5 Email Practices

Are you satisfied with the response you’re getting from your email campaigns? Even if the answer is yes, you should aim to move your campaigns from good to great. 

Here are five simple fundamentals to follow if you want to improve your email marketing results. 

1) Remember that hygiene matters

Routinely keeping your email lists up-to-date is a must as high rates of undeliverable emails will affect the overall success of your campaigns.  Here are some things you can do to keep your email lists current:

  • Use a double opt-in when signing up new subscribers to make sure that they are authentic.
  • Delete any duplicate emails.
  • Make sure to expunge emails that bounce back so you don’t keep sending emails to expired email domains.
  • Send messages to inactive subscribers asking if they want to remain on your list.  If they don’t respond, remove them.

2) Subject lines and preview text need special attention

Getting email recipients to open your email can be a challenge. While short emails are generally a good idea, that isn’t always possible.   

Whether your message is short or packed with content, you need to make sure your subject grabs attention and creates a sense of urgency in as few words as possible.

You should also pay close attention to your preview sentence. Make sure that it builds on your subject line. 

And if you ask a question in your subject, be sure to answer it in your preview text.

Remember, you only have a few seconds for your reader to decide how to handle your email. Make sure they can easily scan through your content and understand your overall message easily.

3) Create a clear call to action

Ideally, your email should only have one call to action, whether that’s to sign up, make a purchase, or click for more information. But if you need to have more than one, make sure the primary call to action stands out with secondary ones taking a lesser position, perhaps as hyperlinked text like get more information here.

4) Know your audience

Knowing your target audience and tailoring your messaging based on demographics, geography, typical behaviours, and psychological traits will help you personalise your message and increase click-through rates. Here are some more segmentation ideas.

Segment based on engagement

Create separate messages for active and dormant subscribers. Instead of sending dormant subscribers your usual email newsletter, offer them a special discount to re-engage them.

Segment based on purchase history

There are a number of different ways you can use purchase history to market to your customers better.

You can look at a customer’s past purchases and use that info to create a curated list of products that they might enjoy.

You can also use a customer’s order history to cross-sell or upsell products to them.

You can even segment your customers by frequency and amount of purchase. You might try offering special discounts or gifts to customers who shop frequently to build brand loyalty.

5) Personalise your sender name

Not only should you address your email recipients by name, but also personalise the sender name. This will make the email encounter more human. 

So instead of sending the message from “Acme Products” send it from “Karen at Acme.”

If you send emails on different topics vary the name of the person sending the email.

With all the sophisticated marketing campaign tools available to you, sometimes it’s important to remember the small things that can make a big difference. Following these simple steps will go a long way towards making your future campaigns a success.