Email Best Practices that Encourage Opens and Clicks

The Inspiring Inbox

HOW

WHY

WHERE

WHEN

WHAT

WHO

how

Why

Where

When

What

Who

should the recipient open this email?

can the recipient convert?

is this email appropriate for the recipient?

is the goal of this email?

will the recipient read this email?

is this email for?

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

WHO

Be specific when you define your email segments

Carefully define each of your audience segments.

Where they are in the sales funnel

When they last clicked on an email

What they buy (site vs. in store)

When and how often they make a purchase

How much they spend

Loyalty status

Geotargeting delivers custom branding offers to subscribers

Psychographic data

Behavioral data

Firmographics

Demographics

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

How they navigated your site

What they do with your products or services

Behavioral

Demographic

Personal interest

Job function

Job title

Where they live

Gender

Buyer personas will be based on data.

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

Use research to test an email’s effectiveness.

WHAT

Define and measure your email marketing goals

What goal do you achieve when they complete this action?

Pay attention to the metrics that measure that specific goal.

A/B testing

Content analytics

Heat maps

Decide what action you want the recipient to take

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

Step 3

Step 2

Step 1

Turn buyers into fans

Usually part of a campaign with limited time to act

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

Also called “triggered” emails like a purchase receipt

Inspire customers to make additional purchases

Subscribers who require a different nurture journey

Encourage loyalty

Subscribers who convert

Send a welcome email Educate Cultivate their interest

Provides an opportunity to send a discount code and reconnect

Great for explaining your product and providing support resources

Greeting a new subscriber

Convert those leads to buyers

Acquire new prospects and leads

Promotional emails

Transactional emails

NURTURE CUSTOMERS

CREATE ACTION PLANS

Initiate your email nurture journey

Abandoned cart emails

Onboarding emails

Welcome emails

Types of automated emails to send to your subscribers:

Your email funnel has 3 purposes.

WHEN

Create campaigns based on your sales funnel

Use tables, not

tags

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

Keep mobile device CSS widths in mind

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

Write alt tags in case your images don’t load

Avoid Flash

Your emails will be opened on both desktop and mobile devices

WHERE

Optimize for all email clients and all screen sizes

Tips to keep in mind

of recipients open email based on the subject line alone

Personalize it

Be specific

Use emojis and other symbols

Make it urgent

Ask questions

Keep it simple and short

Have a goal in mind

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

35%

69%

WHY

Encourage readers to open your emails with your subject

Slider and bars

Navbar

Feature box

Welcome gates

Pop-ups

Generic end-of-post CTAs

Sidebar CTAs

1–5%

1–8%

Varies

3–9%

10–25%

0.5–1.5%

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

should they do it?

will they know what to do?

do I want the subscriber to do?

ASK

Why

How

What

Tie it to your goal for the email

HOW

Use the right call to action (CTA)

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

SOURCES