Email Best Practices that Encourage Opens and Clicks

Buyer personas will be based on data.

Heat maps

Where they are in the sales funnel

See why email is king in every stage of the customer lifecycle

Personal interest

A/B testing

Tips to keep in mind

Be specific

Slider and bars

WHEN

Great for explaining your product and providing support resources

Sidebar CTAs

NURTURE CUSTOMERS

What they buy (site vs. in store)

Encourage readers to open your emails with your subject

Step 2

Inspire customers to make additional purchases

is this email appropriate for the recipient?

Demographics

Encourage loyalty

Optimize for all email clients and all screen sizes

Promotional emails

Keep mobile device CSS widths in mind

What

Convert those leads to buyers

of recipients open email based on the subject line alone

Types of automated emails to send to your subscribers:

Make it urgent

Use tables, not

tags

Keep it simple and short

Job title

How they navigated your site

WHAT

Write alt tags in case your images don’t load

Define and measure your email marketing goals

3–9%

Your emails will be opened on both desktop and mobile devices

0.5–1.5%

For email capture forms, consider where you place it on your website.

will they know what to do?

of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line

ASK

How

should the recipient open this email?

Usually part of a campaign with limited time to act

Tie it to your goal for the email

Feature box

Use the right call to action (CTA)

Pop-ups

69%

Use these email marketing best practices to engage your subscribers and reach your marketing goals.

1–8%

SOURCES

Send a welcome email Educate Cultivate their interest

What goal do you achieve when they complete this action?

Behavioral

Behavioral data

Where

WHERE

Onboarding emails

How much they spend

With every campaign, focus on the basics of email marketing best practices.

Geotargeting delivers custom branding offers to subscribers

Initiate your email nurture journey

Use research to test an email’s effectiveness.

will the recipient read this email?

how

Be specific when you define your email segments

Gender

When

can the recipient convert?

Firmographics

Subscribers who require a different nurture journey

WHERE

Acquire new prospects and leads

But use inline styles, not CSS, which isn’t supported by some clients

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) is helping marketers personalize segmentation.

The Inspiring Inbox

Greeting a new subscriber

Welcome emails

Use emojis and other symbols

Ask questions

Job function

Algorithms applied to subscriber behavior will help find out what they will do next

Create campaigns based on your sales funnel

Also called “triggered” emails like a purchase receipt

WHEN

Content analytics

Demographic

Pay attention to the metrics that measure that specific goal.

Personalize it

Your email funnel has 3 purposes.

Email Best Practices that Encourage Opens and Clicks

Step 3

Provides an opportunity to send a discount code and reconnect

Generic end-of-post CTAs

Transactional emails

When they last clicked on an email

Decide what action you want the recipient to take

WHY

Define your font families, sizes, and colors for all text

Loyalty status

Why

WHY

WHO

Send specific emails when your subscribers are in specific parts of the funnel.

HOW

Abandoned cart emails

When and how often they make a purchase

is this email for?

What they do with your products or services

Step 1

CREATE ACTION PLANS

Where they live

is the goal of this email?

WHO

Psychographic data

WHAT

Why

Varies

Avoid Flash

10–25%

0.5–1.5%

Carefully define each of your audience segments.

should they do it?

Have a goal in mind

do I want the subscriber to do?

Who

Turn buyers into fans

What

Navbar

HOW

Welcome gates

35%

1–5%

Subscribers who convert