Email Best Practices

Don’t Ignore These Top Email Marketing Best Practices

Email Best PracticesDespite how it might look, high-performance email marketing is never easy. Even when you’ve got a keen eye on your delivery, open and click-through rates, it can be easy to slip up.

Take a look at the following best practices to help yourself avoid silly mistakes in the future:

Huge top images are dangerous

If you’re regularly using 300×400 image banners in your emails, you’re skating on thin ice. Although they work well on websites, there’s reason that they perhaps shouldn’t be so popular in emails.

Think about it – a nice image is great, but how well does it sell your overall message? Including a large photo at the top of your email pushes down the rest of your content and that’s where the real hook is going to be. Remember – your words drive actions from your readers, so make sure that they can be seen easily.

Make the most of the preview text

It’s sad to see an email in my inbox with neglected or ignored preview text, because it’s such a waste. What was a potential business opportunity is going to be lost on so many people, as it’ll come across that you haven’t put in much effort.

The preview section of an email gives you such huge potential to get a little creative and spark intrigue from your audience – why wouldn’t you make the most of it?

It’s not all about you

Contrary to what you might think, you shouldn’t be selling your product’s features. Readers don’t really care so much about what your product does – more how they’ll benefit from it. Instead of using the name of your company, instead place the focus on the recipient of the email.

If you really want to drive your results, couple selling your product/service’s benefits with the use of the word ‘you’. By doing this, you’ll be approaching the recipient on a personal level, making them that much more likely to engage with you.

Decide who you are

Are you a brand, or are you a person? Depending on which one you choose, stick with it and maintain consistency throughout your publications. After all, this is direct response – by cultivating a personal relationship with your audience, you’ll boost the chances of actually hearing from them.

Work on your call to action

Regardless of what you say in the rest of your email, your call to action is key. You can include as many links as your heart sees fit, but stick with one call to action that drives your audience to do something.

Although you might think it’s simpler to have only one button, A/B split test it and see how using more affects your results. After all, testing is the path to email marketing success.

Be relevant

Many people think that the biggest factor for success with email marketing is the quality of the list. It is, however, equally important to get high-quality content.

Writing email copy isn’t as easy as it sounds, so you’re going to need to test what works and what doesn’t. If you’ve found a piece that generates results, don’t stop there. Results can always be better. To cover your bases and reduce risk, run a 90/10 split. Send your highest performing copy (the control) to the larger segment and send your test copy to the other half. You’ll be surprised by how you can improve by using this method.

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