5 EMAIL MARKETING BEST TIPS AND ERRORS

Work on your audience

Create your own contact lists, and work on a personal segmentation on it based on demographics insights or funnel steps.

Once it is done, you can send personalized emails to your lists, with a high probability of increasing the conversion rate. This means working smarter, not harder, because in this way you can send a lot of emails but your customers will receive just emails they are more interested in, without being spammed (success.act-on.com, ebook, 2020).

In addition to building and segmenting your email lists, in according to Salesforce.com is suggested to clear your email lists habitually and use double opt-in to avoid wrong email addresses which could be the cause of an email score decrease. (Sendgrid.com, blog, 2022).

Error: sending emails just focused on your products or services. Email marketing is also an opportunity to educate and engage your target audience (Forbes.com, Expert Panel, 2022).

Work on design

Create an awesome user experience using design. Personalizing your emails is important to be recognized and distinguish from other companies. Use your logo, use your personal way of copywriting, use images or multimedia elements (such as using a GIF), use the CTAs button, and write a subject line your recipients can’t ignore (Sendgrid.com, blog, 2022).

Salesforces.com has given us a good example in the section “how to design an email” here: https://www.salesforce.com/resources/articles/email-marketing-best-practices/

Emails also need to show up correctly on different devices, so for example according to Hubspot.com is better to keep your email around 500 to 650 pixels wide otherwise will require users to scroll horizontally to read the full email and this can affect the conversion rate.

Error: Don’t test your email usability on mobile apps or on different browsers. And using “trigger words” (Optinmonster.com, Sharon Hurley, 2020).

 

Work on strategy

Work having a strategy means sending emails not just because it is needed but because you want to communicate to your customers, following goals.

As Sengrid.com suggest is important to send emails at a consistence cadence, but always consider that quality is more important than quantity. Automations in email marketing are important and can help you with the hard manual work but just if coordinated with other campaigns. It is called coordinated cross-channel campaigns.

So, the best tips, in this case, could be to understand the message you want to transfer to your customers and create an email marketing strategy related. A specific example is to have a plan for holiday (calendar), so you can plan when to send offers, events invite, or just information with email marketing.

Timing is also important in sending emails. Making tests and understanding the right timing correlated to a specific email format or audience is a good way to increment conversion rate…And don’t forget to incorporate always your social media channels connections into your emails.

Error: rely too much on automations. Not all markets are scalable with exhausting automations. Sometimes customers want that you make them feel unique. (Forbes.com, Expert Panel, 2022).

Work respectful

Work customer oriented, and be respectful to your customers. It means including the possibility to unsubscribe, follow the rules of GDPR, avoid spam and make sure your emails are appreciated by the email providers, verifying your email score.

In according with Hubspot avoid using “no-reply” in the sender’s email address because people don’t feel confident reading it, and it discourages customers to ask questions to the company just by clicking on “reply”. (blog.hubspot.com, Pamela Vaughan, 2022).

The goal of email marketing is also to encourage customers to start a conversation with us, making them curious is a good way of using email marketing.

Error: don’t speak clearly and do not work safely when you collect customers data. Do it and once it is done, don’t miss the chance to collect email sign-up! Use all your available touchpoints like website, blog…And If a client doesn’t want to receive your emails more, don’t take it personally.

 

Work with data

Work with data, ever. In according with Salesforce.com, the most important email marketing metrics are: open rate, click rate, click-to-open-rate, bounce rate, delivery rate, spam percentage and complaint rate, unsubscribe number and rate.

Make A/B tests with your emails, it means sending to the same audience the same email just with a little change, it could be a different image or a CTA button position, and learning what your audience prefers using data (KPI).

“A/B testing works best when you make one small change at a time” (salesforce.com, blog, 2022).

Error: not checking your analytics. Keep always an eye on what is working and what is not working. Working with a good email marketing platform is suggested to track KPI correctly (sendingblue.com, Sanebox, 2022).

 

 

 

 

 

Reference list

 

https://success.act-on.com/ , ebook (2020), “5 tips for successful email marketing campaigns”, Available at: http://bitly.ws/xKQs

 

https://sendgrid.com/ , blog (2022), “30 email marketing best practice and tips for 2022”, Available at: https://sendgrid.com/resource/email-marketing-best-practices-tips/

 

https://www.forbes.com/ ,  Expert Panel (2022), “10 email marketing mistakes that might be hurting your brand”, available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2022/01/24/10-email-marketing-mistakes-that-might-be-hurting-your-brand/?sh=21a0adc341c1

 

https://www.salesforce.com/ , Salesforce resources (2022), “Email marketing best practices”, Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/resources/articles/email-marketing-best-practices/

 

https://optinmonster.com/ , Sharon Hurley (2020), “14 email marketing mistakes you need to avoid”, Available at: https://optinmonster.com/email-marketing-mistakes/

 

https://blog.hubspot.com/ , Pamela Vaughan (2022), “17 email marketing best practices that actually drive results”, Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23965/9-email-marketing-best-practices-to-generate-more-leads.aspx

 

https://www.sendinblue.com/ , Sanebox (2022), “The top 10 email marketing mistakes you’re probably making”, Available at: https://www.sendinblue.com/blog/email-marketing-mistakes/