10 Email Marketing Best Practices to Improve Your Campaigns

Email marketing best practices act as guardrails that help you efficiently achieve your email campaign goals. This blog discusses the top 10 email marketing tips that can help you optimize your email campaigns for the best results.

In the past couple of years, there has been a surge in the number of ways marketers can reach out to customers and prospects. However, email marketing continues to be one of the most powerful marketing strategies that help strengthen customer relationships, improve engagement, and drive business revenue. This cost-effective channel generates an average of $36 for every dollar spent.

With email marketing becoming increasingly technology and data-driven, it has become easier to scale and accelerate email marketing efforts with minimal effort. You need to continually refine and optimize your email marketing strategy to improve your ROI.

Incorporating email marketing best practices and tips is a must to ensure your strategy is optimized for driving maximum engagement and conversion.

Why Do You Need Email Marketing Best Practices?

Every email marketing plan starts with a goal, such as nurturing leads, improving brand awareness, driving conversions, and more. Best practices help you achieve these goals efficiently.

Email communication best practices help you optimize various aspects of your email marketing program and strategy. This includes maintaining an email list, delivering relevant and effective content, using captivating designs, determining the appropriate timing and frequency, using the right email marketing automation tool, ensuring compliance, and more.

At the same time, you need to closely monitor the campaign performance using key email marketing metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and others to gain insights into what’s working and what’s not. You can build on these insights and incorporate industry best practices for email to develop a comprehensive email marketing strategy that helps you achieve your goal quickly and efficiently.

Email Marketing Best Practices

Here are the top email marketing tips and best practices that can help you fine-tune your email campaigns.

1. Implementing a Robust Email Marketing Platform

Automation is the way of the future. Email providers like Gmail or Yahoo Mail fall short of meeting the requirements of today’s rapidly growing businesses as they do not help you track email marketing metrics, such as open rate, click-through rate, and others.

Purpose-built email marketing platforms help stick to email marketing best practices by allowing you to stay on top of the key metrics and automate various workflows. From simplifying email list management to providing ready-to-use, customizable email templates, running A/B tests, and beyond, these tools help you fine-tune email campaigns efficiently.

2. Building a Quality Email List

The success of your email campaigns is highly dependent on maintaining best practices for email lists. Here are the key considerations that can help you build a quality email list:

a. Email List Segmentation

Instead of sending generic emails to the entire database, you should segment your list based on demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors. Email list segmentation provides the foundation for crafting tailored and personalized messages that resonate better with each segment.

The more you align and personalize the messages to your subscribers’ needs, tastes, and preferences, the more likely they will help improve engagement and drive conversions.

b. Opt-In Strategies

Although it might seem daunting, verifying that every contact in the email list has been added organically and with consent is essential. You can implement the double opt-in strategy that asks users to confirm their consent to receive future emails by clicking a link in a confirmation email. Additionally, you can also offer special offers and exclusive content to entice prospects to sign up.

You should avoid purchasing email addresses and remove any purchased ones from your database, as a lot of these purchased emails are often fake and can impact your engagement. They can even get you blacklisted by email service providers and anti-spam services.

c. Email List Hygiene and Maintenance

It is crucial to regularly clean your email list to remove email addresses that have stopped engaging with your emails. When people ignore your emails over a long period, it can signal ISPs that you are sending spam emails, which can further impact your delivery rates and engagement. Maintaining your email list’s hygiene can help ensure a good engagement rate and provide more accurate performance data.

3. Be Clear About Campaign Goals

Every business runs several email campaigns, each with a distinct purpose. Setting clear goals acts as guidelines that provide direction to your email marketing efforts and form the basis for evaluating the performance of the campaigns. These goals should be further broken down into well-planned, actionable steps that help you steadily advance toward your goal.

For example, your goal could be to improve your conversion rate by 20%. To achieve this, you can plan an email drip campaign that effectively nurtures the leads through the awareness, consideration, and conversion stages.

4. Writing Compelling Email Content

Every part of an email—the subject line, body, and call to action link or button—is critical for driving engagement.

a. Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing a recipient sees in their inbox. It should be relevant to the recipient and pique their interest to open your email.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind while crafting subject lines:

• Keep the subject line short.
• Keep the key theme or topic toward the beginning, as subject lines get cut off after the first few words.
• Avoid using spammy words.
• Personalize it by adding the recipient’s first name.
• Ensure it is engaging and thought or action-provoking so that it entices them to open the email.
• Ensure the subject line reflects what’s in the email.

Here are some examples:

• John, here’s your email download link. 
• Customer Engagement Webinar: Join us on February 2. 

b. Body of the Email

The body of the email is the crux of email campaigns. Once a recipient opens the email, the onus is on the body of the email to drive the recipient to take the intended action. The email content should be relevant, engaging, and effective for them to click on the call to action button.

Here are a few best practices for crafting effective email content:

• Personalize it by adding the recipient’s first name.
• Leverage dynamic email content to ensure it’s aligned with the recipient’s interests, preferences, and behavior.
• Keep it concise, relevant, and easy to read.
• Smartly use images and interactive content to make it visually appealing and engaging.

c. Call-to-Action (CTA)

Every email you send should have a clear goal and purpose that it needs to achieve. That goal could be to drive conversions, such as downloading an e-book, making a purchase, registering for a webinar, etc., getting their feedback through a survey, or simply providing company information through a press release.

Most of these emails require the recipients to go to a landing page on your website to complete the action. An effective call to action, or CTA, is what helps them do it with ease.

Ensure that the CTA is:

• Visually striking and easily noticeable.
• Short and clear.
• Optimally placed.
• Action-oriented, such as “Download eBook” for downloading an eBook, “Register Now” for registering for a webinar or an event, etc.

5. Designing Effective Emails

Design is the next key element that ensures an email campaign achieves its goal. A well-designed, professional-looking email plays a key role in creating a strong brand image and is generally considered to be a reflection of the quality of the product or service offered.

 a. Responsive Design

Using responsive or hybrid design is the industry standard today. Responsive email design ensures a consistent and seamless experience for recipients across mobile and desktop devices. It essentially adjusts its size depending on the device to ensure consistent style and usability.

Most email marketing platforms offer this capability, enabling you to deliver the best experience to the recipients regardless of how they are engaging with your email.

b. Visual Elements

Smart use of visual elements is essential to ensure the recipients spot the key components easily. These visual elements include:

• The colors used for banners, call to action, etc. While using brand colors is an absolute must, it is recommended to use contrasting colors to make the button or the hyperlinks stand out.
• Images and visual content. It is difficult to capture a recipient’s attention using only text and paragraphs. Using images can help capture the attention of the subscribers and keep them interested. It is also recommended to add alt text, which appears if the image does not load.

What’s important is to strike a balance between these visual components and the key message (text) to deliver a unique and memorable experience. Email marketing platforms today offer ready-to-use and customizable templates that help you design emails quickly and efficiently.

6. Timing and Frequency of Emails

The importance of determining optimal email send times and cadence cannot be overstated. It depends on a number of factors, such as the recipient’s time zone, type of email, and audience engagement patterns.

a. Optimal Email Send Times

Determining the right time to send an email requires being aware of the recipient’s time zone, holidays, and even days of the week, type of email, past behavior, and more. For example, sending any product demo requests or company newsletters during Christmas or Chinese New Year might not get the intended level of engagement.

For business emails, HubSpot found that sending emails on Tuesday has a higher email open rate compared to other days. The same study also found that sending an email at 11 AM EST has the highest chance of receiving a response. Email marketing tools generally offer send-time recommendations for driving optimal engagement.

b. Frequency

Sending frequent emails can overwhelm the recipients and make them mark your email as spam or even unsubscribe. Instead of sending too many emails, focus on ensuring quality—carefully craft the subject line, the body of the email, and the call to action in line with recipients’ needs and preferences.

When planning an email drip campaign, for instance, it is recommended to plan the campaign with around 3 to 10 emails and space them out, sending each after a gap of around 4 days to 2 weeks. You should regularly monitor their performance and make adjustments accordingly.

7. Analyzing and Optimizing Campaign Performance

Email marketing is not a one-size-fits-all activity. What works for a customer segment might not work for another—and even what works for a customer segment today might not tomorrow. Audience tastes, preferences, and interests evolve over time, necessitating a regular review of the performance of the email campaigns and optimizing them for the best results.

a. Key Metrics to Track

Some of the top email marketing metrics that you need to track to understand how a campaign is performing include:

• Deliverability rates
• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates

However, not all metrics are relevant to every campaign. For example, for an email campaign inviting people to register for an upcoming webinar, the click-through rate is the key metric to monitor while the open rate would be more prudent for an email campaign containing an important company announcement in the body of the email.

b. A/B Testing

Running A/B tests helps optimize email campaigns by providing insights into what’s working the most. From subject lines and email copy to your CTAs, every aspect should be tested for optimal results. Though this trial-and-error method might seem cumbersome, identifying the winning element can do wonders for your email campaigns.

The A/B testing method requires you to create two versions of the same email campaign – version A and version B. Version A is sent to one half of your target audience, and version B is sent to the other half and then their performance is compared to identify which one worked better. It is recommended to create the two versions by changing only one element—subject line, body of the email, or CTA—so that it is easy to identify what resonates the most with the audience.

8. Ensuring Compliance

As an email marketer, you should be cognizant of the relevant regulations you need to comply with and accurately understand their scope and requirements. Failing to comply with these regulations, such as the CAN-SPAM act in the US, GDPR in the EU, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003 in the UK, and the CASL laws in Canada, among others, can not only result in hefty fines but also damage your brand image and reputation.

To ensure compliance, you need to:

• Ensure that all the email addresses in your email list have been obtained with consent.
• Ensure the subject line reflects the content of the email and is not misleading.
• Provide accurate sender details in every email, including postal address, as per certain regulations.
• Provide the option to unsubscribe or opt out of the email list.
• Clearly state that your email is an advertisement (required by the CAN-SPAM Act).

As a best practice, it is recommended to regularly review your email practices to ensure they adhere to the relevant regulatory requirements.

9. Rewarding Your Superstars

Appreciating and rewarding email subscribers who always engage with your emails can go a long way in boosting their loyalty and making them your brand ambassadors. For example, an e-commerce company can offer early access to their upcoming sale or a B2B company can offer special discounts to their flagship events and conferences.

These superstars can also provide you with valuable insights to fine-tune your email program. You can run a survey to get their input and feedback on your email frequency, templates, and more.

10. Leveraging AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help you significantly level up your email game. Today, most of the leading email marketing tools have embedded AI-powered capabilities that you can leverage without the need to switch from the product interface, making the entire process seamless.

You can harness the power of AI to:

• Quickly gain insights into customer data for personalizing emails.
• Get optimal email send time recommendations.
• Gain insights into potential customer lifetime value.
• Run A/B testing to identify subject lines that will drive more engagement

Be Future-Ready with Email Marketing Best Practices

Optimizing email campaigns is an ongoing, iterative process that requires you to incorporate fresh insights to better meet ever-evolving customer needs continually. Incorporating email marketing best practices and tips streamlines the process, enabling you to amp up your email marketing strategy to steer clear of pitfalls and accelerate progress toward your goals.

CleverTap is an all-in-one customer engagement and retention platform that provides actionable insights for refining your email campaigns. Its purpose-built email marketing tool, embedded with easy-to-use email templates, versatile editor, AMP for email, A/B testing capability, advanced analytics, and more, helps you deliver personalized and interactive email experiences with ease.

Furthermore, CleverTap’s omnichannel integration enables you to unify your email marketing efforts with other channels like mobile push, SMS, and in-app messages, ensuring a unified and cohesive strategy.