing platform should be able to facilitate this.

The timing of your email can impact its success. Research your audience to determine when they are most likely to check their emails Try testing different send times and days to find out when your audience engages best.

10. Consistency

Consistency in both content and branding helps build trust with your subscribers. Use a consistent sender name, email design, and frequency to establish a familiar presence in your subscribers' inboxes.

Email subscribers on a regular basis, but on a schedule you can maintain. Don’t spread yourself too thinly, so you can’t manage over the long term. To start with, go out once a month and monitor your results. Or try sending more frequently, but with shorter content.

11. Mobile Optimized

The majority of emails are now opened on mobile devices. Ensure your emails are mobile-responsive, with easy-to-read fonts, clear calls to action and a layout that adapts to smaller screens. Most good email marketing platforms provide this as standard and help you with this.

Before sending your emails always send a test email to yourself and check how it displays on mobile and desktop. It is super important that you double check all the call to actions work and go to the correct place.

12. Monitor and Analyse

Regularly review email marketing metrics that can be found in your email marketing platform, such as:

• Open rates: % of recipients who opened your email
• Click-through rates: % of recipients who clicked on one or more links within your email
• Conversion rates: % of recipients who completed the desired action (e.g., made a purchase, filled out a form) after clicking on a link in your email

Use this data to refine your email strategy and make continuous improvements. Keep a record of these metrics and benchmark against yourself. Then makes changes and see if you get any improvements.

Open rates and other statistics vary depending on your industry but if you are getting open rates in excess of 30%, this is good.

Reap The Benefits Of Email Marketing

Email marketing, when executed effectively, can drive engagement, build customer loyalty, and boost sales. You need to work at building your list and the content in your emails. Success doesn’t come overnight and like most things in marketing you need to be in it for the long term and stay consistent.

If you need help with your email marketing get in touch and we would be happy to set you up with email marketing for your organisation or help you improve on what you are doing.

Here’s to your email marketing success!📥