Email marketing best practices

Email marketing has been around for over 40 years. In that time, it’s still a top contender in achieving marketing and sales goals across the globe. Likely, this is because it provides a quick way to connect -especially when schedules are conflicting.  

When done correctly, email marketing can be a powerful tool to cross your prospects over the line into becoming happy customers.

Overall, email marketing is a great way to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Build/Nurture relationships
• Generate opportunities
• Promote products/services

Although it has many benefits, understanding when and how to connect is critical in seeing positive outcomes. Let’s dive into some best practices!

1. Get to know your audience

If you're planning to do email marketing, it’s important to understand who you are talking to. Breaking down your prospects into smaller segments can help you identify similarities and differences within your database. These segments can turn into your buyer personas.

A buyer person is a detailed narrative of your target audience. This includes information like their demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. Understanding how these personas are different will help you in your email marketing approach.

Information to gather when building buyer personas:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Marital Status
• Children Status
• Job Title
• Department
• Industry
• Personal Income Range
• Company Employee Count
• Company Revenue
• Motivation (i.e. incentive, fear, social, growth)
• Goals
• Pain Points

Identifying your buyer personas can help you personalize your out-reach and often results in a better interaction or response.  

2. Craft emails with personalized & valuable content

It's important to create emails that are relevant to your prospects. A way to do this is by segmenting your campaigns by persona so the emails they receive resonate with them. The final goal may be to sell, but this occurs after a relationship is built and a strong value is presented!  

In addition to email personalization, providing valuable content or information can help build trust. Direct them to blogs, resources, or anything else that can be of value. This can reassure your prospects that you are experts within your industry and can help boost your company’s credibility. Here are some things to consider when drafting your emails:

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a. How much do they know about your product/service?

Introduce yourself! Make sure the recipient knows who you are and what your product/service does. Try to make itclear and concise.

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b. Which buyer persona do they belong to?

You’ve built your personas, now it’s time to utilize them! Craft different emails based on your personas focusing on what their specific needs are.

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c. Are they gaining value out of reading or interacting with your email?

Oftentimes, pushy sales emails push your prospects away. Providing content other than a hard sell can help reel them back in!

3. Timing is everything

Timing is a big factor when sending your emails. It might not seem like it but sending an email at the wrong time could lead to the recipient completely losing sight of your email. Things to consider when sending your emails:

• Time-zone
• Work hours
• Avoid holidays/weekends

Remember: don’t over-do it! These people may not really remember who you are and what you can do for them and/or their business. Sending too many emails can be spammy and off-setting to your recipients.  

A simple 3-touch campaign can help you get your point across without going overboard. Setting this up within an email campaign platform will also allow you to set delays/wait time between each email that’s sent out giving it a nice cadence.  

4. Remain Compliant

One of the most important elements within email marketing is ensuring that your emails are compliant and aren’t being flagged as spam or junk. Sometimes out of desperation companies fall into the temptation to break some rules to see results. We strongly discourage this as you can ultimately ruin your brand reputation and lose the trust of customers and potential ones!

So, what can you do to remain complaint when sending emails?

• Include your company name and address
• Add unsubscribe links and honor those who decide to unsubscribe
• Provide real email addresses in the from/reply-to  
• Avoid spam trigger words in the subject line
• Limit the number of emails you send out

*Note this is not legal advice and we encourage you to consult an attorney if you’d like advice on your compliance. For more information on CAN-SPAM click here.

5. Experiment & Analyze Results

It's always a good idea to report on the results of your campaigns. This data can help you understand gaps or places to improve within your strategy.  

Key things to determine the overall effectiveness:

• Opens
• Clicks
• Unsubscribes
• Spam Rate

It’s important to take a step back and look at your approach, especially if you aren’t seeing the outcome you’d like. Setting up A/B tests can be a great way to decipher what works and what doesn’t. This includes trying new subject lines, key messaging or call to actions. Remember to test one element at a time to gather more conclusive results.

Connecting with your audience can be tricky. Don’t be afraid to try something new -it may just be your key to success!

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Key Takeaways

Email Marketing can be one of your most effective tools. Utilizing these best practices provides the ability to maximize your time, effort and outcome. Understanding your audience and crafting personalized and compliant emails can make all the difference in building meaningful relationships and driving significant results.

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