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Isa is an author and writer and has profiled incredible creators and artists, including Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony winners. When she’s not writing or interviewing creators, she’s probably walking her dog Stanley, working on her next book, or listening to the Hamilton soundtrack for the 300th time.
Email marketing best practices | Email campaign best practices | Pipedrive
Over the years, email marketing has evolved into one of the most cost-efficient forms of digital marketing.
However, learning the ins and outs of this marketing instrument is often harder than most marketers anticipate. Some things may work for one business, but end up being a total failure for another.
The only way to really learn what works best for a certain business is to test your approach repeatedly. Eventually, your efforts will start to show you where you need to improve and what your customers love to read.
Having said that, there are some email marketing practices that are universal for most industries. These are practices that have shown to work repeatedly, across different types of businesses.
As such, in this article, we have gathered 38 experts with a proven track record of email marketing success, and have them share their opinion on the things you can do, to send successful campaigns every single time.
Evan Carmichael is working to solve the world’s biggest problem: Untapped human potential.
Tell stories, especially yours.
Before people will listen to you or buy from you they need to understand that you know how they feel, what they’re going through and that there is a way out.
Your story is the thing that will connect them to you and is your competitive advantage. The more vulnerable you are, the better. People don’t want to learn from the perfect person because they’ll think you don’t understand them and what they’re going through. Except that you do. Because you’ve been through it. But they don’t know that until you tell them.
Make them feel that you understand them, then they’ll take the actions you want them to take. #Believe
Sam is founder of the eagerly-anticipated OPTIM-EYEZ. He has been ranked as the world’s top three influencers by Webinale, Onalytica, and ScribbleLive.
Here are my big three concise email marketing recommendations (which are also mostly necessities!):
1. I don’t know how many times I have to say it. STOP EXPORTING YOUR LINKEDIN CONTACTS AND ADDING THEM TO YOUR EMAIL LISTS.
This is actually illegal if you’re sending to contacts within the EU (due to GDPR)—and not to mention, downright flippin’ annoying.
If people didn’t give their permission, how is this ever going to turn out to be good for your business in any way?!
(And no, simply introducing your email content with the line ‘You’re receiving this email because you’re a contact on LinkedIn’ doesn’t make it OK in the slightest.)
2. Make it super easy for subscribers to unsubscribe at any time.
You might think this is encouraging negative action, but it actually instills more trust.
3. Segment your lists. The more targeted and relevant your emails become, the more your subscribers will feel special—if they didn’t subscribe to hear about your cute new puppy, don’t send them emails about your cute new puppy.
Warren Whitlock advises companies on the strategies needed to take advantage of digital media tools and online opportunities that drive growth and profits.
A current focus is on blockchain, a technology that will disrupt most traditional businesses while he also advises on ICO, e-commerce, martech, new media and the future of marketing.
There are two things over the last 38 years of using email that stand as life-changing.
Getting rid of spam
Modern accounts shouldn’t have a problem but if you have it, take a look at better software and accounts to fix it. Email is communication not a daily weeding job to find important messages.
Practicing the philosophy of ‘zero Inbox’ and ending each day with zero messages in my Inbox.
I read/process all the messages I get and can now mail to thousands with my own return address and encourage them all to reply.
If you have thousands of emails in your inbox, you are wasting time every day. Just archive everything older than 30 days and get started. Search will let you get to an old message faster than scrolling. Then quickly go through the rest. I’ve been doing this for years and get up to a few dozen every so often. I just have to go through and decide where it belongs outside of email. If not, I archive it and know I can find it if ever needed.
Email remains the most universal way to carry on a personalized conversation. Text and messengers apps are great but not anywhere as universally used as email.
Bestselling Author and Keynote Speaker Erik Qualman has performed in over 50 countries and reached 30 million people.
His Socialnomics work has been featured on 60 Minutes to the Wall Street Journal and is used by the National Guard and NASA.
His book Digital Leader propelled him to be voted the 2nd Most Likeable Author in the World behind Harry Potter’s J.K. Rowling. You can connect with him through Equalman.
Start with the the subject line
Most email that isn’t read is because it was never opened in the first place. Don’t trick people into opening it with the subject line. This works, but it only works once and people will unsubscribe.
If the subject line is too difficult to create then most likely the content of the email itself needs work. In sum, when drafting your email you should think of the subject line first before anything else.
The subject line should help you write the email, not the other way around. Most of us do the exact opposite and treat the subject line as an after thought.
Ian Brodie is a marketing consultant and author of the bestselling book Email Persuasion. You can connect with him through his website.
For 2019, I would put my focus on just one thing: Deliverability.
That’s painful for a marketing person to say. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter how engaging your email content is, how enticing your subject lines, how compelling your calls to action: if your emails don’t make it through to your subscribers’ inboxes then it all counts for nothing.
And of all the areas in email marketing, the one that’s changing the most is deliverability.
If you could write great emails in 2015 or 2018 or 2005, your emails will still be pretty great in 2019. But what’s changing significantly is the algorithms the big email service providers use to decide where to place your emails. All of them, and in particular Gmail which powers by far the biggest number of inboxes, are getting tighter and tighter on what they allow into the inbox versus what they push to spam or promotions.
And the days when you could keep out of the spam folder just by avoiding ‘trigger words’ or by playing games like saying ‘f.ree’ instead of ‘free’ are long gone.
So even though it’s not a sexy marketing topic, I would advise getting to grips with deliverability.
That means understanding how to get your subscribers to whitelist your email address. Keeping your mailing lists clear of spam-traps and dead addresses. Regularly monitoring your inbox placement using tools like Glockapps.com, and managing engagement so you send only to people who are actively reading and taking action on your emails.
This one area can have a much bigger impact on your success with email than any tweaks you can make from a marketing perspective.
Jacob Cass is a prolific graphic designer who runs the popular design blog, Just Creative, which doubles as his award-winning graphic design & branding firm.
Jacob’s clients include the likes of Disney, Jerry Seinfeld and Nintendo. Jacob has spoken at TEDx, been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur and has been awarded LinkedIn’s exclusive ‘Best of’ for graphic design.
Set your goals
Proactively grow your email list
Use triggered emails
Optimize for mobile
Automate with autoresponders, workflows and segmentation
Use email marketing in combination with social media
Use a tracking pixel
Time your campaigns
Track and test your campaigns
Dennis Yu is the Chief Executive Officer of BlitzMetrics, a digital marketing agency providing real-world experience to students by managing ad campaigns for companies like the Golden State Warriors.
My number 1 tip to make your emails effective: write them like social media posts.
Why?
Because 80% of emails are opened on a mobile phone. That means people are on the go, scrolling fast (140% faster scroll on mobile than desktop), and need you to capture their attention immediately.
That means your headline is even more important—and not just because the average user is inundated with 200+ emails a day. I happen to get 900 emails a day, so you can imagine how hard it is to get into my inbox and to also get my attention.
This means write simpler copy using nearly all text and short paragraphs, like you see here. Having a lot of formatting makes your email look like an ad. Having long paragraphs being read on a phone that’s only two inches wide presents a reading challenge that most users will decide to just skip.
Social media posts, especially LinkedIn, are all about the copy. So learn to teach, inspire, and entertain—selling only 10% of the time.
Tim Hughes is ranked Number 1 as the most influential social selling person in the world. He is the co-founder and CEO of Digital Leadership Associates.
Spend time on social media, using ‘permission marketing techniques’ building relationships, engaging and creating insightful content.
Ivana Taylor is the publisher of DIYMarketers.com a resource for entrepreneurs who want to do less marketing and make more money. In 2010 she ranked number 21 out of 30,000 influential people on the internet.
She is the book editor for Small Business Trends, a contributing author to AMEX Open Forum and has appeared on MSNBC.
In 2019, the most important thing about email marketing is to first and foremost decide what role email marketing will play in your chosen marketing strategy.
For example, if you choose a content marketing strategy, then use email as a way to engage with your email list and drive them to content that will ultimately lead to a call to action.
If you’re running a direct marketing strategy, then email is your primary form of contact with your email list and each email will contain a call to action.
If you want to use email marketing as a support to your marketing strategy, then your first step is to make sure that you start with who you are selling to and how they want to communicate with you, what you’re selling and the best way to move potential prospects through their buying journey.
Don’t ‘do’ email marketing because you heard it was something every business should do. Choose email marketing as a supporting tactic to the marketing strategy you choose.
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the co-founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency.
He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-list celebrities. You can connect with him through his website.
When it comes to email marketing, here are the best practices in my experience:
Be consistent. It’s the key to grow your audience and engagement too.
Don’t underestimate the power of your welcome emails. Use them to build strong relationships.
Find the right times to send the email for maximum impact. This method works very well for me.
Be authentic and seek their feedback. It helps you understand what your readers want.
Adam Connell is a content strategist with a background in SEO and email marketing. He used to manage the content marketing efforts of international brands. Now he teaches bloggers how to get noticed at Blogging Wizard.
Get to know your audience
The results you get from email marketing are proportionate to the value you deliver to your audience. Survey your email subscribers to find out how you can serve them better. This can be done easily by using your automation sequence and a survey tool like Typeform.
Use an email verification tool to improve deliverability
Email deliverability is a huge challenge. Spam traps and incorrect emails can have quite an impact. A tool like Mailfloss can filter these out automatically so you don’t have to lift a finger.
Let your subscribers know what they’re signing up for
Whatever list building tactics you are using, be transparent about what people are signing up for. If they need to join your newsletter to get a free download, let people know. Include it on your forms, confirmation email and thank you page. And of course, make it easy for people to unsubscribe.
Dan Scalco is the founder and marketing director at Digitalux, a digital marketing agency located in Hoboken, N.J.
The number one email practice I would recommend in 2019 would be to automate your email personalization as much as possible. Digital marketing is becoming more and more tailored to the recipient due to the increase in volume of marketers/business making the shift to digital marketing.
Personalization through email tactics such as Browse Abandonment, which remind customers about products they recently viewed, help keep marketing tailored to the individual buyer. In an ever-growing world of general mass e-newsletters, personalization is what will help you stand out and increase conversions.
Nicholas is a growth marketing consultant who helps brands turn website visitors into leads and customers using high-converting landing pages. He’s the founder of Landing Page School, which offers free training on landing page design, A/B testing, and conversion optimization.
The number one email best practice I recommend is to make your emails look more human and less robotic.
Nothing is worse than an impersonal email packed with images and buttons and links. That’s not something that most people want to engage with.
Rely less on formatting and focus more on the copy. Write with a personal tone, and if you can, put a name on it so that people know who’s behind the message.
Joe Williams is a Digital Marketer and SEO trainer at Tribe SEO. He’s on a mission to make SEO easy, fun and profitable.
Two things that work great for email marketing are creating compelling lead magnets and segmenting your email list.
For a lead magnet, it could be a valuable PDF, but I’m moving more towards creating a mini email or video class series.
For email segmenting, it may be by their industry knowledge in the product or service that you offer. Typically, I’ll segment into three or four buckets through a drop down form on email capture, and tag them in my email autoresponder. Then, I can market to them on a much more personal way, and this will lead to hyper-targeted messaging when I make my sales pitch later down the line.
Ashley is a recovering WordPress designer turned Affiliate Marketer who loves ranking stuff on Google. He spends way too much time in the Swiss Alps and tries to get some work done in between. You can connect with him through Madlemmings.
These days I am less worried about following all the advice and rules and more interested in creating real relationships with my readers. The same applies to email.
So, what does that mean in practice? I like to provide oodles of value to my email list before pitching them anything. Like trusting a friend when you buy a new car (or anything of value) it’s usually not something you do lightly. And expecting your email list to be open to buying from you or via your affiliate links before you have established yourself is the same. Trust comes first, even online.
Jordie van Rijn is an international email marketing expert and helps people select MarTech as founder of emailvendorselection.com.
Put your content to work for extra opt-ins
As far as conversion is concerned, asking for that all important email opt-in is crucial. All email lead nurturing programs start after a first opt-in and email address is given. It is a turning point.
Research on consumer email marketing attitude and behavior showed that people are most likely to exchange their opt-in for a tangible monetary benefit. Free shipping, a 5$ gift card or 10% off.
But what about brands in B2B, or brands ones that have mostly content?
Some list building techniques that sound like a bad crime movie: Bribery, extortion, content-gating, all sorts of mischief. Think about creating one very strong piece of content that has done all the selling for you (because it is so good). Then you just ask if people want more.
You can offer a content upgrade (eg. a downloadable checklist to accompany a how to article). But it can be even simpler. If you do a blog series, add a ‘receive the next part once it comes available’. The whole thing can be as simple a paragraph of text pointing to your normal signup, no extra work needed
Ben is a social media and press consultant specializing in technology, media, government and charity. He offers senior client consultancy and trusted counsel, sets strategy, and ensures well-executed implementation for campaigns at all levels. Connect with him through Montfort.
He is a regular speaker and well connected to the London media scene, influencers and blogging communities.
Try plain text emails.
These have been shown to be working more effectively than image-heavy emails, as they have higher deliverability rates, load quickly on mobile and allow readers to get the message straight away without having to scroll down on mobile.
Fewer but better.
Try sending fewer emails but put more time into making the content much better. If you’re known for sending low value emails, your readers won’t open them. Better to become known for sending valuable emails, even if that’s slightly less frequently.
Minuca Elena is a freelance writer specializing in creating expert roundups. Her posts provide quality content, draw huge traffic and get backlinks. She also helps bloggers connect with influencers. You can connect with her on MinucaElena.
The best email practices depend on the goal that you have. Basically, there are two possibilities:
- Email marketing
- Outreach
To your subscribers, you should always send out new content (an email about each new post you publish), updates about changes that are happening in your company and special offers and promotions from time to time.
People love getting discounts and great deals but they don’t like to be sold things. So you should make your sales emails look and feel like you are offering them an amazing opportunity, not like you are trying to sell them another product.
If you are busy and don’t have enough time to publish regularly then you should also send your subscribers your latest media features like interviews and podcasts in which you were a guest. This way they will see that you are a respected and successful person in the industry.
For outreach, my best advice is to personalize your templates as much as possible. You will spend more time on this but it will be more efficient and you will have better results.
Marcus is a digital marketing strategist at Bowler Hat where he helps small businesses get big results from SEO, Google Ads and Facebook Advertising.
Tip 1
Something that gets overlooked with email marketing is to ensure you have implemented DMARC and DKIM authentication for your emails. This improves deliverability and ensures your marketing messages get in front of your prospects.
Tip 2
The most important factor in email marketing is to add value. Make your email so valuable that the recipients make time to read it.
There are many ways to do this. The specifics will depend upon your audience. One great example of a marketing email is a two-minute summary of Google Webmaster Hangouts. I don’t have time for the whole 90-minute webinar so I actively look out for and read the key takeaways summarized in a two-minute email.
Dela Quist, founder, and CEO of leading email marketing agency Alchemy Worx, isn’t one to hold back. Passionate about email marketing, Dela has all the research and statistics at his fingertips to prove his arguments. Dela is an entertaining and convincing writer and speaker—well worth following.
Test Test Test.
Testing is a proven way to ensure that each email you send engages as many people as possible. What many people do not realize with A/B testing, is that testing two subject lines at a time will bring you fewer results than testing more subject lines.
Research we conducted into the effect of the number of subject lines (variables) you need for success shows marketers can improve their chances of success by 7x if they test three subject Lines, 10x if they test four and 30x if they test ten subject lines!
Now I accept that not everyone has the resources or the necessary amount of subscribers to write and test 32 different subject lines every time they send an email. What I would recommend to everyone is to test at least four subject lines at a time. A four subject line test is likely to result in a 33% lift. To compare, a classic A/B test is only likely to give you a 3% lift.
But help is at hand
Email marketers and copywriters who are serious about improving the performance of their email campaigns can only do so by increasing the number of Subject Lines they test. Touchstone, a testing tool that uses AI to identify winning subject lines, makes the testing part easy.
Harris Schachter is Director of Marketing at Home Care Delivered, Inc and Founder and Owner of OptimizePrime, LLC.
My best advice for email marketing is to provide value in an informational sense, not just sell stuff.
This is especially crucial for the first couple of emails sent to a new subscriber, when they are more likely to open it (and more likely to unsubscribe after possibly re-thinking their decision to sign up).
These first few communications will set the tone for your emails in general, and it is much more effective to stoke a slow-burn approach to warm up those leads, rather than cranking up the heat right off the bat.
Email is a free channel, so don’t waste it! Test out your sequences by combining informational and conversion-oriented messaging, and don’t forget to segment based on audience/persona or product interest.
Ruben Gamez is the founder of electronic signature app Docsketch, which helps get your sales document signed twice as fast as anything else.
Email is now something that’s used by most companies to nurture and convert leads into customers.
Because of this, it’s more important to stand out and do a great job of onboarding readers into your email list. Just like software companies have been doing, paying attention and actively working to increase engagement in the first few touch points will go a long way.
This means that the first couple of emails are critical and you’ll need to test to make sure you nail that experience.
A former Investment Banking Consultant turned Digital Marketing Strategist. Neil Sheth is the founder of Only Way Online, a digital marketing agency. He helps businesses attract new customers online whilst protecting their time and resources. You can also connect with him through Your Brand Found.
Start thinking about how you can leverage your subscriber audience across other social channels. We are living in an omnichannel integrated world now where you need to appear and engage with your audience in multiple places and in multiple ways online.
That’s why I’m always looking at my email audience thinking how do I encourage them to check out my other channels. For instance, I recently spoke at Google and emailed my subscribers to follow me on Instagram as I was sharing the day using Instagram stories. Nicely, one of my subscribers decided to buy my services that day after seeing the talk. No coincidences there!
Janet E Johnson helps business owners grow their business with strategies including branding and optimization of their social media. She focuses on specific ways to take the customer from a fan or connection to a sale. Her services on her website include training, consulting, speaking and management.
Be consistent.
Your list will forget about you if you do not get in front of them consistently. This can be weekly, 2x per week or even daily. Some brands choose to send out emails monthly, but I would suggest more than that. It also helps to send at the same day and time of the week. This sets the expectations for your list.
For over 20 years, Lolita has worked with startups, emerging brands as well as Fortune 500s to develop marketing and business development strategies that increase brand awareness and ultimately drive growth and revenue. You can find her at lolitacarrico.com.
Email marketing is an effective method (based on ROI) to communicate to loyal fans and incite repeat purchases.
Use advanced segmenting and automation
The primary thing to remember is that email marketing platforms allow you to segment and automate. With these functions, you can truly customize your emails for better user experience.
Rather than blasting the same message or offer to all your subscribers, tailor the messages by segmenting your lists based on buying behavior, last purchases or actions. The more you can micro-target your emails, the greater conversions you’ll see.
Keep it short & engaging
The Twitter and Instagram era have conditioned consumers to respond best to short-form and visual content. Email should be no different! Keep your messages concise and on-brand, with a tone that resonates with your audience and is visually stimulating.Finally, keep in mind that on social media there is no need to share your email address to follow a brand. When a consumer subscribes to your emails, they are giving you more access to them. Use it wisely to avoid the dreaded unsubscribe.
Daniel Ndukwu is the founder of KyLeads, a platform that helps websites turn more visitors into subscribers, and then customers.
There are a lot of things you could do with email marketing and they’ll increase your open rate, CTR and engagement.
If you were to boil it down to one or two then I’d focus on:
Segmentation
Every market or business has multiple customer segments they cater to whether they know it or not. Each of those segments wants something different from your products and services. Segmentation, psychographic and behavioral segmentation specifically, makes it possible to tailor your message to the goals of individuals rather than using one-size-fits-all messages that the whole world can relate to.Personalization
This isn’t about putting someone’s name in the subject line or body copy, not really. This is about reacting to their needs as an individual. For example, someone visits a product page four times or stays on a long form sales page for 15 minutes but doesn’t end up buying. If they’re a subscriber, you can send a message that takes that into consideration. Maybe they need a discount or more information before making the purchase. Give it to them.
With a wealth of knowledge gained from being an industry veteran of 19 years, Kath is an author, blogger, expert contributor, international conference speaker and trainer.
As CEO of Holistic Email Marketing, she devotes her time to developing customer-centric e-commerce journeys using a holistic, multi-channel approach.
Lead with Strategy and not with technology
When we let technology drive our decision-making, we can end up creating a disconnected experience for our customers. We can avoid that by creating a strategy first and then applying technology to carry out the strategy. Avoid creating a program around a tool or a feature.Test to continually optimize your campaigns and email program
Testing has three goals:
- Gain an uplift
- Learn something about our customers
- Share learnings with other team members and channels
You will get best results when you adopt a scientific approach that incorporates a hypothesis tied to your campaign or program objective. It’s easy to do simple A/B testing on a subject line or call to action, but those results likely will apply only to that campaign. Aim higher, testing over multiple campaigns to gain statistical significance and long-term gains.
Be subscriber-oriented in your reporting.
Think beyond the campaign. Use metrics that focus on customers and subscribers. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to making decisions only based on campaign metrics. This helps us to measure success using the correct metrics and make strategic decisions that will keep us focused on our objectives.
Rachel is a content strategist, SEO writer, and inbound marketer for e-commerce and SaaS clients. She loves writing about remote work, productivity and marketing strategies. You can find her at rachelandreago.com.
Use custom graphics, or no graphics at all
Using custom graphics is nothing new, but it’s definitely a best practice for a reason. Avoid stock photography, which is boring at best. Custom-designed graphics in your newsletters help keep your images relevant and helps to convey your message.If it’s between stock photography or no image at all, do no image at all. Plain text emails have been making a comeback as busy readers are getting tired of highly designed, loud marketing newsletters, and sometimes a plain text with just the facts can be refreshing.
Summarize your newsletter at the beginningThink about your mobile viewers here. People who open their emails on their phones don’t have time to scroll through a barrage of images, so summarize your message and highlights in a few paragraphs at the beginning of your email, before any graphics/images. I also recommend putting your logo at the bottom of the email, not the header (which readers will have to scroll past).
Scott is the CEO of Elevation Marketing. He is a balanced risk-taker with nearly three decades of experience starting and growing advertising and marketing agencies.
2019 has seen many marketing trends shine in the spotlight. Voice search, evolving AI, a view beyond millennials to Generation Z—these topics are driving conversations. What can get overlooked amid the hype are reliable strategies that should be a cornerstone of any marketing plan.
Take Email. This tactic still has the potential to deliver a high ROI to those who leverage it correctly. So let’s cut through the noise and look at the best email best practices in 2019.
Boost your open rates with split-testing
This should be a pillar of every email strategy. Can’t figure out which campaign to settle on? Split testing will tell you which subject lines will be most eye-catching, the type of CTA to use and the most optimum content. In short, it will help you avoid mistakes before you make them.Personalization
The other pillar of email in 2019 is personalization. Dollars to donuts your split testing will reveal that the most engaging subject lines are personalized. Do this by utilizing all the data at your fingertips: browsing and purchase history, demographic info, lifestyle, etc. Invest in AI platforms to automate data harvesting on a massive scale, tell a story with your email content and always incorporate the recipient’s name whenever possible.
Brenda Stoltz is the founding partner of Ariad Partners, a growth agency specializing in helping companies improve their marketing, sales and brand loyalty. Brenda also shares her expertise on B2Community.com, AllBusiness.com, FoxBusiness.com and Eloqua.com.
There are three primary email practices that are crucial for marketers in 2019. Effective email marketing is about proper targeting, messaging and deliverability.
Segmenting and Targeting
No matter what your message says, if your email list is not properly segmented and targeted to your content, it will fail.
Messaging
If you’ve targeted the right people, the next most critical factor is your message. It needs to be short and to the point, relevant, lead with the benefit to the reader with an offer that is compelling (easy peasy, right?) People are busy, don’t waste their time.
Deliverability
In addition to list management best practices, get familiar with DKIM, SPF and DMARC. These authentication practices won’t save you if you’re using not using best practices for list management and sending, but it will help you protect your domain and improve deliverability, if you are.
There is money in email marketing. A good email program is gold. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Follow these best practices, test, test, test and reap the rewards!
David first cut his teeth on direct response marketing back in 2007. After realizing that principals and strategies implement offline have an even more profound effect online he quickly steered his expertise to all things digital marketing.
Over the years David shaped his company Websites That Sell, into one of Australia’s leading digital agencies that companies can trust to generate meaningful and impact results via their website and Google.
Consistency, consistency, consistency.
Consistency is the key to getting a good return on email marketing efforts.
It doesn’t matter if email once a day, once a week or every month, it’s consistency that will ensure you get results.
Why?
Because your readers:
- Get used to you in their inbox, you’ll get better open rates
- Get to know you, you’ll get better conversion rates
- Get more of you, more often
Sporadic mailing will trigger more spam complaints, delete buttons and jeopardize possible sales.
If you’ve gotten someone on your email list, you’ve done the most expensive part—paying for SEO, PPC or Social Media to get them there.
By not being consistent and staying in front of your readers consistently you’re dramatically diminishing the returns on your marketing spend.
A final little bonus…
How do you get consistent (even when mailing daily)?
Learn how to tell stories, piggy-back media/news events, teach and, of course, sell.
Syed Irfan Ajmal is a digital marketing agency owner, international speaker and podcaster. His bylines & citations include Forbes, the World Bank, SEMrush and 100s of others. Connect with Syed on Gigworker.
Your audience is probably overwhelmed by a massive stream of incoming emails.
You can use power words in the subject line to increase your email open rate.
New, free, imagine, limited offer: all power words that trigger emotions, arouse curiosity and may even build trust.
Segment your list
Do you know 39% of marketers who segmented their email lists experienced higher open rates?
So start segmenting your list into groups based on the form your readers opt into.
Get personal
Personalized emails improve conversion by 10%
Use the subscriber’s name in the subject line and the body of the text.
Imagine you are having a conversation with them in person.
Use a text email rather than using shiny banners.
Brian Massey is the original Conversion Scientist and he has the lab coat to prove it. His company, founded in 2007, Conversion Sciences, was one of the first agencies focused exclusively on website optimization.
Brian has learned what works on the web through thousands of website tests. He has seen it all.
How much is an email subscriber worth to your business?
So few businesses calculate this value, but it really can help you decide whether you optimize to grow your list or optimize for leads and sales.
The easiest metric to calculate is revenue per recipient, or RPR. This is the revenue generated by your email traffic divided by the total number of emails sent. It can be easily calculated for any time period.
You can also calculate the leads per recipient, or LPR, and convert to RPR by multiplying by the value of a lead. How does this affect your business?
See if your RPR is higher than your average session value for mobile visitors. If it is, then you may want to optimize your mobile website for email subscribers, instead of asking them to buy on the mobile device. The same goes for lead generation. Let RPR guide your decisions.
Dennis Seymour is a Full Stack SEO and SaaS entrepreneur. You can also connect with him through Seriousmd.
In 2019, it’s all the more important to capture attention with all the noise available to people.
Here are my go-to practices in 2019.
Determine the purpose of the email first.
If you don’t know the purpose of the email, you’ll likely write a long email that people will trash or a short email with no results. Understand the main purpose first, that way you can plan how many emails you need to send for the campaign and write copy that will actually matter to the receiver.
Segment people you email.
This used to be a pain in the butt back in the day. Today, you have absolutely no excuse. It’s super easy to segment your emails. That way, you can write targeted copy for your email campaigns
I use tools that can customize the actual content.
I use tools like Bonjoro or Lemlist depending on what campaigns I run. These tools will help you track your opens and conversions as well. Give it a try, you’ll need to experiment to see what fits your niche best.
Kulwant Nagi is a blogger, affiliate marketer and international speaker. He runs the digital marketing company Afflospark, which focuses on providing content writing services to clients in many niches. Follow him to improve your blogging and content marketing skills.
The best email practice for 2019 is showing up more. The internet is filled with so much noise and so many experts that getting lost is so much easier now.
If you don’t remind you subscribers time to time, they will forget you and ultimately unsubscribe you.
So maintain email frequency and keep sending them different emails so they don’t forget you.
Timo Kiander is a freelance writer. He runs a blog called OnlineBuilderGuy, where he publishes in-depth articles regarding WordPress and online website builders.
Ask questions
One of the great ways to learn more about your subscribers is to ask questions, like if he/she needs help with anything or what the person would like to learn more about.
For instance, you can do this in your welcome message, after the person has subscribed to your email list.
Asking questions shows that you care for your subscribers. It is also a great way to build trust.
David Hartshorne is a freelance writer working with business owners and marketing teams to create detailed, actionable content that resonates with their audience. When he’s not writing about digital marketing and technology, you’ll find him chilling with a thriller. Connect with him through Azaharmedia.
Latest figures from Statista shows the number of emails sent and received each day will continue to rise to 333 billion by 2022.
The question is: are you sending the right type of email?
While most marketers are familiar with marketing emails like newsletters and promotions, there’s another type of email that’s equally as important in 2019.
Transactional emails give you the chance to personalize your message and get higher open-rates because they’re sent on a one-to-one basis rather than marketing emails, which are sent on a one-to-many basis.
The primary objective of transactional emails is to keep your existing customers informed. Typical examples include welcome emails, ecommerce shipping confirmations, cart abandonment reminders, account updates, invoices and receipts.
Using automation software where you can send highly-personalized transactional emails based on an individual’s behavior or actions at the right time. And it’s this type of email which customers prefer most because they know it’s unique to them.
So if you want to retain your existing customers, keep them happy by sending personalized messages that are relevant only to them.
Patrick Chen is Co-founder of ContactOut, an email finder tool, and Conscioused, a self-development blog.
Outreach is still one of the best email marketing practices for businesses.
It should be a part of any revenue-minded marketer’s toolkit. However, there’s an increasingly obvious distinction between blanket email spam and genuinely thoughtful outreach that will interest your customers and prospects.
This in turn will help keep your all-important email deliverability and reputation pristine. Here are my best practices when reaching out to potential influencers and customers to help grow your business:
1. Don’t get cute with email subject lines. Nobody likes clickbait on social media so why do it in someone’s inbox? State clearly what the email is going to be about. If you’ve done your prospecting properly, your ask should naturally be interesting to them anyway.
2. Create a transparent pitch. Say who you are, how you found the person and what you want.
3. Keep it short and use simple language. To the above point, the best emails say those three things in max one to two sentences each.
4. Make it easy to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’. If the person cannot answer your ask in one sentence, you’ve made too big of an ask.
5. Personalize. We stick to two bits of personalization:
a) Where you came across the person’s work
b) A specific compliment on something they’ve said or written.
Again, if you can’t even find these two bits of information, you haven’t done your research properly.
We would like to thank all the experts that shared their most valuable insights in this expert roundup!
So, in short, the top three email marketing best practices in 2019 by the world’s best marketing experts are:
Amazing, huh?
Who would have thought that in 2019 these would be the most important email marketing practices to follow.
We hope that you got inspired and found some tips to create better emails.
For more B2B marketing tips, check out our articles on CRM, cold calling and cold emails.
Melissa is originally from Boise, Idaho but currently living in Tacoma, Washington. She has spent the last few years working in the marketing and social media industry and has found a passion in deliverability! In her free time she loves to travel, run and spend time with her family.
Melissa is originally from Boise, Idaho but currently living in Tacoma, Washington. She has spent the last few years working in the marketing and social media industry and has found a passion in deliverability! In her free time she loves to travel, run and spend time with her family.
Steph Knapp is a freelance B2B + SaaS content marketer that loves educating and empowering curious humans. When she’s not typing away, you’ll find her volunteering at the animal shelter and obsessing over a new hobby every week. She shares marketing, freelance, and cat content on Twitter @ hellostephknapp.
To judge the effectiveness of a marketing campaign and track email performance, marketers often look at conversion. However, there are numerous other specific metrics that all feed into your conversion rate and thus must be measured in your email marketing campaigns.
By observing these metrics and comparing them to email marketing benchmarks and your business’s specific key performance indicators (KPIs), you can see which areas are performing well and which need improvement.
In this article, we’ll explain nine of the most important email marketing metrics to measure, what factors impact these email metrics and what they can tell you about your email marketing strategy.
Your email bounce rate tells you the percentage of your emails that never made it to the recipient’s inbox. There are two types of bounce rates: hard bounces and soft bounces.
Hard bounces can mean your email didn’t make it past a subscriber’s spam filter or that the email address is fake or inactive. This type of bounce is permanent and sends a major red flag to internet service providers (ISPs). Fortunately, most email marketing automation tools will remove bounced email addresses from future sends.
Soft bounces can mean your email didn’t make it to the inbox because it’s full or there’s a file in your email that’s too large. This type of bounce is temporary and many email service providers will continue to try and deliver your email over the following days.
Bounces are inevitable, especially as your list grows and the number of emails you send increases. Even though soft bounces aren’t always under your control, a high bounce rate affects your sender reputation and domain health, which in turn affects your email deliverability rate and email campaign metrics.
To avoid this, practice good email list hygiene by removing inactive subscribers from your email list and using a double opt-in (i.e. where subscribers must open an email from you and click a button to confirm their email address before officially joining your list).
Your deliverability rate is the percentage of emails you sent that made it to your subscribers’ inbox. Deliverability rate does not include the emails that landed in the spam folder (that’s delivery rate).
There are a variety of factors that influence this email metric, including keeping an eye on your sender reputation and making sure your domain isn’t on any block lists. The easiest way to ensure a high deliverability rate is to only send marketing emails to people who have opted into your list.
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Your email open rate is the percentage of emails delivered that were then opened. It only includes unique opens rather than repeat opens. It’s impacted by three things: your deliverability rate, your subject line and preview text and your time of sending.
If your open rate seems low, first check your email deliverability. If that looks normal, it’s most likely an unengaging subject line or the fact that you’re sending at the wrong time of day (i.e. when your subscribers are least active). Consider A/B testing these two things, as well as any other component of your emails you’d like to optimize, such as promotions or calls to action (CTAs).
Your spam complaint rate is the number of people who reported your emails as spam out of how many were delivered to subscribers’ inboxes. Similar to bounces, spam complaints are very detrimental to your email deliverability and an important email campaign metrics to keep an eye on.
There are many ways to avoid this, primarily by only sending emails to people who have opted in and sending content that’s relevant to your target audience and audience segments.
Additionally, placing a clearly marked unsubscribe link in your emails can help mitigate spam complaints from annoyed subscribers. Visible unsubscribe links are also required by law according to the CAN-SPAM Act and GPDR, so make sure to include them to remain compliant.
Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks l out of the total number of emails delivered. This email marketing metric helps you measure your email’s performance as it relates to engagement.
It’s possible for your CTR to be impacted by how many people open your emails, but that’s not always the case. For example, an email campaign can have a very high open rate and a low or non-existent CTR. That would mean your subject line was attention-grabbing, but your email content didn’t measure up.
To improve your click rate, make sure your emails are optimized and formatted correctly for mobile devices.
CTR is not to be confused with click-to-open rate (CTOR). CTOR is the percentage of those who opened your email who also clicked on it. CTR simply tells you how many people clicked your emails out of how many you sent.
List growth rate tells you how quickly your list is growing (or not growing) over a certain period. To measure list growth rate accurately, take the number of new email subscribers over time minus the number of unsubscribes and spam complaints in the same time period. Divide by the total number of subscribers to get the final number.
A dip or lag in this email metric can mean several things, including a high unsubscribe rate.
If your unsubscribe rate hasn’t increased, consider checking your lead generation offers. Customer needs and desires change, so what once might have been an attractive freebie or giveaway in exchange for one’s email address may no longer be as enticing.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of people who have taken a desired action. This could be making a purchase, or simply clicking the “Read more” button on a blog post snippet. It’s up to you and your business what you’ll record as a conversion.
Creating a good email content plan with relevant, on-brand messaging that resonates with subscribers is one way to ensure high conversion rates. Including a compelling offer in your promotional emails and including a single, prominent call-to-action (CTA) button are others.
Revenue per subscriber tells you how much revenue, on average, is generated from a single subscriber. Since return on investment is an important goal, this metric helps you understand whether email marketing is a high-yielding channel for your business.
This email metric can also help marketing teams make a business case for their email marketing efforts, even if other metrics are below your benchmarks.
In ecommerce, measuring revenue per subscriber can help you gauge which products you should run promotional emails campaigns for. Ifyour email engagement and conversion rates are high but you want a higher ROI for your promotional email efforts, you could consider promoting products with a higher average order value (AOV). Keep in mind that conversion rates might decrease if you do this, but your overall revenue may increase.
Your unsubscribe rate is the percentage of people that remove themselves from your subscriber list in a given period. A high unsubscribe rate usually comes down to your email content.
Setting clear expectations on your landing page or email sign-up form and sending a welcome email (or series of welcome emails) can help to keep your unsubscribe rate low.
List segmentation can also help. This is when you group your subscribers into segments based on various factors, including the type of content they want to receive or are most likely to find engaging. Creating relevant, valuable content for each list will take more time and effort, but parts of the process can be automated via email marketing platforms.
No matter how you execute it, segmentation can drastically reduce unsubscribes and increase conversion rates.
Being data-driven isn’t helpful if your email marketing strategy is dictated by irrelevant metrics. The same can be said for your overall digital marketing strategy.
The nine email marketing metrics above provide a helpful starting point to gauge the success of your email marketing efforts.
Crafting your email marketing strategy based on data from your email marketing platform’s dashboard is a great foundation, but don’t be afraid to experiment and test new things with your audience.
Steph Knapp is a freelance B2B + SaaS content marketer that loves educating and empowering curious humans. When she’s not typing away, you’ll find her volunteering at the animal shelter and obsessing over a new hobby every week. She shares marketing, freelance, and cat content on Twitter @ hellostephknapp.
Dana is a freelance writer who works closely with B2B SaaS brands to create content people enjoy reading. When she’s not working, you’ll find her sipping on a warm cup of tea and reading a good book (the scarier, the better). See what she’s up to at www.dananicoledesigns.com
Dana is a freelance writer who works closely with B2B SaaS brands to create content people enjoy reading. When she’s not working, you’ll find her sipping on a warm cup of tea and reading a good book (the scarier, the better). See what she’s up to at www.dananicoledesigns.com
Always in search of adventure, Kayla hails from Hopkinton, MA, the start of the Boston Marathon. When she’s not using words to help businesses grow, she’s probably summiting a mountain or digging into a big bowl of pasta. Like what you’re reading? Come say hi: http://www.kaylalewkowicz.com
Dana is a freelance writer who works closely with B2B SaaS brands to create content people enjoy reading. When she’s not working, you’ll find her sipping on a warm cup of tea and reading a good book (the scarier, the better). See what she’s up to at www.dananicoledesigns.com
Melissa is originally from Boise, Idaho but currently living in Tacoma, Washington. She has spent the last few years working in the marketing and social media industry and has found a passion in deliverability! In her free time she loves to travel, run and spend time with her family.
Turn on the dark theme in Pipedrive for a new, low-brightness CRM experience.
We’re currently rolling out the dark theme to all users. Once you have access, you’ll be able to select between three theme options in Pipedrive:
Light theme – Pipedrive’s original color palette
Dark theme – a new, less bright interface
System theme – match Pipedrive’s theme to your device settings
We’re always looking to improve Pipedrive and many of our customers have suggested adding a dark theme.
Staring at a bright screen, especially when working at night, can become uncomfortable. The new dark theme, which uses a subdued palette and reverses the black-and-white ratio of our Pipedrive UI, reduces brightness levels.
The dark theme option will be available on all plans and to all users. Admins won’t have permission to set account-wide dark or light theme settings – each user selects the theme they prefer.
Users can easily switch between themes if they prefer the light theme during the day and the dark theme at night or in low-light conditions.
When you have access, go to Account > Personal preferences > Interface preferences. Under the Appearance subheading, select Theme and use the drop-down menu to make the switch!
We’re rolling out a refreshed contact detail view to all our customers, with a new summary panel at the top of the sidebar, new scrolling options and collapsible categories in the sidebar and main section.
We’ve updated the design of the contact detail view to align it with our new deal detail view, improve visibility and give users more control over what they see.
Here are all the key changes:
A new summary panel at the top of the sidebar that captures useful contact information: email addresses, phone numbers, linked organizations or people and user-added labels
Individual scroll bars for the main section and sidebar that make it easier to navigate to the information you want to see
Added collapsible sections to help you hide distractions and focus on what matters most
Some users have opted into the new contact detail view already, but we’ll be rolling it out to all users over the next few weeks.
When it comes to closing a sale via email, timing is everything. How long do you normally wait before following up on a lead? And what subject lines do you find most effective?
According to Robert Clay from Marketing Wizdom, only 2% of leads close after the first meeting. Therefore, sending a follow-up email is vital for making more sales. Your initial pitch has laid the foundations, whereas the process that follows is what closes the deal.
A study by Velocify found that 93% of converted leads are reached by the sixth contact attempt after the initial discussion. It’s no secret that many salespeople give up long before this point, meaning there are substantial missed opportunities which, with a little perseverance, could have been grasped. Furthermore, the type of follow-up email you send matters.
Some salespeople use a classic ‘good housekeeping’ tactic, asking the prospect if it’s time to close their file. This often prompts the prospect into responding, either with a confirmation that he or she isn’t interested, or with a question that sparks further conversation and, hopefully, a sale.
Another common method is to offer a gift or piece of valuable information, motivating the prospect to open the email and respond accordingly. No matter what method you prefer to use, it’s important that your email has personality and gives the prospect enough value that they feel motivated to take action.
Click here to discover a variety of tried-and-tested email templates you can use to close your next sale.
Dana is a freelance writer who works closely with B2B SaaS brands to create content people enjoy reading. When she’s not working, you’ll find her sipping on a warm cup of tea and reading a good book (the scarier, the better). See what she’s up to at www.dananicoledesigns.com