Email Campaign Best Practices
281 billion. That was the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received last year. That’s nearly 200,000 emails sent every minute and over 3,000 per second. Email volume like that makes standing out in the crowd a difficult task, but with the median ROI of email campaigns checking in at 122%, you can’t afford to not try.
That’s why we’ve put together the magic formula containing tips on the subject line, content, and delivery to optimize your email campaigns!
How do I start an email marketing campaign?
Subject lines are the foundation of a great campaign. As marketers, we spend a great deal of time writing compelling copy for email campaigns, but are we applying the same effort to Subject lines? If not, then you might be undermining your own efforts.
Follow these best practices when writing subject lines.
1. Keep it short
In a world with increased mobile users and shorter subject line previews, keeping subject lines to less than 50 Characters, or about 7 words, will maximize your open rate.
2. Create curiosity
The subject line doesn’t need to tell the whole story. Give them enough of a taste where they are intrigued, but not completely lost by the messaging.
3. Get creative
The above tips are helpful when writing the subject line, but there’s no set guidelines. Use that to your advantage by taking time to get creative and testing multiple versions of the subject line.
4. Peak Self-Interest
One of the most effective ways to drive up open rates is creating a subject line that plays to the recipients self-interest. Offering them a way to improve their business, cut costs, or gather valuable information that they can in turn use to grow revenue.
5. Open Rates
Email open rates represent the percentage of people that opened the email, and provide insight into the quality of your subject line. Emails that produce lower open rates suggest that you may need to refocus the subject line so that more are inspired to actually open the email.
How can I improve my email marketing content?
Now that you’ve crafted a subject line that is sure to receive a high open rate, it’s time to perfect the content of your email to ensure it’s both compelling and useful.
We’ve put together a successful recipe of best practices to follow when creating email copy.
1. Create engaging content
What makes an email click-worthy? Clicks are generally attributed to great promotional offers, interesting stories, thought-provoking articles, and videos. The next point will help you plan out your content.
2. 80/20 Rule
Consistently sending your recipients promotional offers can have negative results. Find the right balance of content that keeps your audience engaged. Best practices suggest that 20% of your content should be focused around your product and promotional offerings, while 80% should highlight all the other things going on within your company or industry.
3. Build Trust
Building trust stems from the points above. Don’t waste your recipient’s time with meaningless inbox junk that will be ignored. Authenticity and honesty will help build your brands cadence, while helping to prevent recipients from unsubscribing.
4. Call to Action
So the recipient has opened the email and read to the bottom. Now you’re only objective is to get them to click through to a landing page. The call to action can be a decisive factor in the success of your email campaign, so be sure to give it as much thought as you gave the content. Create curiosity or offer something valuable to ensure that readers are clicking through..
5. Click Through Rates
Click through rates, just like open rates, help you determine where your email might be lacking. Emails that produce lower click through rates suggest that you may need to refocus the content and call to action.
What is the best time to send emails?
Timing is everything - right? Maybe not everything, but it certainly plays an important role in your campaign. Historically, emails sent around 11AM Tuesday and Thursday drive the best results. Check out these best practices to ensure your campaign has the best delivery.
1. Day of the week
Tuesday and Thursday typically provide the best return for emails.
2. Time of day
10AM-11AM is typically the best time slot. Best practices today are suggesting that later in the afternoon around 4-7 have been showing increased open rates over the last several years, so don’t be afraid to test different times.
3. Keep them in the loop
Connect with your audience at least once a month to ensure that you stay top-of-mind. The more touch points you have with a prospect, the higher chances of getting a conversion.
4. Tweak as you go
Finding the sweet spot takes some trial and error. Test your emails before they are launched and let’s focus on creating a magic formula of your own!
Remember that each of these best practices are pieces to a larger puzzle when it comes to building a successful campaign. The combination of these tips combined with a touch of creativity is how we you propel your business to the next level.