Writing a good marketing email involves key items for maintaining content relevancy, the trust of your audience, and buyer conversion.
An effective email marketing campaign can help you achieve your marketing goals, but just putting some text and images in an email probably isn't enough to get you there. It takes a bit of extra effort, but taking some time to follow the best practices and recommendations below will give your campaigns a greater chance of success.
Be Relevant
Know your desired outcome and write clear content towards that goal.
Don't try to bombard the reader with too much information on different products, events, etc. Let them know exactly what to do and expect next via the email text and call to action (CTA).
Segment your email contact lists
Segment your email lists by age, gender, location, customer behavior, product preferences and lifecycle interests. This will increase your open rates and decrease unsubscribes.
Customize content
Effective personalization goes far deeper than adding a first name. We’re talking about dynamically changing entire sections of content based on a user’s interests and behavior, such as personalized product recommendations, offers, abandoned-cart emails, and customer surveys. Also, use customized CTAs and avoid the phrase "learn more" and other overused and vague CTAs.
3 Key Elements
Sender Name
Sender name is inextricably linked to trust. Your contacts generally look at the sender name first to determine whether the email is spam. Display a recognizable real name.
Subject Line
Subject lines should be 50 characters or less to avoid being truncated but as informative as possible to capture your reader’s attention. Don’t overdo it with excessive capitalization, special characters, emoji, or punctuation. Not only will this kind of messaging compromise your reputation, but your email could also end up being classified as spam.
Preheader
Customize it. If you don’t customize it, it will appear as the text that first appears in your email. This may be ‘View this email in your browser‘. Expand on your subject line and entice people to open your email to get more information or special offers.
Include Interactive Content
Interactive email design is a powerful way to boost engagement.
-
- Animated buttons and call-to-actions
- Hamburger menus and search options
- Product carousels
- Rollover effects to showcase products and offerings
- Offer reveals
- Accordion features to make your emails more compact
- Add-to-cart functionality
- Polls, surveys, and user-generated interactive content
When you design interactive elements, keep in mind that not all email clients may display them correctly. You may need to create segments for email clients to ensure optimal user experience.
Follow Through
Have the next steps after clicking the CTA be simple and clear. Use a relevant landing page whether it is a product page, or directly to the cart with the product added, a form for a download, a meeting link or a blog post with a clear CTA of its own.
Other Tips
Interactive email design is a powerful way to boost engagement.
-
-
Be real: use realistic images, videos, and commentary to support your stories.
-
Feature user-generated content.
-
Always create mobile friendly email that can be viewed on a variety of devices - avoid background images.
-
Don’t send more than once a week or as your audience deems acceptable.
-
Measure campaign results and then optimize, optimize, optimize.
-
Use split testing to increase email engagement.
-
Business to business email perform better with text orientated emails.
-
Make it easy to unsubscribe, follow all spam laws for your region.
-
Reward your VIPs with loyalty offers and special treatment.
-
Following these email best practices and understanding your target audience will make email an effective part of your marketing strategy.
