12 Tips When Sending an Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. It’s versatile in every way. For example, you can use it to gain the trust of your subscribers and feedback. Or you can announce new updates about your business and keep your brand at the top of customers’ minds.

However, approximately 300 billion emails worldwide are sent daily. With this figure in mind, it can be challenging to stand out to readers. Therefore, you must put in all your effort to meet your email marketing goals.

The good news is you have 12 tips below to help you drive more email marketing campaign results.

1. Always Use a Custom Email Address

Like your site’s address, you can look professional using a custom email address. While free email services like Gmail and Yahoo are great for personal use, they don’t fit the standard of looking plausible when using them for business purposes.

When using a custom email address, you would use your domain name at the end of your email. For example, it could look like — yourname@domainname.com.

Using a custom email helps with branding and gaining a sense of trust and credibility with customers. Another great way to secure your brand name in your email is to use a “dot brand.”

Dotbrands are a TLD (Top-Level Domain) with your brand name to the right of the dot, ensuring you own your entire namespace. This strategy allows you to register your domain name in any way you like and establishes higher security within your business – especially for internal emails.

2. Make It Personal

Personalization is a crucial element in your email campaigns. However, many business owners misunderstand what personalization means.

It’s not all about using a subscriber’s name, even though that’s important, too.

It’s also about incorporating timely, relevant emails. For instance, if you segment your users, you can send them the most pertinent information based on their needs.

One example is if you have a list of subscribers segmented for promotions. Perhaps they are only interested in receiving discounts instead of regular newsletters and updates.

Sending a personalized campaign will win every time. You can start by collecting relevant data to see what your customers are interested in or ask them what their preferences are toward the emails you send.

3. Incorporate Automation

When sending out a campaign, automation is a must-have. Without it, you could be missing out on increasing your revenue.

When using automation, you can establish perfect timing for recipients to receive your emails. As a result, you can increase conversions and efficiency and scale.

Apart from those benefits you can set it and forget it. This strategy gives you more time to focus on more important tasks, growing your business.

4. Use A/B testing

A/B testing is crucial because it gives you the information you need to improve your campaigns.

Your audience is constantly evolving. Therefore, their needs will change, and so will your list of subscribers.

Using A/B testing, you send two emails at once to different segments on your email list. Once you gather your results, you can measure them to determine which emails work best for your audience.

Use testing to optimize your campaigns, and you ensure better results for your email marketing efforts.

5. Make it Mobile-Responsive

These days, everyone uses a smartphone to open and read their emails. Therefore, optimizing for a good mobile experience is key.

That’s because people don’t want to spend the entire time going through their messages. They need email that is quick to load and scannable on a small screen.

Ensure your email is optimized for mobile by:

• Using simple text that users can read on one screen without having to scroll.
• Ensuring it loads within the first few seconds.
• Incorporating accessible buttons that are clear and large enough to tap.
• Using the right font size, type and color for contrast and readability.

6. Set Up Trigger Emails

Triggered emails are automated messages sent to subscribers after they’ve taken action on a previous email.

Triggered emails have 152% higher click-through rates than traditional bulk emails. This data shows you could have more success using triggered emails. That’s because once you send one a customer has taken action on, they’re already interested in what you have to offer in the next.

Therefore, the subscriber invested in your messages will anticipate the next email.

Different types of triggered emails you can send include:

• Reminder emails after they’ve abandoned their cart.
• Feedback request after order completion.
• Review request after a purchase.
• Welcome email series after subscribing.

7. Use Copy to Connect Emotionally

Every customer has a pain point or desire that traces back to emotion. For example, if you’re an accountant, customers may fear getting their taxes done on time. Rather than worrying, they’d like some reassurance that they’ll receive the highest return.

Try to give your audience peace of mind by triggering them with emotions through your marketing copy. You’ll get more engagement this way, and you can always keep experimenting with testing.

8. Send Emails at the Right Time

Generally, the best time to send marketing emails is throughout the midweek during the day.

However, it’s best to use your analytics to determine the best times to send an email. Sending them at the right time guarantees a few things.

First, it ensures your audience knows when to expect an email from you. When you send emails at the right time, your audience will likely foresee those messages. If it’s not consistent, they could miss out on your email or forget about your brand.

Secondly, it helps with engagement. When your audience expects those emails, your opening and click-through rates will likely remain steady or increase.

Ensure you run A/B tests to find optimal times to send marketing emails to your subscribers.

9. Take Advantage of Subject Lines to Stand Out

Subject lines are the first thing the reader sees, which has a way of persuading them to open the email.

Of course, you don’t have tons of space to draw in your readers. Therefore, you’ll have to get strategic when creating your subject lines. A good rule of thumb is to keep it concise but compelling enough to make the reader want to open it.

To entice readers, ensure you ask them a question or use a statement to capture their attention. For example, you could say, “What’s the quickest way to achieve [Goal]?”

Leaving a cliffhanger in the subject line will keep the reader curious and make them want to discover more.

10. Pay Attention to Your Preheader Text

Your preheaders are just as important as the subject line. So the more enticing your preheader text becomes, the better the chance to increase those open rates.

Using the preheader space effectively is the best way to increase your engagement. You don’t have much room to write. Therefore, being aware of this will help you to optimize it more.

When crafting a preheader, consider complementing it with your subject line. You can use it to supplement the subject line and give more detail.

11. Craft a Compelling CTA

A call-to-action is important because they encourage subscribers to click through. However, you don’t want to use something generic because it doesn’t hook the interest of your readers.

Instead, you can ask yourself these questions when crafting your CTA:

• Is it difficult to miss?
• Is it easy to act on?
• Is it descriptive enough?

For example, “Shop Now” CTA might fall short of being interesting. Yet, a CTA that says “Shop One-Day Sale” is more compelling and gives a strong sense of urgency.

Making your readers feel like they might miss out on something helps drive more action.

12. Focus on Driving Engagement

Most marketers focus on email marketing with a short-term goal – boosting conversions.

Of course, that’s natural since your primary goal with email marketing is to increase sales. However, the most crucial aspect you should focus on is building a relationship with subscribers.

Promotions aren’t everything. People subscribe to your email list because they’re interested in knowing more about your business.

Therefore, engaging emails are more sustainable and will always drive more returns for your email campaigns in the long run.

Capture Better Results When Sending Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing has been around for a long while, but only a few have successfully mastered it. Keep these email marketing tips in mind and ensure you focus on what your audience wants.

Keep testing and refining your campaigns, and you’ll be well on your way to maximizing your success through this channel.

Eleanor Hecks is the founder and managing editor of Designerly Magazine. She’s also a web design consultant with a focus on customer experience and user interface. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dogs, Bear and Lucy. Connect with her about marketing, design and/or tea on LinkedIn!