Email lists have some of the best ROIs in digital marketing if you use them well. How can you make sure you’re getting the most out of your list?
The good news is that since email marketing has been around for so long, there are tried and true rules for what you should and shouldn’t do in terms of setting up your marketing emails. These are the 4 golden rules for email marketing success.
1. Every Email Must Have a Purpose
The first and most important rule of email marketing is that no useless emails should ever be sent. If you’re sending an email and you cannot clearly define the purpose of the email and its relevance to the recipients, don’t send the email.
It’s better to focus on quality over quantity with email marketing. Sending too many emails that are not relevant to your audience or that don’t provide something valuable can lead to lackluster results. If you want to see the best results from email marketing, focus first on relevance.
Planning is a key part of making your emails relevant.
Automation planning
When you plan out the emails you’re going to send, you get the chance to polish your campaigns and make adjustments before anything lands in an inbox. This is the best way to ensure you’re sending out useful, relevant emails to your list.
Email marketing automation makes it possible for you to plan emails as far in advance as you want, setting up email series or response emails that automatically send when someone interacts with your business in a certain way.
With automation, you can take the time to plan out an email series that coordinates with your own website content, product launches, current affairs, or anything else that may be relevant to your list. It also allows you to see your email marketing from a bird’s eye view and make decisions from a more informed position, leading to better quality emails being sent out.
Don’t waste people’s time and attention. You have the chance to reach people directly in their inboxes. Use it wisely!
2. Segmentation & Personalization Are Vital
People subscribed to your email list for a reason. What was it?
If you don’t know, you’re missing out on the golden opportunity of personalization.
Email list personalization is when you can send specific emails to a group of people based on what they’ve interacted with, what they’re interested in, and how they’re likely to respond. It’s only possible to do if you segment your email list and personalize emails based on those divisions.
Segmentation doesn’t have to be extreme. Nor does personalization. It can be more subtle, such as sending out slightly varied versions of the same base email depending on the differences you know about your list. More extreme segmentation could mean sending out different email series that match a segment’s interests.
Learn more about how you can supercharge your email marketing segmentation through Notion.
Avoiding spam
By segmenting your email list, you can avoid getting your emails sent to the spam pile. The more your emails are sent to spam by your subscribers, the less you will be trusted as a sender. Emails could automatically be marked as spam, not delivered, or sent into promotional email folders by default.
At the end of the day, you can’t control what the recipient does with your email. Don’t stress about it too much, but just make sure you avoid using spam trigger words, work with a reliable email marketing service, use only your own collected emails, and send emails only based on what your subscribers signed up for.
It’s particularly important to segment your email list if you have multiple CTAs that lead to signing up for your email list. Keep track of who signed up with different CTAs so you can segment your list effectively and send out only emails relevant to those people.
Email list hygiene
Even when people have legitimately subscribed to your email list, you can’t assume that everyone wants to be on your list forever. Email list hygiene involves removing cold subscribers to keep your list up to date with people who actively engage with your emails.
Every few months, go through your list and remove recipients with a high bounce rate or a low email engagement rate. These are people who are either not receiving your emails at all, sending them straight to spam, or not opening the emails they do receive.
Refining your list
Once you’ve cleaned up your email list, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of re-segmenting your email list to ensure you’re providing the most relevant offers or information to the right group of people.
Use data about email engagement and CTA responses to separate people based on their interests and engagement with different types of emails you’ve sent. You can make as many different segments as you want based on the types of emails you send out, then decide which segments will get each different email series you create.
Segmenting is essential for email personalization and keeping your message right for your audience. Make a point of refining your list a few times per year to keep your segmentations as relevant as possible.
3. Prioritize Mobile Friendliness
Around half of all emails are opened first on a mobile device, not a desktop. If you’re making all your emails on a desktop without considering how mobile-friendly they are, you could be accidentally making it difficult for 50%+ of your readers to interact with your emails!
Mobile design makes a big difference for emails. You usually won’t notice the difference on a desktop, but it will be hugely significant for mobile users.
You can find a more detailed guide about why mobile design is important and how to do it here: Why You Need to Make Your Emails 100% Mobile Friendly
In the meantime, here’s a rundown of the basic things that differ in mobile email design versus desktop design.
Size
Mobile screens are far smaller than desktop screens. Because of this, any elements you make that are too small will not be easy to see, read, or interact with. Make sure that any elements you incorporate into your email designs are visible and usable even on very small screens.
Length
Longer emails are difficult to read on mobile devices. Attention spans are short, especially for emails. Make your emails as concise as possible, including only what needs to be said and cutting out the fluff. Choose your words wisely and save all the other details for your landing pages, social media posts, and other content you’re sending people to.
Complexity
Complex designs don’t usually work well on mobile screens, especially if it’s unclear how a person should be engaging with the content of the email. All email designs should also be easily scannable, with the most important parts highlighted near the beginning. CTAs should be distinct and prominent, with content sectioned out as needed to make it obvious what’s happening.
Tip: Don’t rely heavily on images, because some email providers will not allow images to load in emails to avoid spam or other harmful elements in malicious emails.
4. Make It Accessible
Accessibility is a big factor that can affect the success of your marketing emails. By making emails accessible, you’re allowing everyone to read them as easily as possible.
What does it mean to make emails more accessible? Here are a few things you can do:
Image alt text
Alt text is text that appears when you hover your mouse over an image. It explains in a short sentence what the image shows. Image alt text helps people who cannot see images understand what the image communicates. It gives all people the ability to fully understand the information in the email, whether they can see it or not.
Single column design
Emails with multiple columns of information can be difficult to understand and interact with. Single column designs are the best for accessibility purposes. With single column designs, information will be clearly displayed in an obvious hierarchy that’s more user-friendly.
Contrasting colors
A high level of contrast makes it easier to read text on a colored background or image. Low-contrast text is not easy for some people to read, especially if the colors are similar, the text is small, or the background image has a lot going on.
Speaking of text…
Text legibility
All text in an email should be easy to read. If you use specialty fonts, small text sizes, overlaying text, or anything else that could be difficult to read, your emails may not do as well. Text in emails should be written out in basic, highly legible fonts with some separation from other visual elements that can cause confusion.
With emails being such an integral part of digital marketing today, it’s vital that you get the basics right. Following these 4 golden rules of email marketing could help you improve your CTR and get more traction on your CTAs, simply because people can appreciate your emails more!
