Top brands and retailers worldwide go beyond well-optimized online stores to grow their bottom line and gain loyal customers. They also vie for people’s attention in email inboxes, enticing them to get great deals or check back on their abandoned carts.
With many brands sending emails daily, it’s challenging to break through and close sales. Effective email marketing moves you toward success—you only need a strong strategy to deliver it.
If you’re ready to generate more revenue with engaging emails, here are some email marketing best practices to include in your strategy.
Connect with Customers Through Hyper-Personalization
Personalization is the core of successful email marketing campaigns. It’s about collecting customer data, analyzing it, and using important insights to craft relevant, targeted, and engaging emails.
As AI broke into email marketing, a better way to connect with customers in their inboxes emerged. Enter hyper-personalization, where brands reach recipients through extremely personalized emails. Think of it as your opportunity to give potential customers precisely what they’re looking for.
How to Implement Hyper-Personalized Email Campaigns
- Gather data about customer demographics, interests, purchase histories, and browsing habits through forms, surveys, and preference centers. Use this information to develop and execute your hyper-personalized email campaigns.
- Segment your email list based on attributes such as age, location, purchase history, engagement, or industry.
- Tailor email content to your audience’s specific traits and interests. Merge tags and dynamic content blocks allow you to fill emails with customized content.
- Send emails whenever recipients take certain actions. For example, you could send an abandoned cart reminder that encourages shoppers to go to checkout.
- Craft geo-targeted email campaigns. These campaigns can highlight location-specific offers, events, or personalized information.
- Know when to send emails. Customers tend to engage with marketing emails sent on their birthdays or to celebrate milestones relevant to their chosen brands.
- Seek AI-powered recommendations to help you refine your campaigns.
Use AI for More Effective Email Campaigns
With AI in email marketing, you spend less time crafting engaging campaigns.
AI-powered tools can tell you the best time to send emails, segment your audience for you and predict customer behavior. They can also create personalized emails based on user data and improve customer journeys, particularly focusing on areas such as welcome and abandoned cart emails.
You’ve got various options for AI-driven email marketing software: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Brevo (previously Sendinblue), Campaign Monitor, and more. AI helps these tools gather and analyze data related to email personalization, ideal send times, and customer journey automation.
Design Engaging Emails
Design also matters in email marketing. Follow the email design best practices we’ve listed below to create appealing and effective emails.
Preview & Test Emails Before Sending
After crafting your emails, don’t hit send just yet. Your chosen email marketing platform should let you see how your emails look on desktop and mobile. Otherwise, use a separate tool for previews.
It’s also worth noting that even if you design emails for desktop computers, many people will read them on mobile devices. Hence, testing your emails across platforms is key.
In most cases, images and text are rescaled and arranged in a basic column for a mobile-friendly email. Many email marketing platforms make modifying designs possible as well. Once you’ve finalized your email design, test it before you send.
Send Short Messages
Lengthy copy is made for blog posts and other sections of your website. When writing your email content, treat it as a teaser for your new article, resource, or offer and include a link to that information. Short and sweet emails perform better than complex or puzzling emails.
Craft Simple & Skimmable Emails
To make your subscribers read your full email, go for skimmable content. If you were asked whether a text-only page is more readable than a well-formatted one (showing headers, subheaders, and bullets), what would you answer? Text formatting makes the eyes follow the flow of your content and helps readers understand it.
Flashy patterns and too many bright colors are exhausting to look at. For designs, use one or two colors and fonts, and include complex graphics when needed.
Stick to the Same Designs
If you use pre-designed or custom email templates, choose ones with your brand’s preferred colors and fonts. A consistent design makes an email look simple, professional, and convincing instead of homemade and inexperienced.
Write Compelling Subject Lines
Personal, promotional, and compelling subject lines also win customers. Do take note, though, that your industry and target audience dictate your approach to crafting subject lines.
AI can be great for writing memorable subject lines. You’ll find AI text generators, including those built into email marketing software, with pre-defined templates to pattern your subject lines after.
Pro Tips for Effective Subject Lines
When writing subject lines, follow these top tips.
- Give readers a deadline, particularly if your emails are meant for sales or signups.
- Ask open-ended questions. They’ll intrigue recipients, getting them to read your emails.
- Craft subject lines without words like “free” or “last chance.” Both are considered spammy.
- Limit your subject lines to about 40 characters or five to seven words.
Create Effective Calls to Action
Once readers finish reading your emails, they should take action. This is where calls to action (CTAs) come in.
To start, “click here” or similar CTAs won’t convince recipients to act. Clear, direct CTAs work the best—think “download the report” or “buy now.” Also, make sure your emails have up to three CTAs.
Design is also important for effective CTAs. Try using a new color for each CTA and create clickable CTA buttons with a small shadow or rounded edges.
Prioritize Data Privacy & Compliance
The best email marketing campaigns value privacy and compliance. We’ve listed some email marketing best practices that’ll keep you on the good side of your customers and the law.
Use Double Opt-Ins
Double opt-ins involve sending new subscribers a verification email. This message contains a link to confirm their subscription to your email list. Once each subscriber clicks that link, they’ll be added to the list.
If you use double opt-ins, consider sending compelling and straightforward confirmation emails. Tell readers why they should subscribe to your list and the content they’ll get. In addition, you can reward new subscribers with a little incentive.
Add an Unsubscribe Link
Email opt-outs may lead to a drop in your subscriber count, but they make adding an unsubscribe link to your emails important. Although some recipients will opt out of receiving your emails, your unsubscribe link encourages others to do so at any time.
Follow All Laws Relevant to Email Marketing
Finally, email marketing is regulated in most countries. If your brand is based in the United States, you must follow the CAN-SPAM Act. Learning about this strict law will help you avoid legal issues associated with your email marketing campaigns.
Under the CAN-SPAM Act, you must:
- Include an unsubscribe link in your emails. The link is usually placed in the email footer.
- Respond to unsubscribe requests within 10 days. Your email marketing platform should manage these requests.
- Avoid misleading recipients by using a different email address.
- Include the physical address of your business or the sender in your emails. Like unsubscribe links, this information often appears in the email footer.
- Avoid sending emails to “harvested” email addresses (email lists purchased from third parties)
Outside of the U.S., European countries enforce the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Canada and other countries have similar regulations as well.
Drive Your Revenue with a Solid Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing has evolved over the years, embracing hyper-personalization and AI while highlighting effective design, privacy, and compliance. Whether you’re new to this field or after more sales and conversions, you’ll need a strategic approach to tackle these changes and stand out. This means adopting best practices for email marketing and refining your strategy until you achieve outstanding results.
Want to attract and convert leads with engaging email marketing campaigns? Contact Devwerkz’s email marketing experts today or get helpful insights from our blog.