There’s never been a better time to incorporate email marketing into your latest ad campaign. Modern consumers are attached to their mobile devices, and mobile email users are checking their email more than ever before. This presents email marketers with a tremendous opportunity to get their names out there—but more than that, to develop long-term relationships with their email subscribers.

There’s a lot of advice on the Internet about how to best approach email marketing. It can quickly become confusing if you try to nail every aspect of your campaign before learning the basics. With that in mind, here are some email best practices you should focus on as you attempt to optimize your email marketing.

Elements of Email

While it might seem like the content itself is the most important part of email marketing, that’s not quite the case. Your biggest challenge actually lies in getting people to open your emails and, subsequently, to take your emails seriously. There are endless tactics you can employ to make your emails more pleasing to your audience. But to make your life easier, focus on these areas as you optimize your email marketing.

Subject Line: When it comes to getting an email read, nothing is more important than the subject line. Pick something that gets your reader’s attention, including actionable words and a clear description of how the reader stands to benefit by opening the email. Don’t get cute; just get to your point in a clever and compelling way.

Personalization: Email allows you to truly communicate with your customers on a one-to-one basis. Your emails can and should be personalized to the individual recipient based on how they’ve interacted with your company in the past and where they are on the buyer’s journey. Personalization also means sending the right email to the right person at the right time, which helps you eliminate unnecessary emails that may burn out potential customers.

Call to Action: What are you trying to achieve with your email? Do you want someone to make a purchase or do you simply want them to check out your YouTube channel? Whatever the case, be sure to directly ask the reader to carry out this action. Don’t forget to inform the reader what value they can expect to receive for their clicking through.

A/B Testing

Although experienced email marketers might think they’ve got a winner on their hands, the only real way to know for sure is to send the email out to the company’s customer list and see how recipients respond. Sometimes a seemingly great email falls flat, while an email that might not seem the strongest might resonate more with your audience. There are many reasons why an email does or does not click—from subject lines to calls to action to the email copy itself, any element of your email is worth testing.

A few tips to remember as you embark upon A-B testing:

  • Keep It Simple: Test only one aspect of an email at a time
  • Keep Your Testing Consistent: Use the same day and time for all of your testing
  • Manage Sample Sizes: Use at least 1,000 observations for any test for the best results

Email Tracking

From a business perspective, the best part about email is your ability to track the results of your email campaigns. You’ll be able to obtain data about virtually any aspect of your emails, which on the surface is a good thing. However, as we’ve seen with A-B testing and the very content of your emails, too much information can be hazardous.

Here are some metrics to help get you started:

  • Delivery Rate: The percentage of your emails that are delivered
  • Open Rate: The percentage of your emails that are opened
  • Click-Through Rate: The percentage of people that click a link to your site in your email

When used correctly, email marketing can be the most effective of all forms of digital marketing. These tips can help you optimize your email marketing, giving you the biggest results with minimal tinkering on your end.

To learn more about our campaign services or how we can help your company optimize your email marketing efforts, contact us today at (888) 950-0700 or info@localhost.