Introduction

Email marketing campaigns are an effective way to reach and engage with your audience target. To maximize the effectiveness of these campaigns, it is important to understand and follow the best practices.

Email marketing campaigns, being cost effective, present a unique opportunity to companies to extend beyond physical and social media based marketing strategies. With the ability to create automatic frameworks and leverage company data to create a personalized strategy for separate demographics in the customer-base, email marketing can be an effective tool to increase sales, company publicity, and reduce cart-abandonment rates.

The purpose of this insight is to highlight research-proven best practices for email marketing campaigns along with common pitfalls to aid marketing strategies.

Do’s

1. Leverage Company Data

Companies have the ability to collect detailed information about user activity. This data can be useful for creating demographic groups within the entire customer-base, which allows for customer-specific email targeting campaigns. Some examples include customer geographical details, interests based on previous search and purchase history, and age.

Amazon is a perfect example of a company that leverages user data to send effective email marketing campaigns. Make sure to follow up after a purchase and send emails regarding products that the customer might be interested in based on previous activity. Try to bridge the gap between the application and the email-marketing team.

2. Create Urgency

Creating a sense of urgency by including beneficial events that are reaching their deadlines soon can create psychological triggers to push the customer into taking action quickly. However, it is important to control the frequency of these emails as too many emails can backfire and frustrate the recipient.

3. Create a Compelling Subject Line

With users receiving a large amount of daily emails, investing time and creativity in the subject line can go a long way to stand out in the crowded inbox of a typical user. Including a clear, eye-catching subject line can achieve higher click-rates. 

For example: “[Name], Your Exclusive X% Discount Code Expires Tonight!” 

This subject line addresses the recipient by their name, creating a personalization. Second, it creates a sense of urgency by stating that the code expires tonight. Third, it shows a clear reason for the recipient to click on the email as it benefits them. Lastly, it is short and concise which ensures visibility in the inbox.

4. Use a clear Call to Action (CTA)

Make sure it is clear what you want the recipient to do next. For example, do you want them to visit a website? Complete a purchase? Make a purchase from their wishlist because of a promotion? Sign up for a webinar? Furthermore, including a call to action button instead of a text link can increase conversion rates by up to 28%.

5. Ensure Mobile Friendliness

With the increase in use of mobile devices, it is important to design emails in such a way that it is easy to read and remain attractive on smartphones. Mobile clients account for about 53% of emails opened!

6. Pay Attention to Local Identities

Using customer data, ensuring that your email aligns with their cultural, personal, and even religious identities can increase the click-through rates for marketing emails and decrease unsubscription rates.

7. Follow Local Regulations

Make sure to follow local marketing laws in the region for the campaign such as GDPR, CCPA, and CAN-SPAM. This involves a series of compliance regulations that should be followed, such as including a clear opt-out mechanism for the customer, and separating transactional and promotional emails.

8. Analyze the Effectiveness of Emails

Keep a track of metrics that can show the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. These include open rates, click-through rates, traffic from emails, and purchases from emails. In addition to this, asking customers for feedback on emails can be a helpful tool as well.

9. Test and Optimize

Using A/B testing for testing different layouts for emails for a specific group of customers can help improve the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns. For example, how well does a specific group of customers respond to formal/informal email subject lines. The key to a successful email marketing campaign is continuous testing and optimization of several techniques.

Don'ts

1. Don’t Use Long Subject Lines

Using a long subject line that does not immediately engage the recipient and show intent can damage the campaign. A long subject line could be perceived as overwhelming and reduce open rates. 

This also goes hand-in-hand with mobile-friendly design as a subject line may get cut off on smartphones if it is too long, losing effectiveness. The overall loss of focus and reduced engagement makes long-subject lines a strong pitfall that should be avoided.

2. Don’t Spam Your Audience

Monitoring and controlling the frequency of emails sent to customers is an essential component of email marketing campaigns. Too many emails to a customer may cause the emails to be flagged as spam, or frustrate the customer - motivating them to unsubscribe.

3. Don’t Forget to Clean Your Email List

Remove inactive subscribers who haven’t engaged with your marketing emails over a period of time. This can help reduce the marketing cost that is spent on sending emails to customers that are inactive and improve the overall efficiency of the campaign.

4. Don’t Overlook the “From” Line

The from line helps customers recognize where the email is coming from. Using a familiar name from a prominent figure in the company, or the brand name can help recognizability and avoid being marked as spam.

5. Don’t Send Emails at Random Times

The timing of the email can have a significant mark on the effectiveness of marketing emails. Try to avoid times when the customers are less-likely to engage with emails. For example, sending an email in the middle of the night or during office hours. Time zones play a pivotal role in deciding when to send emails to specific groups of customers.

6. Don’t Clutter Your Email Content

Keep your emails concise and to the point. Avoid including too many images, different CTAs and irrelevant information to ensure the main objective of your email is maintained.

7. Don’t Rely on Surface Level Insights

In addition to collecting metrics for email effectiveness, it is also important to dig deeper and try to understand why some techniques are failing to achieve the expected results. Is the email irrelevant? Is it hard to understand? Is something wrong with the purchase page on the application?

8. Don’t Jump to Conclusions

When testing and performing A/B testing, try not to jump to conclusions based on insufficient information. Perhaps there are external factors that are reducing the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns such as day-to-day fluctuations, or seasonal changes.

Conclusion

Email marketing remains a powerful channel when done right. This article has outlined the best practices to follow, such as personalizing content, optimizing for mobile, and continuous testing. It has also highlighted common pitfalls to avoid, like using long subject lines and using strategies that violate regulations. Implement the do's and steer clear of the don'ts to create compelling email campaigns that engage your audience and drive conversions.