Email Marketing Best Practices to Generate More Leads

Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your customers and generate leads. Here are some email marketing best practices you can implement to get more leads to your business.

1. Don’t Buy Email Lists

This next one probably isn’t a surprise, but GDPR has changed the way businesses collect and use data.

If you’re emailing people you’ve never contacted before, your email campaign’s effectiveness will drop.

If you’re looking to grow your list with European contacts, make sure you obtain their permission before sending them emails. Purchasing email lists without that approval could violate the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

2. Avoid using ‘No-Reply’ in the sender’s email address.

If you’re an email marketer in the United States, then you’re probably familiar with CAN-SPAM. This legislation has been around for a while and it provides some important guidelines to follow.

One big CAN SPAM rule is to not use “no-reply” or “no-answer” as the sender of your emails.

“No Reply” in email prevents people from responding to your email, but CAN SPAM protects your right to opt-out.

Instead of using a “no-reply” address for your automatic emails, use someone’s name. Your recipients will be more likely to open it if they know that it was created by a person, and it will help keep you in compliance with email marketing laws.

3. Stick to fewer than three typefaces.

If you want more conversions from your emails, keep the clutter to a minimum.

If you use too many fonts or typefaces in your email, it can be distracting to readers and make your email less visually appealing. Stick to two fonts or typefaces at most to avoid clutter and keep your email looking its best.

Use 10- to 12- point font sizes to ensure readability on all devices and email programs.

4. Optimize the email’s preview text.

If you subscribed to a mailing list, you may have received an email with this message at the top: “This message may not display properly. Click here to open it in a new window.”

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While it’s an important message, it can really hurt your chances of someone opening the email if you put it in the pre-header.

First, you’re letting your recipient know that your email might not even work. Second, you’re not providing any context as to what the email you sent is about.

Your preview text is your opportunity to further engage your reader and encourage them to open your email. By adding additional details, you can capture their attention and entice them to learn more about what you have to say.

Helpful tip: You can optimize the preview text to better match the subject line and encourage people to open your email!

The problem with using custom email templates is they often contain the same “conditional” statement: “can’t see the image?” or “not displaying the page properly?”

At the top of your email, place a banner that links to your landing page.

Email preheaders should always be customized to tease what the email will offer. This entices the reader to open the email and learn more.

You can fix this by editing the “preview” message in the back-end of your email newsletter.

5. Include an email signature.

If your email newsletter is being sent to clients or customers, be sure to include a signature. This helps keep all communication consistent and on-brand.

Email signatures are a great way to increase your brand’s visibility and maintain cohesive sign-offs across all your company’s communications. By including an email signature, you can make sure that your brand is represented consistently and effectively in all of your correspondence.

Your personal contact information in your email signatures is the ticket to your prospect’s attention. The more personal and approachable you make your emails, the more likely they are to be opened and read.

Your email signature is the key to getting their attention.

If you want to create a professional-looking, customized, and branded email signature, you can use the free tool from Hubspot.

If you need to step away from your inbox, our Out-of-Office Email Generator can help you craft a response that’s just as delightful as the rest of your correspondence.

6. Clean your mailing list regularly.

Some of your contacts might still receive emails from you, but will never read them.

It’s tempting to send as many emails as possible to as many people as you can, but it’s more important to keep your most engaged email subscribers on your subscriber list.

Since people who rarely or ever read your emails will make your email metrics look bad, it’s best to exclude them from your campaign.

If a subscriber hasn’t opened or clicked any of your emails in a while, remove them from your list.

This can help to ensure that your email marketing is as accurate as possible and that you’re not wasting your marketing efforts on people who aren’t interested. This can also help you to improve your marketing effectiveness.

You can implement workflows that move people to a less frequently emailed list based on their level of engagement.

You can keep your audience engaged with your email marketing by implementing workflows that automatically move your inactive contacts to a weekly email newsletter. This ensures that your recipients still have an interest in hearing from you.

Then, those unengaged recipients can be moved to a monthly email newsletter. And so on.

Keeping your list clean is important, as you don’t want to bombard your recipients with emails that are of no interest to them. This can also help improve deliverability and your sender score.

7. Keep the main message and call-to-action above the fold.

Above the Fold refers to any information that is visible on the page before the reader has to scroll.

Recent research shows that even though social media has changed the way users consume information, above the fold is still the most visible area on a web page.

Nielsen Norman group found that 57% of viewers’ time was spent above the page, with 17% of that time spent on the second screen and 10% on the third.

It’s important to keep your message and call-to-action above the fold in order to increase conversion rates. By doing so, it’s more likely that recipients will see it when they open your email.

Before running an AB test for your email, you can run an A-B-C test.

8. Personalize the email greeting.

Do you ever get annoyed when you receive emails from companies that don’t address you by name?

While it may be tempting to divide up your audience into different segments, such as customers, clients, and consumers, this shouldn’t be the focus of your messaging.

Personalize your greetings with contacts’ names. For Hubspot customers, this is called “personalization tokens” and look like this:

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Then, the email address of the recipient would produce the recipient’s name by grabbing this personalized tag in the HTML code of the message, like so:

Sending personalized greetings to 50 people at once is easy. Simply create your email, click “Send”, and personalize the “To” field with 50 different names.

With email marketing automation, you can automatically greet your recipients by name. This adds a personal touch to your email, which can help you stand out from your competitors.

9. Keep your email around 500 to 650 pixels wide.

If your emails are longer than 650px, they won’t fit properly in inboxes and users will have to scroll down to see the full messages. This can make for a bad user experience and hurt your conversion rates.

This is a real pain and will definitely affect conversions.

If your email templates are formatted to the standard dimensions, then they will be easier to read, convert, and have a better overall experience.

10. Split test your subject lines and calls to action.

Are you having trouble getting your emails opened? Are you not targeting the right audience?

Check out the first two tips above for improving your blog posts!

First, conduct an AB test, and then move on to the former.

This variation tests to see if your audience would be more or less likely to take an action based on that element. Output: AB testing can improve the effectiveness of your digital marketing content. By splitting your email recipients into two groups, you can test whether a specific variation is more likely to result in the desired action. This allows you to fine-tune your content for maximum impact.

This variation tests if your audience is more likely to take a specific course of action.

You can use AB testing with HubSpot Marketing Hub to test different elements in your email, like the subject lines or call-to-action. This helps you see what works best for your audience so you can make changes accordingly.

You can increase your email clickthrough rate by changing the color of your CTA. AB testing can help you determine which colors work best for your audience.

11. Include your logo.

Email signatures are a necessity.

A recent study found that including a logo in your email can have a positive impact on both engagement and brand recall.

Including your brand’s logo in your emails is a great way to increase brand recognition and awareness. This, in turn, will increase the likelihood that your email subscribers will make a purchase.

Be sure to include your logo in your email design so that it is always included. This will help ensure that your recipients always know who the email is from.

12. Name the offer in your subject line.

When you include incentives in your subject line, you can expect to see an increase in your opens.

Free shipping and a free iPod are great incentives for customers.

Although it’s important to notify your customers about your latest sales or products, you don’t want to bombard them with too many emails.

Your email marketing tactics should start with a casual, friendly tone. Only after you’ve nurtured your prospect should you introduce an offer.

14. Write compelling (but concise) subject lines.

Email clients usually truncate long subject headers, so try to keep yours to 30-50 words.

Your email marketing campaign needs a compelling subject so people will actually open your email.

15. Use auto-responders for opt-ins.

Remember that your subscribers will forget they signed up.

Send out an email to your new subscribers reminding them they signed up to receive emails from you. The email should be sent 1 day, 5 days, and 10 days after they sign up.

Your autoresponder email should include extra information or bonuses for readers in exchange for them signing up to your mailing list. That way, they’ll feel they have sufficient incentive to do so.

16. Closely tie emails to landing pages.

Your email should be consistent with the message on your landing page. Use tools like Google Analytics to track which emails are performing well so you can continue to use them.

Make sure to use analytics to track which emails are performing best so you can continue sending them.

What are the 4 types of marketing emails?

There are four types of marketing emails: promotional, transactional, triggered, and reengagement.

Promotional emails are sent to customers and prospects to promote a product or service.

Transactional emails are sent after a customer completes an action on your website, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

Triggered emails are sent based on customer behavior, such as abandoned cart reminders or welcome messages.

Reengagement emails are sent to customers who haven’t interacted with your brand in a while in an effort to get them back engaged.

What are the three key elements of successful email marketing?

The three key elements of successful email marketing are:

1. A large and targeted email list – This is the most important element, as without a large and targeted email list, your email marketing campaign will not be successful.

2. Effective email content – Your email content must be effective in order to get people to open and read your emails.

3. A strong call to action – Your call to action must be strong in order to get people to take the desired action, whether it be clicking through to your website or making a purchase.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your customers and generate new leads. By following these email marketing best practices, you can ensure that your messages stand out and get noticed. So what are you waiting for? Start implementing these email marketing tips today and see the results for yourself!