Top 25 Tips for Effective Email Marketing

Top 25 email marketing tips. Learn the factors that determine the success of an email marketing campaign.

Anyone can start an e-mail marketing campaign. With the right tool it is a matter of pressing a button. A successful e-mail marketing campaign is a different story. You have

to think about a lot of things.

Which factors determine the success of an e-mailing? To help you on your way, we have collected 25 top tips for email marketing.

Tip 1. Know the rules

Make sure you know the rules. The legal rules are included in the Telecommunications Act. This act, among other things, pays attention to the permission requirement (opt-in)

and the possibility of being able to deregister.

In addition to these legal rules, there is also the Advertising Code via E-mail from the DDMA This code clarifies the legal rules and complements them. For example, the

code ensures that the recipient can better identify who the e-mail is from. He can also better indicate whether there are unsolicited messages.

Tip 2. View the e-mail benchmark

If you get started or are already working with e-mail marketing, it is good to know how the competition is doing. With that knowledge you can set realistic goals.

The National E-mail Benchmark provides insight into the sending of Dutch e-mailings and the results thereof. The benchmark is a useful and relevant tool with which every

marketer can compare his own statistics.

Tip 3. Establish concrete goals

E-mail marketing tools such as Qlettr provide immediate feedback on the success of your campaigns. This gives you direct insight into the open and click ratios. But is that

really what matters? I do not think so.

What every e-mail marketer wants to achieve is conversion. After receipt of the mail, the recipient must be tempted to continue the marketing-sales pipeline.

Collect all conversion moments that are relevant to you and organize the campaign accordingly. Then measure the conversions and then adjust your campaign.

Tip 4. Create relevant content

An open door probably, but it is often forgotten. Make sure that the content of your mailings is relevant to the recipient. So it makes little sense to send a mailing to

promote a new kind of tampon if the recipient is a man.

If you only have e-mail addresses, it is difficult to create relevant content. Therefore, make sure you get more information quickly. Collect as much data as possible from

your recipients.

A first name for a personal salutation, the gender and a birth date for a birthday email, for example.

Tip 5. Write for one person

Once you have relevant content, write the text completely for the recipient. Do not write for all possible recipients, but for one, unique person. Make sure that the receiver really feels addressed.

Also try to write in colloquial language. A tip: write down the text of the mailing as soon as possible. Without thinking too much about language errors and sentence

structure. Just type. Improvement will come later. Just write down what you would normally say.

When personalizing e-mails, it is not just about including profile information like the first name, but especially about event-driven e-mails . Event-driven emails are usually sent based on an action by the recipient. Examples are order confirmations, e-mails in the registration process or the birthday e-mail. You send these e-mails at a relevant time for recipients, so the return is often a lot higher compared to regular newsletters. The click-through rate in this type of e-mail is often twice as high compared to regular newsletters.

Tip 6. Use your real name

Of course you speak on behalf of an organization. But you know as well as I can not e-mail buildings. Therefore use your real name as sender and show the recipient that there

is a living person behind the text.

This not only makes it more personal, it is also much more reliable. This way the recipient can search on the name of the channel to see if he really understands it.

Tip 7. Provide variation

If you send a mailing every week, it can quickly get bored if you use the same template every time. Vary therefore. Make sure that every mailing stands out and therefore does

not disappear directly into the trash.

Tip 8. Watch your timing

You can best send your mailing on weekends and preferably in the early morning. This is the conclusion of Kiss Metrics that combined data in an extensive study.

Why the weekend? According to the survey, both the open rates and the number of clicks in the morning are highest at the weekend.

Tip 9. Use the preheader

The preheader is displayed at the top of an e-mail. This is the first text that the recipient reads. And not just the receiver. E-mail clients such as Gmail, Apple Mail and

Outlook also show the preheader in addition to the subject line.

So make sure the preheader invites you to read the rest of the e-mail and do not use it for the text "E-mail not readable? Open in browser. "That is a waste of valuable

space.

Tip 10: Do not put call-to-actions in an image

In many e-mail clients, the images are only displayed by default when the recipient activates their download manually. The vast majority of your recipients will view your e-mail in the first instance without any images. If your main

message is in an image, your recipients will initially miss this message.

Often buttons are used to clarify the call-to-action. If you place these buttons as an image in your e-mail, the most important text of your e-mail is not immediately visible. Therefore use tables instead of images for these call-to-

actions.

Recipients can read the text directly in your call-to-action, even if images are not downloaded. Because the sides of the button are small images, you can neatly round off the corners. The table then looks like a real button. The most

important links in your e-mail campaign are always immediately visible.

Tip 11: Use responsive design

Optimizing e-mail campaigns for mobile readers is a development that is becoming increasingly important. More and more e-mails are being read on a mobile phone. By applying responsive design , mobile readers immediately see what your

e-mail is about. You can drop images or put columns together so that it is not necessary for recipients to zoom in.

Tip 12: Request recipients to share your newsletter

Try to convince your recipients to share your newsletter. Therefore, include social media buttons that allow recipients to share your newsletter (or parts thereof) with their network. If this actually happens, the reach rises considerably, so that you get more clicks from your newsletter to your landing pages.

Tip 13: Less is more

Texts are getting less and less read. Write short, easy-to-understand texts, which increases the chance that recipients still take the trouble to read them. When your texts have attracted attention and recipients are reading, it is important to quickly get the message across. Your recipeints are in fact put off by long introductory texts. The fewer sentences you need to convince recipients to click further, the better.

Tip 14: Be patient

Be patient when you send campaigns aimed at sales. Only when your recipients are ready to actually buy your product will they click through on a call-to-action and 'order directly' to go to the order page. You can better attract recipients by leading them to a page with more information with a call-to-action like 'more information'. On the landing page you give information and you try to direct them to the sales page. This not only leads to a higher click

percentage, but also ensures that you can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and the landing page separately.

Tip 15: Clarify the benefits for the recipient

Make clear what benefit you offer to recipients. Why would they click through? Do not assume that recipients without additional information see which links are important to them. Therefore, do not use links like 'click here', because recipients must first read the whole sentence before they know why they have to click through. Use words in your links that tell recipients about the underlying page.

Tip 16: Avoid distractions

Just as you remove all distractions from a landing page, it is important to avoid all distractions in your e-mail. Make sure that images have something to add to your title and your text. Test the number of offers or products that you

offer per campaign. Resist in any case the temptation to include too many products in the hope that at least something attracts attention. This is not an effective tactic. Go back to your goal and consider what action you want to

stimulate with recipients.

Tip 17: Use a striking call-to-action

Make sure that your call-to-action is above 'the fold' (ie in the preview), as a link not to be missed. Recipients have little time for your e-mails and want to know immediately if there is something it for them in your email. If they first have to scroll before they find your call-to-action, many recipients will drop out. Sometimes it is not clear enough that there is a link in the text. A link must therefore be recognizable as such and at least be underlined.

Tip 18: Seduce receivers

Seduce your recipients to read further on the 'other side' of the link. Make good introductions in your e-mail, but do not give away everything! For example, start a sentence and do not finish it. Or ask a question and give an answer

with the link.

Tip 19: Use alternative texts

Use alternate text for each image. This text is displayed if the images are not displayed. In this way recipients can still judge what your e-mail is about, without having to download the images. A good alternative text can be enticing and stimulate the recipients to click through.

E-mail marketing software often offers the possibility to easily add alternative text. If you are bound to work with HTML, build the code as follows: <img alt = "title_image" style = "width: 30px; height: 60px; "src =" / source /

source.JPG "/>

Tip 20: Send emails only to interested recipients

1. You should only send your newsletter to customers and interested parties who have given you their consent. To be on the safe side legally, the double-opt-in procedure is recommended. After signing up for the newsletter, the interested party will receive an e-mail containing a confirmation link. Only by clicking on this link does the subscriber belong to your e-mail list.

2. Make the login process as easy as possible. Place a note on your confirmation page that the subscription will not be activated until the confirmation link is clicked.

3. Also a note that the subscriber can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time and easily, and privacy should not be missing. For example, put a link to your privacy policy - that builds trust.

4. The registration form should be placed clearly visible on your website (eg below the navigation or right in the sidebar).

5. What is the benefit for the interested party, if he signs up for your newsletter? Do you communicate that clearly: exclusive offers, valuable information, vouchers, ...?

6. Inquire only the most important information in the registration form. This will make the hurdle for logging in as low as possible for the user. The most important is the e-mail address. That's the only required field, what you should require. Everything else is voluntary.

Tip 21. Unsubscribing

1. Each newsletter issue also includes an unsubscribe link.

2. Can the recipient simply unsubscribe from your newsletter list? It is easiest - for you and for him - if he can remove his e-mail address from the mailing list by clicking on a link.

3. Do you respond immediately to complaints? Subscribers complaining about their newsletters should be manually deleted from the mailing list immediately.

Tip 22. Layout and Design

1. Are your emails correctly displayed by the most popular mailing programs and webmailers? It is best to use a simple HTML code to avoid display problems. Even mobile devices should be considered in the design, as emails are read more often on the go.

2. Is the font size big enough? It should not be less than 10 points. In order to make the newsletter clear and reliable, you should limit yourself to a few font sizes and types.

3. Link the online version at the beginning of each newsletter if the newsletter is not displayed correctly.

4. What does the newsletter look like without graphics? Test that out before. Many e-mail programs prevent the display of graphics. Your message should therefore be conveyed without the graphics.

5. Do the information in your newsletter add real value to your target audience? You should not only send advertisements, but also exclusive discounts, coupons or editorial contributions, etc.

6. Are the contributions short and concise?

7. Is your newsletter clearly arranged? Headings and bold words allow you to highlight important visual things. If your newsletter is very extensive, you can preface a table of contents.

8. The most important thing at the beginning! Many readers just look at the top of an email and do not scroll down.

9. An imprint belongs in every newsletter!

Tip 23. Dispatch of Email

1. The newsletter should be sent from a static e-mail address. Spam filters often sort out dynamic IP addresses.

2. Choose the optimal dispatch time for your mailings. At the beginning of the week, it is usually not recommended to send out newsletters, because here the volume of newsletter being sent out is very high and there is the danger that yours would go down. In addition, after the weekend, the mailboxes are often very crowded.

3. Use a meaningful sender address so that the reader can recognise you directly and does not delete your mails because he believes that he does not know you.

4. Delete unreachable addresses (bounces) from your mailing list. If you send your newsletter campaigns to inactive addresses multiple times, it will cause spam filters to block you.

5. Find yourself a reputable company (newsletter software) with which you work together to send the newsletter. Your service provider should oblige their customers to adhere to an anti-spam policy. Otherwise, there is a risk that providers block the IP address of the service provider and thus also land your emails in the spam folder.

Tip 24. Analysis & Optimization

1. There are plenty of valuable pieces of data to help you evaluate the success of your newsletter campaigns to make them even better. For example: opening rate, click-through rate, logout rate, conversion rate (percentage of those who have used an offer), ...

2. Test and optimize your newsletter (subject line, sending time, etc.) by sending different variants and running A/B tests.