In this post you will find effective email marketing tips to create memorable emails and increase your chances of conversion by utilizing tools such as personalization, segmentation and automation.
1. Use email marketing to build relationships with your contacts
The best way to boost your business is to build relationships with customers. In addition, it's important to keep in touch every now and then to let them know how you are doing and what your new products are. With email marketing, it is easy to communicate with your customers and update them about your new offerings, blogs and offers with out much investment.
2. Send emails regularly
Regularly sending emails to your subscribers is the best way to keep your business in their minds. The more they get to know (and like) you, the more likely they are to return.
But how often should you send emails? Some studies suggest sending daily emails may damage your brand image and cause subscribers to unsubscribe. A better strategy is offering a mix of event-based and regular newsletter content, as well as a selective use of promotional offers. Another tip is not to send an email every time you have something new or sale-related.
3. Do not spam your contacts
The term spam was coined in the late 1990s and refers to sending unsolicited emails. These days, businesses are understandably wary about being perceived as a spammer, so to stay on the right side of data protection and anti-spam legislation, you may want to avoid sending too much email that is promotions based. The best way to succeed? Think carefully about your subject line and offer value to your contacts by giving them information and resources that help them with their job.
4. Avoid buying lists for running email campaigns
Buying a list of email addresses might seem like a good idea, but there is a serious risk of damaging your email sending reputation and becoming blacklisted. Instead, spend time on building your own lists by collecting information from your website, social media and other places. It may take time and effort, but it will be worth it in the long run as you build authentic relationships with people who signed up to hear from you regularly – not spam them.
5. Avoid excessive use of links
Links to your other content and to your website are a valuable part of an email newsletter. However, excessive use of links can come across as spam, so make sure they are well integrated into the design and don’t stick out like a sore thumb.
In addition, you should only link to relevant content that is likely to interest your audience. Otherwise, they will be more likely to hit the unsubscribe button than click on a link which takes them away from your message.
6. Provide share worthy content to engage audience
Share worthy content can drive more traffic to your website and engage your existing contacts. This content could include infographics, calculators, how-to guides, videos or other resources that are interesting and helpful. Shareworthy content will help you convert more of your existing email subscribers into customers. However, make sure that the content is relevant to your subject line and not too promotional or salesy.
7. Test inbox placement to see how your email is getting delivered
When you send out an email, take a look at how it is getting distributed. It might arrive in their inbox, spam folder or even their trash bin. To see where it is going, use Inbox placement tools such as Mailgun to see where your email is landing in multiple inboxes. This will allow you to see where each email is being delivered and when – so that you can get more accurate data about which emails are being opened and which aren’t.
8. Send emails in their time zone
Email marketing tools offer an option for marketers to send emails in the recipient's time zone. This feature uses subscriber's IP address to determine geographical location from sign up forms and email interactions, enabling marketers to send emails based on the recipient's time zone and improve their email open rates and click rates.
9. Use Images to drive CTR
When it comes to email marketing, images are the best way of keeping your audience engaged. However, you should avoid sending a long list of images which blocks out the text or makes it difficult to read. Instead, think about using fewer graphics, as well as using other tools such as videos or GIFs which will help build interest in what you have to say. In our experience, Images get 55% more clicks when compared to simple CTA buttons and hyperlinks.
10. Have a clear CTA in place
The main goal in email marketing should be to get your contacts to take some sort of action, whether it is getting them to subscribe or purchase something. To do this, you should always provide a clear call-to-action (CTA) and include links within your messages.
Different CTAs should be used for different types of content, so that each CTA drives your contacts towards a specific goal. For example, if you are sending a ebook about growing your business with email marketing, your CTA could be "Download the email marketing guide"
11. Do not confuse the recipient with too many offers
Since CTAs are the main way to get people to take action and convert, it is crucial that you do not distract contacts with multiple CTAs in lead gen campaigns and other sales emailers. In a newsletter or an educational email, multiple CTAs would work.
12. Personalize the message to your audience.
You should personalize every email that you send. Even simply adding a name or an image can make a big difference in the success of your campaign. Personalizing the information will help your contacts trust you and develop a better relationship with you. You can take this even further by creating an email persona for each contact, which will help you build more personalized messages.
Once you have created a persona, think about what type of information they are most interested in and how they like to receive it. Then create content that matches these needs and deliver it to them personally – not as part of the general newsletter. This way, your contacts are less likely to see the email as spam and more likely to read it and act on its contents.
Example:
NETFLIX – Netflix does an excellent job of providing users with automated content. They take into account the movies and shows that you've watched and send you recommendations based on those preferences – all without having to fill out forms or answer questions.
12. Choose the right day and time to deliver emails
Everybody’s schedule is different, so take the time to consider when your recipients will be most receptive to reading emails from you. In our experience of sending more than 5 million emails, we observed that 9-10AM ET Monday/Tuesday/Thursday is a good time to reach decision makers in the B2B SaaS Industry. There's no specific difference in open rates for specific days of the week for B2C email sends.
13. Have a clear subject line in place
Your subject line is the primary factor that determines whether or not someone will open your email. Focus on making it interesting so that people will continue reading. Also make sure it includes a call-to-action so people know exactly what you are trying to say.
14. Use heatmaps to understand email copy engagement
Most of the email marketing service providers offer heatmaps to understand the user engagement on your email. This data visualization technique shows real-time analytics into how your subscribers interact with your email copy and assists you in optimizing your emails.
15. Save email templates for future purposes
Templates can save you a lot of time when you are sending out emails to large groups of people because they usually include all the necessary pieces that you need in order to create a good looking and effective message. Store the email templates in your email marketing tools to keep it handy for you and other marketers in your team working on email campaigns.
16. Keep your email copy concise
Don’t let yourself ramble on by saying too much. Instead, focus on a single topic and avoid unnecessary details to create a high-converting email marketing copy. It is perfectly fine to include some brief information about yourself every now and then if it has something to do with the email that you are sending out or if it helps people remember who you are or learn more about your business.
17. E-mail automation
Don't waste time sending emails manually. Automate where possible to improve productivity and make campaigns more effective. One of the best ways to keep people coming back to an email list is by setting up workflows so that they will get messages every few days or so with new information on a particular topic. This is something that you should always do because it gives them a reason to come back each and every time you send out a message.
18. Perform grammar and spell checks
Your email will look completely unprofessional if you can’t even spell words correctly and correct grammar errors. Further, you may lose your brand image so it's important that you run email marketing copy through a grammar checker such as Grammarly before sending your message. You should also read your entire message aloud to yourself before sending it out to make sure that it makes sense to someone who isn't familiar with your brand.
17. Brand your email signature
Your email signature can make or break the success of an email campaign. That’s why it's important to make sure that it contains a brand name, logo, or any type of image that captures the attention of your reader. You can also use images of your products to promote them in case people don’t remember what they look like.
18. Use power words & action verbs
When it comes to email marketing, one of the most important things that you can do is use action verbs in your messages so that they will encourage people to act quickly. This is something that many marketers overlook and therefore they lose their readership as a result.
19. Optimize for mobile at all times
Since most people now read their emails on their phones instead of on their desktop or laptop computers, then you should always optimize them for mobile devices whenever possible. This will help them read your messages more efficiently and also encourage them to take action because it will look like you take their business seriously.
20. Use emoticons
According to a study done by BJ Fogg at the Stanford University School of Business, using emoticons can increase your success rate up to 93%. Emoticons are symbols that are usually used in text messages or as a form of shorthand to express your emotions. They usually include faces or other images, but they can also be punctuation marks like “:)”.
21. Use the right email formatting
Use bold, italic, and underlining sparingly and only when it will help you to grab your reader’s attention. Your goal is to make your message as easy to read as possible without sacrificing the information that you want to share.
22. Use relevant keywords in your email marketing copy & subject line
When people are searching for information about a topic, they often use key words that describe what they are looking for so it's good practice to include those words in every single message that you send out. When they see that you are using the same words that they use, it will make them feel like taking a look at your email.
23. Avoid using jargon and chat language
You should never use any jargon or buzzwords in your text, even if it makes perfect sense to you. This is because people might understand what you are trying to say but if they don’t have an idea of what you mean, then they won’t care enough about the content of your message.
24. Make your website easier to find
One of the biggest mistakes that email marketers make is not making it easy for their readers to find out more about their website. That's why you should always create a link in your signature line so that they can easily click on it whenever they want to learn more about your product or service.
25. You should split-test frequently
One of the best ways to find out what works with your audience is by constantly split testing every single aspect of your campaign, even if it means sending two identical emails. In addition, you should try to find out what content that resonates best with your subscribers by using a process known as A/B testing.
26. Include an opt-in form
One of the best ways to increase your sales is by asking people to subscribe to your product or service in exchange for the chance to learn more about it. This is something that you should always do because it will provide a good incentive for your readers, which they are sure to take advantage of if you make the offer too good to pass up.
27. Don't repeat yourself
Make sure that each email has a unique purpose and message that is never used again. Write new messages with every new product, service or marketing campaign you come out with so that people remember who they are and what their products or services can do for them.
28. Use bullet points when you have a long email copy
If you are sending an email that includes a lot of information, then it might be helpful to use bullets in order to make everything easier for people to read. These will help break up the email copy and prevent people from getting bored with what you have written in the message.
29. Focus on improving email sending reputation
Landing your email in the primary tab of recipients is important for email marketers to increase open rates and generate leads. Generally, Mail Box Providers (MBPs) analyze the email engagement and feedback reports before sending emails to the spam folder. When emails go to spam, it becomes difficult for marketers to gain engagement. With the latest technologies such as lemwarm, companies can warmup their email sending domains and avoid deliverability issues.
30. Avoid using too many links
Although they add value, too many links on an email could turn off readers by making them nervous about accidentally clicking on a bad link. Unless you are sending educational emails, limit the links to not more than three so that they're not overwhelmed with too much information.
31. Enrol in Outlook’s Junk Email Reporting Program and Microsoft's Smart Network Data Services (SNDS).
Deliverability to Outlook.com is based on your reputation. The Outlook.com Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) gives you the data you need to understand and improve your reputation at Outlook.com. SNDS gives senders access to detailed data about individual IPs, and it also includes our Junk Email Reporting Program, which lets you receive reports when users junk your messages. Now you can view IP data and manage feedback loop settings from one convenient website.
32. Know how many of the users have reported as Spam using Google Postmaster tools
Track data on large volumes of emails sent to Gmail and find data about your sending domain using Google Postmaster tools. You can view different dashboards to understand details like Gmail delivery errors, spam reports, feedback loop, and more. The data helps you understand deliverability issues, keep email lists clean and maintain reputation with Google.
Just login to Google Postmaster Tools with the authorized account to access your spam reports, domain reputation and deliverability errors for the last 120 days.
33. Highlight important dates
One of the best ways to encourage people to take action on your email is by adding a date of some kind. For example, “offer ends tomorrow” or “special price ends July 1st” are both powerful reasons for readers to meet your deadlines and offer because they want to get in before it is too late.
34. Offer incentives
It’s been proven time after time again that people react better when there is some offer on the line. That's why it's important that you offer some type of incentive whenever you send an email message, either by giving them a free trial, coupon code or POC for your product/service that they are interested in.
35. Ask for the sale
Asking for the sale is a sure-fire way to increase your sales and ultimately bring you more profits, so don't be afraid to ask people directly if they wish to buy something from you. One of the best ways to do this is by using phrases like "Click here now" or "Act now".
36. Maintain delays between email sends
If you send an email every day, then you might make people want to unsubscribe from your list because they feel like they are being bombarded with too much information. Likewise, don’t go with an every two weeks schedule either because people might give up on you if they don’t hear from you regularly.
37. Use URL parameters to track campaigns
Your website receives traffic several sources. It is important to identify how many of those are from email campaigns and their activity flow on the website. In order to achieve this, add UTM_SOURCE, UTM_CAMPAIGN, UTM_MEDIUM parameters to your email links. Keep these parameters unique for each campaign so as to avoid data mixing.
Create the parameters using Google's Campaign URL Builder.
38. Use URL parameters to pre-fill form fields
Cut down the tasks for your contacts and see the conversion rates go up. Instead of letting the contacts fill basic information such as First Name, Last Name and Email by themselves, use these dynamic URL parameters in your email campaigns to auto-complete contact's details in the landing page form. Top marketing platforms such as HubSpot support this feature and reduces the number of steps it takes for contact to convert.
An example of your URL in HubSpot could be:
https://djolt.co/resources/download-inbound-marketing-guide?firstname=&email=
https://djolt.co/resources/download-inbound-marketing-guide?firstname=*|FNAME|*&email=*|EMAIL|*
The result URL for Ravi whose email id is "hello@djolt.co" would be reflected in his email. When he opens the link, the URL passes his details (First Name & Email) to the form, and the form auto-fills the fields. Please open the below link for details.
https://djolt.co/resources/inbound-marketing-guide?firstname=Ravi&email=hello@djolt.co
39. Split test often
One of the best ways to see what works with your audience is by split testing everything from your headlines, images, and CTA buttons so that you can identify which one drives more sales. By taking the time to split test everything, you will begin to see what works best for your business and which ones are worth continuing to use.
40. Increase email open rates by excluding unengaged contacts
One of the factors email service providers consider in delivering emails to inbox or spam is the email engagement. When your contacts are not responding over a period of time, avoid running promotional campaigns to them and. This will help you increase open rates and be in the good books of email service providers.
41. Use tools for email list hygiene
When you are running an email campaign after a long gap, it is necessary to ensure that the list is clean. Otherwise, your reputation with email marketing service providers go down. When there are huge bounces, they may even block the account. Use tools such as TrueMail, NeverBounce to clean your email lists. These tools follow a complex validation process and offer 90% accuracy.
42. Make Scheduling easy with Calendly
How many times have you exchanged emails with an outsider scheduling meetings? A lot of times, I must say. Tools such as Calendly make scheduling easy and lets you focus more on business deals.
43. Nurture contacts
Lead nurturing is the process of maintaining meaningful dialogs at the right time and building relationships with your contacts with the goal of earning their business. Nurture contacts with timely emails, webinars, checklists, infographics, and free trials and drive them in their buying journey.
44. Create urgency
If you want to drive sales, you can use urgency tactics such as time limitations or limited quantity offers to encourage people to act quickly so they won't miss out on what they want.
45. Stick to your brand image
When you want to engage with leads, keep your tone and style of writing the same as this will help your own brand stand out from your competitors.
46. Be consistent
There’s nothing worse than receiving an email from a brand that has become inconsistent. That’s why you should always make sure that each email looks good when it arrives in your inboxes and that every message is related to what came before it.
Further, try and keep the same look, feel, topics and topics in communication so that your leads are encouraged to continue engaging with you. If they don't know what to expect from you, they may be hesitant to continue investing their time and energy.
47. Benchmark your email campaign metrics with Industry ones
When you are running your email campaigns, it is important to understand how you are performing against your competitors. The Industry benchmarks will help you analyze how your email campaigns are performing and optimize your future campaigns.
48. Make sure that the bounce rates and unsubscribe rates are low
When you send an email out using email marketing tools, you are essentially using their servers to send emails out. Since you are using their servers, they regularly track the bounce and unsubscribe rates for your campaigns. Otherwise, Email Marketing Service Providers may suspend the account.
49. Use the preview section to drive engagement
The second most important part of your email after the email subject line is the email preview section. Recipients read it before opening the email. Use it to bring curiosity among your recipients and drive email open rates.
50. For weekly/monthly newsletters, use RSS feeds to populate the recent blog posts and send emails automatically.
Automatically feed your newsletter emails with your recent blog posts using RSS feeds and never be behind in sending out your weekly/monthly emails.
51. Use Alt tags for Images
Most of the companies block images of external emails from automatically loading to avoid spam and ensure security. When images don't load, recipients do not know what that image is talking about. Instead, you can use alt tags to describe about the image. Alt tags are a replacement to the images and get displayed as text when images do not load.
52. Send emails in blocks
When you are reaching thousands of contacts all at once, there is a higher chance that these emails go to spam folder. To avoid this, marketing platforms offer you an option to send emails in blocks. With this feature, you can send blocks of emails with a gap of few minutes.
53. Use the right tools for Marketing Emails and Lead Gen Sales Emails
When you are running email marketing campaigns related to webinars, newsletters and workshops, you can rely on email marketing tools such as MailChimp, SendinBlue or Drip to send emails at a time. These email marketing tools are helpful to send bulk marketing emails without maintaining continuous conversation.
For Lead Gen campaigns, you want to ensure that your emails do not land in promotions or updates folder. You want to build personalized one-to-one conversations and convert them. For sales emails, you can rely on sales outeach tools such as SmartReach, Lemlist, SalesHandy or HubSpot Sales Sequences.
54. Use a valid "From" Address
Not everyone you reach out to via email campaigns are available at the same time. They may be busy and are Out of Office. People who are out of office usually set auto-replies to let the senders know that they are away from work. When you run campaign with a valid "From" addresses to these contacts, you can get their auto-replies to your inbox with their phone numbers and the alternate contacts to reach out.
55. Add brand name to "From" name
On an average, people daily receive 100s of emails from outsiders. How do you make yourself stand out from the others and keep your From name unique? It's simple. Add your brand name to the From name. For example, use something like "John at Tesla", "Joe @ TrueMail". Brand names are easy to remember when compared to person's names because brands are unique and can be used register your brand among people.
56. Include an easy question
Another way to create anticipation is by including an easy question at the end of each email. When you ask a question, people will want to answer it and this means that they are much more likely to click on your signup form link and then take action.
57. Share the benefits of your product
People read emails to find out about the services and products that other people are offering. If you want your email to be successful, you need to include at least one piece of information about what your reader can get out of your message.
58. Avoid using generic email addresses
Generic address such as service@company.com, sales@company.com, or info@company.com can give the impression that these messages are coming from a robot or the company itself so avoid using them whenever possible. This is because it's a very impersonal way to connect with your audience and many people will be left confused as a result. Always use your business email address when you are sending out emails to add a personal touch and show the other person that this is a one-on-one conversation instead of an automated message.
59. Include a privacy policy
If you are sending emails regarding your company’s offerings, then you should always include a privacy statement in the footer of each message that you send out. This is important because it gives customers the chance to read how they can use your information when submitting their personal details so that they won’t be taken advantage of in this way.
60. Collect feedback over email
One of the best ways to improve your email marketing is by getting direct feedback from your audience. This is why you should always collect feedback over email whenever it is possible so that you can see what works and what doesn’t. You don't need your contacts to fill forms for collecting feedback. Mention the stages of satisfaction and hyperlinks to them. When a user clicks on the link, your email marketing tool tracks those clicks and offers you insights. Further, you can collect additional feedback from the people who clicked the links using a form. Be sure to follow up with people who send in their input so that they can see that you are taking them seriously.
61. Set up notifications when a contact engages with your email
With tools such as HubSpot and SalesHandy, get notifications whenever a contact interacts with your email. Since these are live notifications, you can respond to their email interactions instantly and increase conversions.
62. Keep the subject lines short and engaging
In our analysis of sending more than 4 million emails, open rates are usually higher when subject lines are short. Lengthy subject lines are boring and don't entice subscribers.
Be compliant with CAN SPAM rules
CAN SPAM Act gives the recipients the right to stop receiving commercial emails from others and spell out tough penalties for violations. The main requirements of CAN SPAM Act are:
- Don't use false or misleading header information.
- Don't use deceptive subject lines.
- Identify the message as an ad.
- Tell recipients where you're located.
- Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you.
- Honor opt-out requests promptly.
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.
63. Use the correct header information
Make sure your "From", "To" and "Reply-To" addresses are accurate and must identify the person or business that initiated the message.
64. Align subject line and email copy
The email subject line should always be an accurate representation of the email content. Both the email subject line and email marketing copy should talk about the same topic and convey the same message.
65. Include your business's postal address in all your promotional emails
In all the promotional emails that you send out, you must include your business's postal address in all your emails. CAN SPAM Act requires you to include the postal address to help recipients understand who you are and where they can find you.
66. Make it easy for your contacts to unsubscribe
Each of your promotional message should offer an option for your contacts to unsubscribe from your emailers. Craft it in a way that is creative and logical to your audience.
67. Disclose that your message is an advertisement
CAN SPAM act applies not just to bulk emails but any electronic email message with a commercial advertisement or promotion of a product/services as a primary purpose.
68. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf
Whether you hire a marketing agency or freelancer for your email marketing activities, you cannot contract away your legal responsibilities to comply with the law. Your company will be responsible for all the email messages that your marketing agency sends on your behalf. When a compliance issue arises, both your company and marketing agency will be at risk.
69. Honor opt-out requests promptly
CAN SPAM act states that you must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You should not charge a fee, request additional information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single webpage as a condition for honoring an opt-out request.
70. Authenticate your domain with email marketing platforms
To run email campaigns from the email marketing tool, you need to authenticate your domain by implementing DKIM and SPF records. These records are provided by email marketing platforms and must be implemented in your domain's DNS. When these records are not implemented properly, the emails you send out does not show your branding in the email header and may land in spam folder.
71. Don't tell them. Show them with real life examples
Do you know why case studies are so popular? Businesses have their challenges and look for ways to resolve them. With case studies, businesses can easily relate their existing challenges with the ones in the case study and solutions implemented for them. People do not pay attention when you talk about your solution offerings and benefits in your emails. They engage when you talk about real life examples related to customer's industry. Do mention them where needed in your emails. Mentioning these examples and success stories in the emails and landing pages can help you gain trustworthiness and increase conversion rates.
72. Don't send duplicate emails
If you send two or more emails about the same topic or product every week or even every few days then people might stop reading them because they’re just going to get annoyed with all of the requests and sales pitches.
Optimize landing page for conversions
Conversion rate is a key KPI for your promotional email campaigns. You may have done everything to write the perfect email copy and deliver the email to recipient's inbox, however, conversions do not happen if the landing page is not optimized for conversions. Optimize your landing page elements such as forms, CTA, page load, landing page headline and content.
71. Keep the landing page form fields to minimum
Sending a form to your reader doesn’t mean that they will have to fill out their entire name, email, company name, phone number, message and other details. Instead, include a simple signup form that allows them to do only three things: give you information so that you can better target future campaigns, subscribe to your emails, or skip your emails.
72. Collect details progressively
You plan to collect a lot of details about your contacts. At the same time, you plan to keep the form fields to minimum. With progressive profiling technique, you can gradually collect more data on leads at strategically timed intervals throughout the buyer's journey. Marketing platforms such as Eloqua, Marketo and HubSpot offer marketers to progressively profile contact's details based on the information already collected.
73. Email deduplication & non-marketing contacts
Email marketing tools automatically deduplicate email ids so you do not need to worry about sending the same email to same email address multiple times. These contacts are charged only once. Further, you can reduce your tool subscriptions by moving your unengaged contacts to archives or non-marketing contacts. Leading marketing platforms such as HubSpot and MailChimp offers the non-marketing contacts feature and helps you in reducing your spend on email marketing activities.
74. Use active voice for your email copy
Sentences written in an active voice use fewer words, making the writing more concise and efficient. Active voice, unlike passive voice, places more emphasis on subject of the sentence and makes the sentence easier to understand. An average reader reads an email for only 2-3 seconds and takes a decision on whether to read it further or go to the next one. Since it is a very short duration, you must use active voice to make the copy easier to understand for your readers.
75. Optimize the Plain text version of your email copy
When you are creating emails on marketing tools such as MailChimp, you are generally creating a HTML version of emails using the code editor or drag and drop builders. These email marketing tools automatically create a plain-text version of your email (using the HTML version) which will be displayed when a email service provider such as Outlook blocks the HTML version from loading up. Email service providers may only show plain-text version of emails when emails land in spam or when the email is not from trusted sources. The HTML version loads up when recipients click on the "Display HTML Version". Make sure that the plain-text email is loading properly and has all the line breaks and proper text formatting.
76. Have an email marketing calendar in place
An email marketing calendar helps you organize and schedule email marketing campaigns. It displays campaign related information such as target persona, number of recipients, marketing collateral used, email schedule, email open rate, click rate, email subject line, campaign owner, conversion rate and email follow up date.
77. Ask them to "report as not spam"
When you find that your emails are landing in spam folder, it is essential to inform your readers to look for email in the spam folder. You must also mention them to report as not spam. These reports inform email service providers that these emails are genuine and not junk. After looking into several reports, these email service providers move your future emails to the inbox.
78. Don't stop experimenting
Never stop experimenting just because you are getting decent results. Try changing elements, try a different message, offer a free trial or talk about industry trends to see how recipients are reacting to each campaign. Marketers must experiment at all the times and take data-backed decisions to optimize future campaigns.
Succeeding with your email marketing campaign is going to require a lot of work, research, and tracking on your part -- but if you've been successful in the past, then it won't be too hard at all. Just remember that email marketing is about the customer, and it's going to take some time for your customers to learn about your company -- but give it time.
Make sure to keep up with tips and tricks in this space and find strategies that work best for your business. That way, you can stay on top of the latest trends and use them to great effect in your email campaigns.
79. Request your subscribers to add you as contact
These days it's more important than ever for people to be able to trust the information they are receiving from other companies. As a result, many businesses have turned towards so-called "white listing". This means that you should give your information to companies that you are familiar with and trust.
80. Build your contact list
Your email campaigns are only as good as your contact lists are. Give your visitors a reason to sign up on your website. It can be a free trial, consultation, e-book or a excel/word template. When contacts sign up on their own, they are showing interest in your offer and submit correct data. Utilize marketing channels such as SEO, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to bring traffic to your website and generate conversions.
81. Send your collateral in an email
Many visitors submit dummy email ids to receive the collateral. These emails are invalid and are not of any use. Instead, you can share the content collateral in an email when visitors sign up on your website. This way you can keep a check on contacts submitting fake information and ensure that the email list is clean.
82. Restrict personal email addresses
In B2B businesses, personal email addresses are of not any use. They do not provide much value. With marketing platforms such as HubSpot and Marketo, restrict your web visitors from submitting personal email addresses in a few clicks.
83. Avoid sign up forms when not needed
When you are sharing collateral to your existing subscribers via links in an email and are not looking at collecting any additional details, do not use unnecessary forms to know the subscriber's interests. Email marketing tools track the contacts clicking on an email and should provide you enough information. Further, you can increase your email engagement by informing your subscribers about "no form fills".
84. A shared IP does not necessarily doom you
In general, emails sent from email marketing tools are via shared IP addresses. What does a shared IP address mean? Sending an email requires exchanging data between servers. These servers have unique IP addresses. When you are sending emails via email marketing tools, you use their servers and IP addresses to send emails. In general, these servers send emails for other users as well. When multiple users use the same server IP address to send emails, there is a chance that your email marketing activities getting affected because of someone else's poor marketing habits. However, email marketing tools take necessary steps to safeguard the interests of other users by tracking bounce rates, engagement and unsubscribe rates for each campaign.
85. A dedicated IP is costly and is not useful if it is poorly managed
A dedicated IP means that you use a private IP that is only associated with your sender address to take complete control of your email deliverability. Dedicated IPs are useful when you are constantly sending more than 200K emails a month and have the resources to maintain them. Unlike shared IPs, dedicated IPs are expensive. Mistakes made in a dedicated IP environment are tougher to correct because the volume of good emails sent via dedicated IP are much lower and cannot offset the small mistake.
86. Send welcome emails
When a contact signs up on your website or becomes a customer, send a welcome email that informs the contact what he or she can expect from you in the coming days.
87. User engagement plays a key role in the delivery of emails
Email service providers observe the engagement your emails are getting and use that data in deciding the delivery of your emails. Optimize your email campaigns for opens, clicks, replies and forwards which will help improve the email delivery.
88. When you sent a wrong email by error, email them for the inconvenience caused
We are humans and we make mistakes. We perform all the checks before we send an email out. However, wrong emails may go out because of faulty systems or internal miscommunications. When such error happens, you must immediately email your contacts for the inconvenience caused and request them to ignore that email.
89. Design for simplicity
Even though email marketing can be as simple as one message, choosing the right design can make all of the difference in getting people to sign up or even read your emails. Keep the email design simple and appealing so that the email is readable and engaging.
90. Include video
Although videos are not usually included in email copy, you might want to begin adding them if you want people who are reading your messages on their phones or tablets to have an easier time viewing it. If you want to take things a step further, just make sure that the videos are short and to the point so that they don’t lose interest while watching it.
91. Use a professional tone
You should avoid using slang or abbreviations whenever possible so that you don’t come off as unprofessional to your readers. No matter what type of business you are in, you should always use a business-like tone in your emails if you want people to take you seriously and not think that it's just another sales pitch.
92. Make sure the landing page is loading superfast
Your email marketing efforts go into vain if the landing pages are not laoding fast. Use tools such as GTMetrix and pingdom to understand the performance issues are, implement CDN, defer Javascript, etc. to load the webpages in less than 2-3 seconds.
93. Re-engage contacts
Many contacts do not engage with emails. You should re-engage them with creative subject lines and email copies to bring back their interests.
94. List Segmentation
With lists, you'll create a different list for each campaign you send out to different segments of the same audience. The segments are usually groups of people with common interests and demographics that can be reached with a specific type of content and/or offer.
List segmentation is crucial to email marketing success because it helps to ensure your list is 100% optimized for your campaign and your audience -- it makes sure that everything in the communication is relevant to each individual on the list.
95. Find the right email marketing tool or service provider
There are several email marketing options out there for businesses of all sizes and from all industries. Email marketing tools such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Vertical Response, HubSpot and eSnips are just a few of the services that offer email marketing campaigns as a service. A tool will be easier to use and may be more effective at reaching a larger segment of your audience.
96. Budgeting For Your Campaign
What's the cost of sending one email? It depends on the provider and the campaign, but on average an email campaign costs between $2-$3 for every thousand emails sent.
With that info in hand, you can make a budget for your campaign and start planning what kinds of emails you would like to send out at what intervals. If you're planning a very simple, one or two-step, two-week email schedule, it doesn't need to cost nearly as much as if you have multiple campaigns planned over many months or years.
97. GDPR compliant email marketing
The GDPR is a new set of regulations that require that any company holding personal information about clients and customers must be able to demonstrate that they have their consent to hold and utilize such data. That consent must be freely given, specific and unambiguous. The law also makes it unlawful for businesses to force people give up these rights. Withholding or withdrawing services is expressly forbidden by the GDPR unless it is impossible for the business offering them to continue due to a legal obligation or where it can be confirmed in writing that the individual specifically requests their data be erased from the database. If you abide by these rules, you will have ensured your emails are not spam and are not unsolicited mailings.
98. Request your subscribers to mark your emails as important & move it to Inbox
You can take advantage of this by adding value to your email. If your emails are important to the customer, then he/she would have the option of marking them as important, which means that they will arrive in his/her Inbox rather than spam.
Give the reader a reason to care. You want to develop some trust with your subscribers, and one of the easiest ways is to help them out in some way. Offer a tip that can help them save money and time -- something that they like to hear! People love getting tips for free stuff, so give it out freely on your site or in emails.
99. Perform spam checks
When you send an email, there is a chance that it could be flagged as spam. To reduce this chance, perform a spam check on your email to make sure it's not going to be marked as spam. This is a very easy thing to do, and can make all the difference.
100. Test
You need to make sure that everything you send in an email is correct. The subject line, the greeting, the body and links must all be perfect to avoid getting your message deleted or marked with spam. One way of doing this is to test them using a tool such as Litmus.
Even after you've created your campaign, it's essential that you test and measure it. This means that you'll be sending the emails to a small segment of your list in order to see how well it does. If the campaign is successful, then you can go ahead and create the rest of the emails for your larger list. If not, you'll want to make adjustments to improve your open rate and click-through rate.
It's crucial to know what works and what doesn't so that you can continue to get better results with each campaign.
101. Track your campaign
After you send your email, make sure that you track it so you know how it is doing. It will help you find out which type of email content works best and what types of non-responsive recipients are causing your campaign to fail.
