Reaching pro status takes practice. When it comes to your email marketing campaigns, we’ve got the cheat sheet you need to go pro.
Maximize your open rates, click-thru rates, and inbound leads with these five email marketing best practices.
1. Winning Subject Lines
Bat for a home run with a winning subject line.
An over-the-fence hit starts with the pitch. In the world of email marketing, your pitch is your subject line. Once you’ve grabbed the audience’s attention with a well-worded phrase and motivated them to open the email, you’ve already rounded first base.
A world-series-worthy subject line:
- is short and sweet;
- pulls in key words;
- Avoids words like “free”, “save $,” “click here,” and “50% off”;
- communicates your brand persona;
- AVOIDS WRITING IN ALL CAPS (Wasn’t that annoying to read?);
- doesn’t go crazy with punctuation!!!!!;
- is personalized, perhaps with the recipient’s name.
Instead of wording your email subject lines as a direct sales pitch, entice recipients to open your email by communicating added value. Appeal to the needs of your audience.
2. Visually Alluring Graphics
Incorporating purposeful visuals with your marketing emails is crucial to funneling recipients into your reach.
[Tweet “40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text.”]
Use visuals, such as an infographic, photo, video, or interactive graphic, as an eye-catching alternative to plain text. These visuals will illustrate the main message quickly and encourage engagement.
Email marketing is a direct extension of your brand. Aligning the visual style of your emails with the brand style solidifies the connection between the message and the brand. Stick to the brand’s color palette when designing emails and channel your brand persona by extending visual elements of your identity to your email.
Recipients will encode this visual information into their memory, so even if they don’t have an immediate need for your support, they’ll recall your brand as a go-to resource for a specific need in the future.
3. Wickedly-Awesome Copy
Copy that bores the reader is worse than no copy at all.
Write to get the most important point across first. Begin with the end to ensure the recipient gets your message, even if he or she doesn’t fully read the text.
4. Responsive Design
According to the US Consumer Device Preference Report, 66 percent of all email in the US is opened/read on mobile devices.
[Tweet “66 percent of all email in the US is opened/read on mobile devices.”]
Tailor your strategy to this majority. Enhance the user experience with responsive design.
What is responsive design? It’s a fancy way of saying the content you create fits perfectly to whatever size screen it’s viewed on.
Responsively designed emails won’t require your recipients to finagle with their phones or tablets, struggling to zoom in on the text, images, or videos. Your recipients will see exactly what you expect them to see, wherever they may be, at the quality you want to deliver.
5. Enticing Call to Action Button
A call to action (CTA) button tells people what to do next. The steps are clear and there’s no guesswork involved.
Placing a CTA button within an email guides recipients to the action you want them to take.
A few CTA button best practices:
- Use contrasting colors. You need a button that will pop and direct attention to the action. Buttons that fade into the background and go unnoticed (and unclicked) won’t do you much good.
- Choose warm colors. Color theory suggests that warm colors, like red, orange, and yellow, are better for encouraging people to take action because they are associated with energy, enthusiasm, and optimism. Cool colors on the other hand, like green, blue, and purple, are associated with tranquility, serenity, and spirituality. Instead of motivating your leads to take action and click, these cool colors trigger a drift into a passive mind state.
- Use verbs. Stay action-oriented to reign in the clicks.
When you reach out to your audience through email, remember you only have a small window of opportunity to hook and reel. Don’t be dull. Make the interaction count.
Go Pro with your Next Email Marketing Campaign
Ask us about an email audit for your current email marketing campaign. Give us a call today: 630.691.9500. We’ll ensure your next campaign is pro status.
