On average, marketers can expect an ROI of $42 for every dollar spent on email marketing. But ensuring your email campaign pays off is easier said than done. There are many factors that can affect the success of your email campaign, including the copy and design of your emails.
When marketing emails fail to connect with their intended audience, they can have a number of negative consequences for businesses. Sloppy, mistargeted emails come across as spam, damaging your brand’s reputation. Bland copy that lacks an engaging CTA results in lost opportunities and wasted marketing investment. And without meaningful curation, targeted emails are often left ignored or sent straight to the trash.
At the end of the day, there’s a lot riding on the quality of your email campaigns. To make the most of the opportunity, it’s important to think strategically and adhere to several email marketing best practices.
How To Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns
The best email marketing campaigns are the result of thought and planning. If your email campaign results are underwhelming, here are five foolproof email marketing tips worth considering:
1. Get personal with your copy
When done correctly, email personalization is a highly effective strategy. But how do you personalize beyond addressing your recipient by name? While it’s important to know who you’re emailing, incorporating data into your email marketing campaigns is vital to segmentation, allowing you to target customers with tactics like email offers, news updates and more.
Believe it or not, email campaigns that incorporate data-driven personalization are 18 times more profitable than non-personalized campaigns. With that in mind, consider the following practices for your email marketing copy:
- Segment campaigns with data around location, age, gender and consumer habits and personalize copy based on those segments
- Create a welcome email that is tailored to the unique wants and needs of the recipient
- Nudge recipients with reminders and nurture emails to keep them engaged
- Personalize the email with the recipient’s name
- Acknowledge important dates like birthdays and anniversaries with special offers
- Send your emails from a person rather than the business
- Use a tone that is casual, fun and energetic to sound human
2. Keep it concise
When executing email marketing campaigns, ditch the extra words. As a marketer, you want users to reach your intended CTA as soon as possible. Why? Because on average, email prospects spend 15-20 seconds skimming an email before moving on. In fact, one study by Boomerang determined that emails containing just 75-100 words received the highest response rate at 51%. To hold your reader’s attention, hone in on your intended message right away and eliminate the fluff.
Quick tips for keeping your emails under 100 words:
- Cut the jargon and get straight to the point
- Add bullet points to break up longer paragraphs
- Keep your intended goal front of mind
- Scrap the filler words
3. Offer a strong call to action
What is the purpose of the email you’re sending? Readers need a strong call to action to inspire them not only to click, but to fully engage with your email copy. An email without a CTA is just more junk to delete. So the body of your email copy should flow like a narrative, leading up to the CTA as the ultimate reason to engage. To put it simply, your CTA tells the reader what action they should take next.
To enhance your email CTA, we recommend the following:
- Stick to one CTA per email — if possible
- Keep it relevant and timely
- Speak directly to the recipient
- Use approachable action verbs (get, find, try, etc.)
- Create a sense of urgency
- Help your CTA stand out with contrasting color and button functionality
4. Design with accessibility in mind
You may have heard that accessibility improves on-page SEO performance. But what about emails? While email content and SEO are different concepts, accessibility is still an important consideration for an inclusive marketing strategy designed to connect with people of all backgrounds and abilities. People with hearing, visual or cognitive disabilities benefit from accessible email designs.
Be sure to include the following accessibility features in your email campaigns:
- Appreciate the contrast ratio of all visuals and your CTA
- Assign HTML tags to assign hierarchy within your email
- Include alt text on imagery
- Use semantic code
- Flex with different screen sizes
- Offer light and dark modes for mobile
- Set language attribute
Pro tip: When in doubt, consult the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for further guidance on web and email accessibility.
5. Entice customers with your subject line
The subject line is the most important piece of content when crafting email copy for a campaign. Why does one short line matter so much? The subject line is your first impression and it will determine whether the recipient opens your email or sends it to the trash. So it needs to entice your reader to click on the email and should correlate with your intended goal and CTA.
Crafting a well-written subject line also means that your brand voice needs to shine through — while providing the reader with a tone that hints at a fear of missing out (FOMO).
Keep the following in mind when writing your subject line:
- Use keywords and phrases that resonate with your audience
- Keep it 60 characters or less
- Include numerics or statistics when applicable
- Create a sense of urgency in your message
Email Marketing Solutions by Walker Sands
Need fresh email marketing solutions? Our email marketing campaign strategies are backed by research methods like A/B testing for measurable results. Chat with our demand gen team and launch your next campaign.
