While the practice may seem outdated, you might be surprised at how much your business can benefit from a solid email marketing strategy. In fact, the email marketing market is projected to be worth an impressive $17.9 billion by 2027.
But here's the key: You can't just send out a few emails here and there and hope for the best. By "solid email marketing strategy," we mean one that's thoughtful, strategic, consistent, and targeted. While there are many brands that attempt it, few actually reap the full benefits.
In this article, we'll take you one step closer to being in that second category. We'll look at email marketing best practices, from email subject lines to welcome emails to segmenting your target audience.
Email Marketing Best Practices
Building and Maintaining Your Email List
1. Offer an Incentive for Signups
Most people won't hand over their email address without getting something valuable in return. Think about what would motivate your audience to subscribe. A discount code is a popular choice, but it's not your only option.
Consider what makes sense for your brand. If you sell limited-edition products that frequently sell out, early access to restocks could be incentive enough. Other effective options include free downloadable resources like guides or templates, or entry into a giveaway.
2. Use Double Opt-in for Signups
Requiring subscribers to confirm their email address might seem like an extra hurdle, but it actually protects your email deliverability in the long run. With double opt-in, people receive a confirmation link after signing up, which they must click before joining your list.
This approach stops fake addresses from cluttering your list and helps you comply with privacy regulations like GDPR. Since you're only emailing people who've explicitly confirmed they want to hear from you, you're on solid legal ground.
3. Clean Your List Regularly
A bigger email list doesn't always mean better results. Subscribers who never open your emails can actually hurt your email deliverability rates.
Here's how to maintain a healthy list:
- Find subscribers who haven't engaged in a while and send them a re-engagement campaign asking if they still want to receive your emails.
- Remove people who don't respond to your re-engagement efforts.
- Delete addresses that look suspicious or fake, either manually or using your email marketing software.
4. Make Unsubscribing Simple
If you're making it hard for users to unsubscribe, you could be violating the CAN-SPAM Act in the US or GDPR regulations in the EU. Bottom line: Don't be shady.
Every single email you send should have a clear Unsubscribe link at the bottom. Never hide the Unsubscribe button or make subscribers go out of their way to unsubscribe. Major email providers like Gmail now require bulk senders to include a simple, one-click unsubscribe option.
5. Maintain a Consistent Sending Schedule
Send emails on a predictable schedule to build trust with your readers. Aim for roughly one email per week to keep engagement high while avoiding subscriber fatigue. Remember, people are more likely to unsubscribe if they feel bombarded by too many messages.
This guideline applies to your regular newsletters, not automated messages like abandoned cart reminders.
Welcome Email Best Practices
6. Automate Your Welcome Messages
The first email is important for setting the tone of your email campaigns and starting to build the relationship with your email subscribers. When someone subscribes, you should be ready to greet them immediately with an automated welcome email.
In your welcome email, introduce yourself and tell them exactly what to expect, like how often you'll be emailing and the types of things you'll be talking about.
7. Deliver on Your Signup Promise
Your welcome email is where you fulfill whatever incentive you offered during signup. Include the discount code, downloadable content, or other reward you promised, along with any relevant expiration dates.
Delivering immediately on your promise can lead to quick conversions from new subscribers who are already interested in buying.
8. Share Your Best Content
Help new subscribers catch up on what they've missed by highlighting your most popular or valuable content. You can feature these links within the welcome email body or in a "recommended reading" section at the end.
9. Build Excitement
Welcome emails typically get opened more often than regular marketing messages, so take advantage of this opportunity. Share your founding story, explain your brand values, or give subscribers a preview of the exciting content coming their way.
Email Copywriting Best Practices
10. Write Like You Speak
Nobody wants to spend extra time re-reading stuffy, confusing, and overly formal writing. Your emails should flow as if you're having a casual conversation with your target audience.
To accomplish this, opt for "smaller" words over bigger ones, use contractions (like "you're" instead of "you are"), keep sentences short, and avoid big blocks of text. Reading your drafts aloud can help you nail the right tone.
11. Proofread Carefully
Always review your emails for errors before sending. Try reading your content aloud or backwards (starting from the last sentence) to catch mistakes your brain might otherwise skip over. Grammar tools can also help ensure your messages are polished and professional.
12. Avoid Industry Jargon
Only use specialized terms or acronyms if you're certain your readers will understand them. When in doubt, spell out abbreviations on first use or replace them with everyday language that leaves no room for confusion.
13. Stay on Brand
Keep your brand voice consistent across all emails and platforms. While your overall voice should remain steady, you can adjust your tone when addressing sensitive topics or serious situations.
14. Keep it Short and Sweet
Building off the last point, you don't want to send long, rambly emails that bore your readers and send them running away. There's a fine line between an informative email and a pointless one, so make sure you walk that line carefully.
Research has shown that the ideal length for your copy is around 50 to 125 words. Try to stay in that range, unless you're writing something like a newsletter. Focus on one main topic per email, such as announcing a sale or product restock.
15. Pay Attention to Subject Lines
Some email marketers claim that subject lines are the single most important part of your emails. It's the reason they choose to open it, after all.
Put some extra thought into your subject lines. Note the most exciting, interesting, or timely parts of your core message. Make it fun. Pique their interest. Add a sense of urgency if the content is time-sensitive.
Keep subject lines under nine words and 60 characters to prevent them from getting cut off on mobile devices. Stay away from all caps and limit special characters, which can trigger spam filters.
16. Optimize Your Preview Text
Think of preview text as a subtitle to your subject line. While the subject line grabs attention, the preview text adds context and detail. Together, they should work as a team to convince subscribers to open your email.
17. Give a Clear, Compelling CTA
Have you ever read an email and felt confused about its point? That's exactly what you don't want. Before you write any email, think hard about the point of the email and the action you want your readers to take after reading it.
Do you want them to buy a specific product? Read a blog post on your website? Navigate to a landing page to shop for a sale? Create a CTA button that clearly tells them where they're about to go.
Effective CTAs are brief and use action-oriented language like "buy," "explore," or "discover." You can even use results-based language based on your product or service. Make your CTA stand out by using a contrasting color and bold text. Most email marketing platforms will make it easy for you to create enticing and eye-catching CTA buttons.
18. Test Before You Send
Try sending your email to a small group of subscribers first and track how they respond. Use what you learn to refine your message before sending it to your full list.
You can also run A/B tests by sending two slightly different versions of the same email to separate groups and comparing which performs better.
Email Design Best Practices
19. Make Them Skimmable
Visuals are everything, especially for busy people. Your emails should have a balance of visuals and text, broken into sections that guide their eyes along the page.
If they can't skim, chances are a lot higher they'll just close out and move on with their day. To avoid this, implement strategies like bullet points, images, headers, graphics, bold and italics, call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and white space.
Write brief paragraphs of two to five sentences, each focused on a single idea. Use headers to divide your content and help readers navigate. Mix in photos, illustrations, or graphics to break up text-heavy sections.
20. Design for Accessibility
Ensure people with disabilities can read your emails by following web accessibility guidelines. Add descriptive alt text to images, make sure emails can be navigated using a keyboard, choose dark fonts, and create high-contrast designs.
21. Optimize Emails for Mobile Devices
Have you ever opened an email on your phone that looks downright terrible? Don't be one of those brands. Your emails should look good no matter what type of device, browser, or screen your audience is reading it from.
Fortunately, most email marketing tools will make it easy for you to optimize your emails for mobile devices. Just be sure you're sending yourself a test email and taking a look before you launch a campaign. Use short subject lines and appropriately-sized images to ensure everything displays properly on smaller screens.
22. Keep Your Design Consistent
Use your signature colors, fonts, and other brand identity elements in every email to build recognition. Once you've created a layout that works, save it as a template to streamline your design process.
Email Personalization Best Practices
23. Segment Your Target Audience
Email marketing gives you the ability to send tailored emails through audience segmentation. Using software, you can capture important details about your subscribers or create segments based on their website activity. Send relevant updates to specific segments rather than your entire list to maximize the results from email marketing.
Segmented campaigns show higher open rates (14.31%) and click-through rates (100.95%) compared to non-segmented campaigns. You can segment your email list based on:
- Website activity: Send targeted reminders and prompts based on the subscriber's last visit or viewed content.
- Content interests: Inquire about visitors' interests during sign-up and send relevant content (product-focused, company news, etc.).
- Email frequency preferences: Allow subscribers to choose how often they want to receive content (bi-weekly, weekly, daily) and segment accordingly.
- Purchase behavior: Create VIP segments for high-spending customers and reward them with exclusive perks or early access to sales.
24. Personalize with Names
Address subscribers by their first name in the subject line or email body. Most email marketing platforms let you automate this personalization easily.
25. Celebrate Special Occasions
Collect birthdates when people sign up and send automated birthday messages with special offers. Recognizing milestones like birthdays or purchase anniversaries shows you value customers as individuals.
26. Follow Up After Purchases
Send post-purchase emails to show customers you care about their experience beyond the transaction. Include helpful information like assembly instructions for complex products or an invitation to reach out with questions.
27. Recover Abandoned Carts
Sometimes customers add items to their cart but don't complete the purchase. Send automated abandoned cart reminders with product images and a direct link back to their cart to help them finish checking out.
28. Use Browsing Data
When subscribers accept cookies, you can send them emails based on products they viewed but didn't buy. Let them know when these items go on sale or are running low in stock.
29. Send Replenishment Reminders
For consumable products, send reminders when customers are likely running low. If someone buys toothpaste, for example, reach out after a few months to suggest reordering.
30. Encourage Sharing
Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful types of marketing out there. It’s still one of the most popular ways to discover new brands and create growth loops.
That's why you should always encourage sharing. You can do so by starting a referral program that offers discounts and perks for referrals. Or you can simply include sharing links in your emails to make it easy to share marketing emails.
Grow Your Business with Email Marketing
There are tons of email marketing best practices out there, and many places to start. While it can seem intimidating, just think of it as a long-term experiment.
Pick out the tactics that seem most impactful in the least amount of time, and go from there. Pay attention to your results and keep optimizing with every new email campaign you send.
If you approach it with an open-minded, persistent, and data-first mindset, you'll absolutely see results.
Email Marketing Best Practices FAQ
What Are Email Marketing Best Practices?
Email marketing best practices are guidelines that businesses follow when sending emails to their subscribers. Following them helps companies create better email campaigns that drive more engagement and business. Additionally, email marketing best practices help you stay compliant with anti-spam legislations like the CAN-SPAM Act.
How Can Email Marketing Best Practices Help My Business?
Email marketing best practices can help increase trust in your products and brand. These practices allow you to craft emails that are tailored to your subscribers' interest. This personalized approach helps to build a positive perception of your brand, resulting in higher engagement and conversions.
What Are Examples of Email Marketing Best Practices?
- Using double opt-in email sign-up
- Personalizing email subject lines
- Segmenting your audience
- Personalizing content
- A/B testing emails
- Optimizing sendouts for mobile email clients
- Sending welcome emails
- Avoiding no-reply email addresses
What Should I Avoid When Sending Marketing Emails?
Avoid using no-reply email addresses that prevent subscribers from responding. Don't overuse emojis, all caps, or special characters in subject lines, as these can trigger spam filters. Never ignore accessibility guidelines or make it difficult for people to unsubscribe.