Email marketing essential dos and don’ts to increase growth
Martha Warner 
Are you ready to take your email marketing to the next level? Follow these best practices to increase growth.
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Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash
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Email marketing is an essential part of the digital marketing landscape. Email marketing has the potential to significantly increase your business revenue, if done correctly. It provides businesses with a direct line of communication to their ideal customers. However, you do need a strategic approach, and that is where the essential dos and don'ts of email marketing come in.
Whether you have been doing email marketing for some time now or are just getting started, this blog post will help you optimize your email marketing efforts to see increased growth.
Email marketing dos
Let’s dive into tips on what you should do to increase your growth. Create an email marketing strategy that is focused on your subscribers, relationship building, and best practices to make sure you are on track to increasing your business growth.
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Capture your audience’s attention with a subject line
It all starts with the first thing that people see–the subject line. 33% of email recipients have reported that they open an email because of a catchy subject line. Another 64% say that they make their decision on whether or not to open an email based on the subject line alone.
Check out this blog postto learn more about creating an email with a subject line that gets opened.
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Add in preheader text
The preheader text comes right after the subject line of an email, but it’s another aspect of your email that you shouldn’t ignore. You can use this point to tell readers a little more about what your email is going to be about.
Use this space to your advantage by encouraging readers to open your email. Leaving it blank or not focusing on this part of your email may reduce your chances of getting them to open the message.
Send a test–always
After you have completed your email, send a test to yourself or another member of your team. This step is necessary to make sure that your formatting is correct, there aren’t any grammatical errors, and all links are working properly.
Small avoidable mistakes can turn people away. It can come across as unprofessional. It is also a good idea to open the email on a mobile device and make sure it is formatted correctly for mobile users as well.
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Nurture your list
The sale is the end goal, so avoid going straight for it. If you push for the sale too quickly, you can come across being disingenuous. Email marketing is about building relationships, showing your email subscribers that you are an authoritative figure, and coming across like you genuinely want to help them solve their problem.
Create a variety of emails that will help educate, entertain, and deliver value. Every single email does not need to be pushing them down your sales funnel. Mix it up and grab their attention by showing them the value of being on your list.
Review your analytics
How will you know if your campaign is working or not if you never check your analytics? Analytics let you know how to plan out future campaigns around what’s working and what might need to be tweaked.
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Check out this recent blog post for what analytics you should be tracking on a regular basis.
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Add in a call to action (CTA)
Every email you send should have some sort of call to action. It doesn’t always have to be going for the sale, but you should direct your readers what to do next.
Test out different types of call to actions and see what does better. Instead of adding a hyperlink, try a button. Instead of an image that your reader clicks on, try out a video. You can also try to do A/B testing to see what call to action is working best for your audience.
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Use automations
Email automation happens when you create a workflow with how you want your reader to receive emails. You can set certain triggers to create an automation where emails will be delivered after the reader completes a specific task or after a set period of time. You set the workflow, and your email provider will take care of sending the emails.
Automations save a lot of time and keep readers following the sales funnel that you would like them to. It will make your workflow more efficient and create a better customer experience.
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Don’t forget about mobile users
This past year mobile email open stats actually outnumbered the number of people that check email on a desktop. Nearly 1.7 billion people checked their email on their phone, and only 0.9 billion users checked on their desktop.
The number of people who check their email on a mobile device is clearly rising all of the time. So it goes without saying that you need to make sure your emails are formatted well for mobile users as well.
Try out these strategies:
Use a single column
Keep the email less than 600 pixels in width
Use a larger font
Test on different devices (tablet, Android, and/or iPhone)
Don’t use menu bars within emails
If your email is hard to read on a mobile device, then it is likely that your readers will not continue to engage with your content over time.
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Email marketing don’ts
Email marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. If you aren’t seeing the results you would like, check out this list and see if you are making any of these common mistakes.
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Avoiding your list
Has it been awhile since you sent your list an email? You can’t see growth if you don’t email your list! I often see business owners not knowing what to say, complicating the process, and missing their chance to use email marketing as a resource.
What you send your list doesn’t need to be huge and grand. However, keeping them in the loop of your business on a consistent basis will pay off in the long run.
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Being unclear in your messaging
One way to turn a potential customer away is to not be clear on what you are providing them. If you are talking about one topic in one paragraph and then jump to another topic in the next paragraph, they are going to be confused on your purpose.
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You need to clarify your message and to be able to communicate it effectively. Address one problem at a time and show them how you are able to help them.
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Never buy your list
Gross. Buying lists is spammy! It is unauthentic, and people are not going to want to do business with a company who has purchased their email address. It’s a great way to put off people and make a horrible first impression.
It may not be illegal to buy an email list. However, It can be illegal to use those contacts to market unless they have agreed to receive communications from you. Avoid this and work on following the do list portion of this blog post and build your own list from people who actually want to hear from you.
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Forgetting to segment your list
Make sure the information that you are sending to your list is relevant for them. You can do this by segmenting your contacts. There are numerous ways you can segment your list.
You can segment by:
Engagement rate
Demographics
How they signed up
When they signed up
Their status within a specific funnel
What topics they’re interested in
By segmenting your list, you will send more effective emails and will see a better interest from your readers.
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Your emails look more like a blog post
Did you know that the average person receives 100-120 emails every day? People don’t have time to read long emails and will most likely skim what you have to say or send it to the trash.
Emails don’t have to be long. They are actually better if they are on the shorter side and to the point. Add immense value and leave out the fluff! According to Constant Contact, they have found that the best length for an email newsletter is about 200 words. They seem to have the highest email click through rate.
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Forgetting to proofread
Never skip proofreading! People will be turned off if your emails are filled with mistakes. Always go through your email and check for misspelled words, broken links, and grammatical errors. Check every element of your email, including your signature, to make sure everything is correct and working.
Sending too many emails
Have you ever signed up for a list, and it seems like every time you go to your inbox that there is another email from them? People obviously want to hear from you if they signed up for your email list. However, don’t bog down their email with too many messages.
If you have a list of less than 2,000 subscribers, it is recommended to send about 4-8 emails each month.
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Being spammy
Following spammy practices will land you in the spam folder real fast. The purpose of your email marketing is to land in your subscribers inbox. Spam filters prevent content that looks suspicious from landing in your customer’s inbox.
Avoid going to spam:
Avoid using ALL CAPS in your subject line
Using spammy keywords such as, “Make money fast” or “Get rich now.”
TOO many links. You want to include a few links with a clear call to action, but adding an excess amount of links can trigger spam.
Even with your best efforts to avoid coming across as spam, you may still end up in their spam folder. You can try to avoid this by encouraging your subscribers to add you to their whitelist.
Email marketing, without a doubt. can help you see growth in your business. You will be well on your way to see success and increased growth by following these dos and don’ts of email marketing.
If you are looking for more help with email marketing, check out more on the blog!
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Categories: : digital marketing