7 Email Marketing Tips You Should Adopt Immediately

Every single second, 2.4 billion emails are sent all around the world. With your target audience’s inboxes constantly being flooded, it’s important to recognize that your business’s emails are competing for attention at all times.

Despite the rise of social media and other messaging channels, email marketing is still on the rise. For businesses that want to attract and retain customers, email marketing campaigns are crucial. In fact, 81% of small businesses rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel, and 80% for retention.

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With these facts and figures in mind, it’s easy to see the relevance of email marketing across all industries today. An effective and efficient email campaign drives members of your target audience to engage with your business and take real action, and gives you the ability to better understand your overall strategy through various measurement tactics in the process.

Embarking on your company’s next booming campaign takes time, consideration, and a lot of prep work. Before you hit send, read through these seven tips to help you ensure that your business is putting its best foot forward when that campaign email lands in your audiences’ inboxes.

1.  Set goals that are SMART

The first step in starting any campaign is to identify your company’s goals. Each email you send and tagline you develop should result in an end goal that can be measured and tracked over time. With email marketing, it’s important to apply the “SMART” goals strategy for every campaign you commit to.

Each goal you set for your campaign should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based. By ensuring that your goals can be tracked and tested, you are setting a precedent for your future strategies that will be informed by clear and measurable information. If you don’t set goals that are easy to understand, you lack the ability to determine what you’ve achieved and the clarity to move forward.

2.  Create a targeted email list

In order to reach the right set of people for your business, you need to make sure you know your audience and that you are utilizing a targeted email list. Creating a targeted email list allows you to collect information on your audience and create segments based on metrics like geographic location, demographics, interests, and more.

Segmenting your audience is beneficial because it helps you understand the different audiences that are attracted to your brand and gives you the opportunity to target them based on their individual interests and preferences. This will ultimately result in higher open rates and, eventually, conversions.

3.  Think about your email sender name and subject lines

Some of the simplest features of your email hold the most importance and value when it comes to your campaign’s success rate.

For starters, your email sender name is especially significant because it’s what catches your reader’s attention. It is often the first thing people consider when deciding to open an email. Try sticking to your company’s name and refrain from using a person’s name or “do not reply” address.

Next up, it’s time to take a look at how you’re approaching your email subject lines. Your email’s subject line is the next giveaway for your audience to decide whether to open your message. Additionally, your subject line is often one of the most spam-sensitive parts of your email, so it’s important to consider potential trigger words that could cause unnecessary headaches for your email campaign.

4.  Feature interesting and relevant content

When it comes to email copy, be sure to keep things simple and straightforward. Get to the point and draw your audience in with personalized content that includes eye-catching images and ends with an effective call-to-action.

Just as you should avoid spam trigger words when developing your subject lines, follow the same protocol. Spam filters actually scan the entirety of your emails, so it’s important to keep that in mind when sitting down to write out the messages for your marketing campaign.

Consider your target audience with each sentence you write and every image or link you include. Ask yourself these questions to craft effective emails:

• Does your content add value to your company’s overall message and image in the eyes of your audience?
• Does your content satisfy the wants and needs of your audience?
• Does your content align with your company’s goals?
• How does your content benefit both your audience and your brand overall?

Additionally, remember not to oversaturate your emails with too much content. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with so many images and lines of copy that they become disinterested in your content and unmotivated to continue following up with your company. The body of your email should always feature content that is not only attention-grabbing, but also easy to read and understand.

5.  Try out different layouts and formatting strategies

Once you’ve determined what content you will feature in your email marketing campaign, take the time to play around with different layouts and formatting strategies for your messages. Your visual appearance greatly impacts how your audience will engage with your brand. Members of your audience are more likely to be drawn to read through emails that are user-friendly and meet a certain standard of aesthetics.

It doesn’t take a design guru to create an aesthetically pleasing email format. Think about what works best and makes the most sense for your mission and the content you are choosing to feature.

What do you want your audience to remember once they finish reading your message? How can you use the formatting of your message to prompt your audience members to take the next step and engage with your call-to-action?

6.  Be aware of email marketing regulations and compliance requirements

When considering email marketing as an outreach tactic, it’s important to understand the rules and regulations that can turn your company’s innocent approach into a legal nightmare if not obeyed.

The CAN-SPAM Act sets regulations for commercial messages, as well as gives email recipients the right to unsubscribe. The last thing you want to deal with is the potential fines your business can face by failing to follow the compliance terms of the CAN-SPAM Act.

By ensuring your emails are CAN-SPAM compliant, your marketing and sales teams can focus on content creation and outreach that will result in higher response and engagement rates.

7.  Use data and analytic insights to track your progress

Sending your email is not the final step in the journey of your email marketing campaign.

Once you’ve secured a target audience and created a message full of interesting and engaging content, the next step is to test and track every aspect of your email marketing campaign so that you can gain helpful insights based on real data and analytics.

In order to optimize your email strategy for future campaigns, you first need to understand the metrics that quantify the success of your emails. One helpful set of metrics includes key performance indicators, or KPIs, which measure the success of your brand, as well as its marketing and sales efforts.

Using data to identify points of improvement and success rates is extremely important for your company’s campaign strategy. Without the proper data and tracking, you won’t be able to fully understand the progress you’ve made and your brand’s ultimate potential in comparison to your goals.

Beyond the Checklist

Your email marketing strategy constantly evolves with each message you send. Keeping track of what works and what doesn’t will allow you to approach each new campaign with confidence!

Use this checklist to reassure and reinvent your business’s strategies so that you can boost your success rate when it comes to your next marketing campaign.

To learn more about the basics of email marketing, download A Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing by Mirabel’s Marketing Manager. Click on the button below to download your copy: