Tips, Insights & TacticsBest practices for email marketing.

Despite the rapid growth of social media, email remains a top performer, with one of the best ROIs in your marketing mix. Follow these best practices to make your email marketing programs even more productive.

Why does email marketing stand out? Email is more personal than most types of marketing. Think of it as a conversation between your company and an individual customer. Your primary task is to convey useful information. Be brief and concise. When you provide useful content to your prospects and customers you build trust, awareness of your products and services, and strengthen your brand.

Successful marketing is about being heard above the noise. It’s also about repetition. Email is a great way to complement your other marketing activities such as events, announcements, new catalogs, etc.

Opt-In IncentivesGive your prospects a reason to opt-in to your email list. Offer a free report, white paper or a valuable coupon as an immediate reward in exchange for their email address and their permission to send email. Promote your free incentive everywhere that’s appropriate.

If you offer a newsletter, make a sample copy accessible, so customers can decide up front if they want to subscribe. Use testimonials from existing customers to help convert prospects into subscribers. And provide a link or reminder in your newsletters to share each edition with colleagues who may find the information useful.

List Maintenance

A clean mailing list is more cost-effective and efficient. It affects your professional image and the delivery of future emails. Keep track of email addresses whose recipients never open your emails. Remove them from your list. They skew your response metrics.

Keep your email list growing.Building and maintaining a list of subscribers is an ongoing task. Set up the processes described in the companion tip sheet: Best Practices to Build your Email List.

Stay TrustworthyWhen customers give you their email address, they’re trusting you to use it in good judgment. Don’t disguise content by hiding a sales pitch in a tip. Be up front. A new product or service announcement should look like what it is.

Stay Transparent When a customer receives an email from you, ensure they can tell who sent it and who it’s for. Follow applicable laws. Provide an easy method to opt-out both online or through a physical street address in every email you send. Set up internal processes so opt-out requests are promptly honored.

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Tips, Insights & TacticsBest practices for email marketing.

Maintain PrivacyAlthough it’s not generally a best practice to send emails yourself through programs like Outlook or Mail, if you do, always hide the email addresses (bcc) of your list to protect the privacy of your recipients.

Make Your Content CountYour customers already receive enough emails. Don’t send them more unless you have something to offer worth their time and attention. Unless it’s a win/win, your subscribers will quickly opt-out.

Write ConversationallySince emails are more personal than many types of marketing, use a less formal, more conversational tone. Write your email as if you’re talking to one person. Be genuine, honest, direct—and brief.

What’s next?There may be multiple links to click throughout your email, but always close with an easy to understand, specific call to action. What would you like the customer to do next? The more useful it is, the better. And give your customers multiple ways to respond—click, call, chat live, etc. More response options can increase the overall response.

Pique InterestThe subject line of a marketing email should encourage the recipient to open the message. Keep it short. Make it compelling, but never mislead your subscribers. As you write subject lines, think about your customers’ perspective, not your company’s. What does your email contain that will be of primary interest to your customers?

Spam filter efficiency varies, but avoid the obvious red flags. Don’t use ALL CAPS or exclamation points in your subject lines! “Free” is a powerful word, but don’t overuse it and don’t make it the first word in your subject line.

Maximize Your ResponseAs your mailing list grows, consider running tests. Change one element—and only one—and send one version to a different, small portion of your list. Then send the version that performed best to the balance. Most common is to test two different subject lines, but you can test anything you want. Over time you’ll learn what resonates best with your customers.

Personalize Content When customers opt-in for emails, you may not know much about them. Create opportunities to learn more, such as a short form they fill out to download subsequent incentives. Build out your email list so that you can segment it and personalize content for different kinds of customers.

Track Your ROIEmail marketing provides great accountability compared to other types of marketing. Set up metrics to track delivery, open and click rates, opt-outs, etc. to gauge the success of each campaign.

Open and click rates also tell you what customers are most interested in, to help you keep your content engaging.

Design For Multiple DevicesToday’s emails are read on smartphones and tablets as well as laptops and desktop computers. Design your emails for success regardless of the device they’re viewed on—or whether images are displayed or suppressed.

Make a Webpage BackupWith the proliferation of platforms, it’s more difficult than ever to test every one. Create a webpage version of your email, so recipients can clickthrough to a quickfix to any technical difficulty they encounter trying to read the original.

When to SendEmails sent on Wednesday or Thursday mornings perform well for many B2B marketers. But that may not work the best for your list. Test alternate times until you discover when your emails are most likely tobe read.

Make Clickthroughs CountYou’ve worked hard to achieve high delivery and open rates. It’s all to increase clickthroughs. Make sure you keep customers who clickthrough to your landing page engaged. Spend as much time on the design and content of your landing page as you do on crafting an email.

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