Tips and Tricks for Successful Campaigns Every Time You Hit Send
Launching a successful email campaign is important to your bottom line. So, our experts gathered our top in-house experts to share their knowledge regarding what helps businesses achieve their email campaign goals. Before you send your next email campaign, be sure to review these insider tips.
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Email Design Best Practices
Is your email campaign getting opened? If not, it’s time to consider making creative changes that will encourage your ideal customers to take action.
Subject Line: Keep your subject line to 49 characters or less. A longer subject line may get cut off—and ignored.
Logos: Feature your brand’s logo prominently in the message. There should be no questioning who an email is coming from.
Headers & Pre-Headers: Use of message headers and navigation menus is recommended. Consider using a “pre-header” to greet the user just above where your email begins. It should contain a short email summary plus a call to action.
Fonts: Use universally available fonts (Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, or Times New Roman) so that your message is seen as intended. Additionally, minimize the number of fonts, sizes, and colors used for an overall more efficient look and design.
Images: Use ALT tags in the HTML code for each image used in the HTML design. Minimize graphics and images to logos, photos of products, or situational photos that support the message and appeal to the target audience visually.
Message Length: Keep the message short and to the point (one page maximum in length).
Key Selling Points: Use bullets to illustrate the key selling points, which will tell the user why they should respond to the call-to-action.
Call-to-Action: The call-to-action should be clear and the hyperlink should be prominently displayed in multiple locations if the purpose is to drive customers to your website or an intermediate landing page. Include an “offer end date” to suggest urgency. The offer should be unique to your company rather than similar to offers available from your competitors.
Social Marketing Element: Include share buttons for one or more social marketing sites. This will enhance credibility and help your campaign to go “viral.”
Mobile Marketing: Be sure to utilize a template that will render in a mobile device, smartphone, or tablet.
Don’t Discount Branding: Even if a recipient does not open your email, they can view your “from” line (brand name) and your offer in the subject line. This often adds up to a favorable impression of your company when crafted carefully.
Email Performance Tracking Best Practices
Tracking the performance of your email campaigns is imperative to future email campaign success. Here’s what to pay special attention to before and after you send.
Pre-Flight Report: Our experts can help you identify potential problems your email may run into, from testing your sender’s address reputation to reporting how your email looks across various browsers and devices.
Subject Line Testing: Discover if your subject line is translating well—or it could use a refresh. Remember—a good subject line is needed for great email results.
Track Back: People often make purchases through a shopping portal at a later date. Now you can match this activity back and credit the campaign for this purchase.
Viral Marketing: Include a coupon or discount code that can be shared and used by anyone. Your recipient may not be in the market for your offer but could know a friend who is.
User Engagement Best Practices
You want recipients to open your email campaign. So, understanding what boosts user engagement is critical to a successful email campaign. Consider these tips for boosting user engagement:
- Strong call-to-action in the subject line to promote urgency
- Clear and concise content which is easy to scan and still understand
- Implement social marketing within your email as a secondary way for users to respond and spread your message
- Implement a “sharing” or “forwarding” function to make it easier for users to share both information and offers with friends and family
- Send a follow-up message reminding users that there is still time to respond
- Brand your emails, which in turn helps to strengthen your business. Do this by including your logo, locating it in the same place every time
- Target your audience through the use of lists and various messages; a well-targeted audience increases the relevancy of your message, which will help drive action
