Introduction
Sending an email or two is easy. However, a long-term email strategy that grows your business requires a deliberate approach using best practices in email marketing. From the right tactics for gaining new subscribers to the best ways to allow readers to unsubscribe, the world of email marketing has rules worth learning. By focusing on email best practices, you will connect with your customers and grow your business by converting subscribers into sales.
1. Use Double Opt-In
Sending information and offers via email is a form of permission marketing, a term coined by Seth Godin in his book “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers.” Godin encourages customers to subscribe to marketing and dictate when, where, and how they are advertised to, noting that this is the most effective (and respectful) way to convert viewers into customers. When a website visitor, potential customer, or previous buyer subscribes to your email list, they give you permission to communicate with them.
2. Send a Welcome Message
Once a customer agrees to receive emails, send a welcome message to establish an early connection and prepare them for what’s to come. Welcome messages typically have an average open rate exceeding 86%, making them worth taking advantage of. Most email marketing services, including the built-in marketing in Shopify, allow you to send an automated welcome email after a new subscriber joins your email list. Make sure your welcome message is timeless and relevant to newcomers.
3. Avoid Using a No-Reply Email Address
Using email, you can build a strong relationship with subscribers in their inboxes. The type of email address you use can impact this relationship. As a best practice in email marketing, avoid using a no-reply email address. Instead, choose a valid email address that subscribers can actually reply to. Here’s the difference between the two:
4. Personalize Your Messages
Create a connection with subscribers and provide them with maximum value by personalizing the messages you send. One of the simplest ways to add a personal touch to messages is to address the messages to subscribers using their names in email marketing platforms that add personalized information to your messages. However, this is just one of many ways to incorporate personalization into your messages.
5. Write in an Informal, Conversational Style
As a company, you want to communicate with customers in a way that sounds polished and professional. However, in practice, this can lead to a stiff style that makes your messages appear cold and impersonal. Instead, choose a tone in your messages that is informal and conversational.
6. Keep Messages Short
On average, a person sends and receives 121 business emails daily; the email you send to a subscriber is just one in an endless digital pile. Give your email a better chance of being read by keeping your messages short and concise.
7. Make Messages Easy to Scan
People typically don’t read every word in an email, at least at first. Instead, while reading online, people often rely on an F-shaped reading pattern that’s optimized for efficiency, focusing initially on the top of the text before scrolling down vertically. The reader’s eyes skim over important details to get a general idea of what the email is saying.
8.
Make the subject line interesting
Spending time crafting an engaging and informative email doesn’t matter if the subscriber doesn’t open it. That’s why a subject line that grabs the reader’s attention from their crowded inbox is extremely important. Avoid tricks like all caps, excessive exclamation points, and an overload of emojis, and instead try these tips:
9. Look at the preview text
If the subject line is your title, the preview text is your subtitle. While the subscriber sees the subject line first, the preview text gives you another chance to inspire someone to open your email. Don’t use preview text that pulls from the previous subject line or the first line of your email. Instead, customize your preview text and choose a line that prompts readers to delve into what you want to say.
10. Have a compelling call-to-action
Email is a great medium for encouraging action; that’s why there are calls-to-action (CTAs). Add CTA buttons to your emails to help make it clear what the reader should do. Your CTA text should be short (one word to five words) and concise, while the CTA button should stand out clearly from the rest of the email and be obvious to the reader.
11. Conduct A/B testing on your content
One valuable feature in most email marketing platforms is the opportunity to test your email content through A/B testing by sending different versions of a single email.
12. Use audience segmentation
One of the main advantages of email marketing, compared to other marketing channels, is the ability to send personalized emails by segmenting your audience for more targeted and detailed campaigns.
13. Make your emails accessible
Blindness and visual impairments, such as color blindness, are more common than you might think. By making some adjustments to your emails, you can make them more accessible to a wider audience of readers with visual limitations or who consume your content on a screen reader. While web accessibility (or a11y) is a broad topic, here are some guidelines to help make your emails more accessible to as many readers as possible:
14. Optimize for mobile
Since marketing emails are often drafted and edited on desktop computers, the formatting of emails on mobile devices can be tricky. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution: test your email before sending it out, and check how it appears on a mobile device.
15. Establish a consistent schedule
Your email content is one thing, and the timing of sending your email is another. As part of your email marketing strategy, decide on the frequency and timing for sending your messages. This may seem a complex task; there’s no shortage of data on how often marketing messages should be sent and when. However, many of these differences in open rates and click rates based on frequency are relatively small.
16. Use analytics to drive your email marketing strategy
Use analytics to make data-driven decisions about your email marketing strategy. By paying attention to email marketing metrics across campaigns, you can adjust your sends for better engagement with readers. Here are some metrics worth noting:
17. Include sharing options for distribution
Set up your newsletter for distribution by adding options that allow readers to share your emails. While readers can forward the email, you can also encourage subscribers to share the messages with their friends, family, and followers using sharing options within your emails.
18.
Use Lead Magnets to Increase Subscribers
Lead magnets are an effective strategy to encourage website visitors to subscribe to your email list. A lead magnet is a free resource offered to someone in exchange for their contact details (email address, name, phone number, demographic details). For example, a company selling productivity magazines could offer a lead magnet on its website that provides annual planning resources to subscribers in exchange for an email address.
19. Regularly Clean Your Email List
While increasing the number of subscribers on your email list can be valuable, the number of subscribers is not the figure you should focus on most. Email marketing metrics such as open rate, click rate, and conversion rate can be more informative. For instance, a list with 5000 subscribers and a click rate of 5% will generate more traffic to your website than a list with 10000 subscribers and a click rate of 1%. Additionally, having engaged subscribers can improve deliverability rates by reducing spam complaints or unsubscribes.
20. Make the Unsubscribe Process Easy
No matter how hard you try, not every subscriber on your email list will be enthusiastic and engaged with your messages. Some of your email list may unsubscribe, likely after you send an email. However, as discussed earlier, the number of subscribers is not the figure you should pay the most attention to. You should make this process as easy as possible, with a clear unsubscribe button in the footer of every email you send to comply with the law and leave a good impression in the end.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/email-marketing-best-practices
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