Email Marketing Best Practices: Tips To Become A Better Marketer

It is all about the customization

Business website? Check. Mobile application? Check. Pre and post marketing practices? Check. Email marketing? Wait, isn’t that dead? Why should I practice it? Are you among those who believe the same? To all such believers, my sympathy is with you. Let me bring the business on the board. And let me interrogate you upon this.

How often do you check your inbox? I guess at least two times a day or maybe more. What’s the preferred channel of initiating a professional talk with new clients? It’s only through emails I guess. And how do businesses reach to potential clients? It’s again through emails.

While having so many benefits how can anyone even claim that email marketing is done. Rather it’s in a golden phase where everyone is getting more or less share of benefit by practicing email marketing strategy. If practiced well it can help businesses to get an extra edge among the users that other businesses lack. But it sure asks for some extra efforts and inclusion of some great ideas in email campaigns.

Let’s have an in-depth analysis of the best tactics for a better email marketing strategy:

Prior to we begin, let’s have a look on the stats:

• It’s a report by Radicati Group, which claims 250 billion emails are sent on a daily basis.
• And the upcoming year i.e. the year 2019 is expected to watch a massive growth i.e. 275 billion emails on a daily basis.
• By 2020 the count will reach to 4.2 billion
• Gmail had 1 billion active users in the year 2016
• This is a huge count and the profits are all in the favor of the business who practice the same

Email marketing strategy brings great results and delivers the best ROI on the services. Look at the channels here and the ROI they bring together.

That’s true, email marketing strategy outperforms every other prominent practice including SEO and content marketing. That makes email marketing a prominent channel for advertisement. The strategy any marketer follows matters when it is about reaching to the clients. Email marketers can expect a soaring ROI of $40 on every email the cost of which to these marketers is $1. And that is a massive return. 

Now let’s get back to our original discussion. I will take the article further by mentioning some of the best email practices for 2018 and towards the end of the write-up, there will be a brief on the businesses that practice some of the best email marketing strategies.

Let’s get started with the best practices for Email Marketing

Harness the charm of personalization in your email

Understanding the nuances of personalized emails can significantly enhance your engagement with your audience, much like recognizing the importance of securing your digital presence. This is especially crucial in situations where you might find yourself needing to know "How to Recover a Hacked Email Account," ensuring you're equipped to protect your personal or professional communications from unauthorized access.

For marketers, personalization is a broader term. It is not only sending a well-drafted email to a whole bunch of clients rather it is more precise and asks marketers to customize emails as the preferred needs of the clients and then shoot them right towards the clients.

Let me quote Amazon here.

The emails from Amazon are never “Dear valued customers” but always “Dear Steve”.

It’s never, you might like our latest offerings. But it is always, “here are your preferences” based on customer history.

To Amazon, it’s not just the email marketing strategy but a conducive channel to reach out to all the customers with the services they prefer the most.

It just takes Amazon a detailed study of the customer’s behavioral stretch when they buy something from the company. Amazon relies on big data (the amazing technology) to gather every minute information for their clients. This way it personalizes the services as per the user’s preferences. Here is an example to illustrate how it impacts the recipient with their names in the subject line.

Draft mobile-friendly emails

The stats from the survey done in 2012 states that 27% of emails are opened over the smartphones, which makes it important to harness the mobile-friendly feature or the goodness of AMP in the same. The similar graph for 2014 reached 42% and the ratio is going to grow year by year.

By all that I am wishing to convey a simple message. Invest your efforts to draft an email marketing strategy that is mobile friendly. Mobile has already become the super buddy for every one of us. It is the first thing users have with them when they go to the bed and the last thing they wish to see when they come out of the bed.

In case, your emails are mobile ready you easily get the edge and reach to a huge number of clients without much of the efforts.

Emails that are optimized for mobiles automatically get more impressions than the ones that are just opened over the desktops.

Time the email right

Even if you have created an impressive piece of content for your users through a well-analyzed email marketing strategy, you have just started your journey. The next step is to time your email right. You won’t knock your clients’ door at 3 in the morning. Neither you would like it nor your users will like to have such an experience with your brand. So folks the timings matter.

The right timing is when you have the highest chances of success and this is something you have to work on while developing the strategy.

• While there has had been discussions in the past over the best timings to shoot the emails to the customers, many businesses have agreed to sending the emails in the mornings the most.
• The best timing is by 7 in the morning  
• It is also advised to avoid the middle of the work day and the weekends too. Only a bunch of people have the urge to work on weekends. The majority of people likes it to be unplugged until a Monday morning knocks their door

Ask questions from your clients

The human psychology works extremely well when they are interrogated about any of the matters. They are sure to respond to you on any of the questions you ask over the email. Do include the questions like “what do you think about it?” Can we have your opinion on it? Would you like to get served with the services? And other questions like this.

The goal is to get your users in the business which is easy when you ask questions in your email marketing campaign. Practice it with your upcoming email marketing campaign and see the difference in the result. It will help you to know the sheer difference on what a question-embedded-email marketing campaign can do for your business.  

Automate email marketing campaign is the new trend

In case it is trendy, users would easily swear by your services. And the very latest trend in the email marketing services is to automate your email campaigns whenever possible. Work with a well-analyzed email marketing strategy before practicing the same.

Trigger-based emails are automated with user’s behavior and sent out to them. Welcome emails are the most common types of emails that fall under this category. Trigger emails perform much better than traditional emails and it has been proven by the results that both the email campaigns generate. I have got some stats around the same and here is more about it.

• The percentage of trigger emails is 49% higher than traditional emails
• Click-through rates of such emails are much more than traditional click-throughs
• A report from Forrester has found out that trigger email campaigns generate 4x more revenue for the business

If that sounds good to you, do practice the same with your upcoming email marketing campaign.

Never forget A/B Testing

You can easily find this suggestion in every email marketing best practice guide. And it is all about testing, analyzing, and repeating the process unless it seems to be perfect.

A/B testing for your email marketing strategy means you have to test two different versions of your emails. There is a huge possibility that a subject line could garner impressive results for you while the other lines fail to do the same. This is one of the benefits that A/B testing brings to your business.  

Subject line matters too when it is about getting the attention of the users on the business. It should be exciting, engaging, related to the subject and everything that goes right inside the minds of the users.

Now we have looked around the best email marketing strategies, let’s have a look at the practices some renowned brands adopt.

Email marketing practices from Paypal

Mails from Paypal have elements worth notifying for other massive brands. They are simple and feature a design that is straightforward. The design is concise and features some amount of psychological element in the message. Mails from the company are crafted against a problem (of users), it reflects the sheer dedicated to fighting against user’s issues and then comes up with the solution to tackle the same. With all this and a lot more, PayPal is able to capture the interest of the audience, which is an ingredient that has helped the company reach here to this post as an example.  

Email marketing strategy from UncommonGoods

We all know that call to actions are the inevitable elements of every email marketing campaign and they need to be enticing for the users. But the most important question that a number of marketers would like to ask here is how can I create something different from an element that is in the practice for so long? Well, UncommonGoods offers the most suitable example of this question.

If you are well aware of the website you might have the information about the company on the fact that it designs messages to shoot to clients with specific elements in order to fulfill the requirements of the clients. So, there CTA looks like:

“Wouldn’t your mother love a faster delivery?” Unlike other brands that go with a text, “Get your mother a gift this mother’s day.” They are well aware of the sense of urgency in their messages that has helped the brand succeed in the attempt. Another approach is to try free QR code generators, like Uniqode for example, in your emails to create a unique and engaging CTA, allowing users to quickly access landing pages, promotions, or special offers.   

Here is a quick summary

• Make your subject line interesting. You can be a little humorous, a little clever, a lot informative and analytical too if you find the right stats.
• Generate your email marketing campaigns clearly and be concise with the practice. Just include the main points. Don’t over-stretch your email marketing ideas.
• Remaining mobile-ready is always in the favor of your business. A large number of users open their emails on the smartphone.

The Upshot

Email marketing will continue to deliver great results for the users. But the practice of email marketing needs to be fulfilled with a number of impressive results that lie in bringing the services to the attention of the clients. The email marketing practices are getting more precise and thus every email marketing professional needs to practice targeted campaigns. These are personalized message for the users. And these messages carry the potential to be clicked.

In order to get more clicks, be open to testing. It can help you rectify the messages or include the subject lines that are sure to urge the users.

It is always in the practice that would help you to be different from others but with the same ingredients. It will always remain in your way of pleasing the clients. If you are able to convey the message correctly, no one can stop you from winning the users’ hearts.