35 Essential Email Marketing Tips

There’s no denying that email marketing is one of the most effective and powerful marketing channels to date. In fact, email marketing revenue is estimated to reach almost 11 billion by the end of 2024.

If done correctly, email marketing can drive revenue, build brand loyalty, increase WOM advertising, and build upon your customer relationship strategy. 

The opportunity to create value and grow your business through email marketing is undeniable. Especially as these are people that have already signed up and told you they want to hear from you. (Unless you have purchased email lists or utilizing unsolicited cold campaigns – don’t do that).

That’s why it’s important to utilize these email marketing tips to keep your audience engaged, avoid a bad sender reputation, and generate the most value out of your campaigns.

Create Value in Your Email

Value builds trust and credibility, increases conversion rates, and builds brand loyalty.

Whether it’s discount codes, engaging stories, or interactive content, your emails should get the reader excited and wanting to either click a link or have that excitement for the next communication.

Value can also come in the form of personalization, such as using individual names to address recipients or writing the content on a personal and direct level.

A common mistake made by businesses or individuals is starting email communications because they feel they ‘have to’ as it’s a part of marketing. 

If you send out bland and automated communications (such as blog post links) your audience will start ignoring them – or worse, report them as spam/unsubscribe. 

Educational content, facts, stories, and quizzes/forms are also great ways to provide value to your email audience.

Don’t Be Afraid to Tell a Story

According to the Harvard Business Review, human brains actually respond better to storytelling than regular content.

Also, your email audience has subscribed to your list because they want to hear from you or your company. Therefore you shouldn’t be afraid to tell stories.

This could be a story about how your brand started, achievements your business has made, initiatives you have set out for the business, challenges, or how you created a product. 

There are many creative ways to build a story and link it to your product or service.

One of the key things to remember when telling a story is to remain ‘on brand’. This will ensure that you don’t confuse your audience. 

This includes keeping the same tone and style in your email copy, using key brand words, and remembering your mission and values. 

Telling a story can be a great way to build trust, show authenticity, create a brand identity strengthen customer relationships, and generate positive engagement. 

Send Your First Email Within 24 Hours

One of the most common email marketing tips is to send the first email within 24 hours. Sending an email within 24 hours is essential if you want subscribers to remember who you are. 

8 out of 10 people will open a welcome email, which is responsible for 4x more opens and 10x more clicks than other emails.

Source

If you wait 2-3 days, or longer to send an email, the chances of people unsubscribing are much higher, as they might not even remember who you are. 

One of the benefits of email marketing is automations – and that’s why you should have automated campaigns set up to send welcome emails to new subscribers. 

This could be something simple like a discount code, an email about your business, or an email about what to expect from future email communications. 

The welcome email is also your chance to show off. So be sure to add plenty of value in there and show the subscribers what they have to look forward to. 

Try including links to your most read blog posts, help with navigating your website, goals your company is setting out to achieve, success stories, and other insightful content.

Craft a Unique Welcome Series

Linking into the above email marketing tip, it can be extremely beneficial to create an automated welcome series for your subscribers. 

Check out this example from Travel Supermarket:

Depending on your goals, this can help your audience move further along the funnel or establish your brand reputation.

For example, if you have a SaaS business, you could have a welcome series that consists of 20+ emails over a course of time that focuses on different features:

• Email 1: Welcome, this is who we are, what we do, what you can expect….
• Email 2: How to navigate the dashboard.
• Email 3: How to adjust your preferences.
• Email 4: How to create your first …..

And so on. 

A welcome series can be separate from your other email communications too. As long as you don’t send too many emails to annoy your subscribers.

This is a great way to show personalization and build trust as you will be targeting individual subscribers through triggers and workflow automation.

Include Social Sharing Buttons in Your Emails

You should take every step to ensure sharing content is made easy for your audience.

Considering how there are roughly 4.89 billion total social media users worldwide, social sharing buttons are one of the best ways to do this. 

Email builders usually come with social sharing buttons – or you can create some using HTML. 

You can also go further and run competitions for users that share the most, with giveaways at the end. (this isn’t necessary but it can increase share count).

Be sure that you add ‘social share’ buttons and not ‘social follow’ buttons. 

There are many benefits of social media, so be sure to get your share!

Include a Single Call To Action (CTA)

This is one of the most important email marketing tips: A single CTA should be included at least once if not multiple times throughout your email. 

Including multiple CTAs can confuse readers and actually harm your click-through rates.

The CTA should be clear and concise, with enough information to tell the reader what it is and why, encouraging them to click.

Take this example from Etsy:

It creates urgency, tells the user what to do, and it’s clear what the action should be.

The best practice for emails is to place your CTA at the top, middle, and bottom, however, you can test and optimize this as it works best for your audience. 

Another key point here is to use a visual CTA such as a button, in a different color. For example, red buttons are shown to outperform green ones (CXL).

Sometimes your audience will not read and just skim the email, if you have a CTA buried as a link within your copy, it will get missed. 

Have a separate button and make it stand out so they know it’s clear where and when to take the next action and click.

Win Back Inactive Subscribers

Whether you slowed down on email communications or your audience lost interest, every list has inactive subscribers.

Sometimes you should clean the list and remove them, but first, you should try and win them back.

This may require more in-depth testing and experimenting, but it’s easier to re-engage existing subscribers than to gain new ones.

You can segment inactive subscribers and set up a targeted email campaign with a series of communications to engage them.

This could include special discounts, ‘exclusive’ feature access, free trials, and other valuable persuasive tools related to your business. 

If you have an email program that offers in-depth analytics, try and understand which emails the inactive users have interacted with before. 

Most email marketing tools for beginners will have these features built-in.

This will help you tailor the campaigns to what they like and get them to engage again.

Optimize Your Sending Time

Choosing the perfect time to send your emails is essential for open rates and engagement.

According to CoSchedule, these are the best times to send emails:

There are ‘guidelines’ on when to send emails for the best engagement, however, this can differ depending on your audience and how global you target.

For example, if your subscriber base is New York and London and you sent emails at 9 am London time – this would be 3 am in New York. which would likely result in a lower open rate.

Instead, you should segment New York and London to send the same email but at the optimized times for each location.

You should A/B test different times and review your analytics over a period of emails to understand what days/times work best with your audience.

Avoid Large Images and Background Images

When it comes to email marketing, imagery can actually do more harm than good. 

Sending emails with images that are incorrectly sized and large in file size can impact deliverability and use masses of data.

You will also run the risk of being filtered into spam folders, which can damage your sender reputation.

Check with the platform you use to send emails on the best image size to send based on their templates. 

Also, if you use background images, be aware that some email providers do not display them, such as Outlook.

You should instead try and keep a simple color or shaded background to add contrast to your email.

Get Rid of Inactive Users

If you have tried our other email marketing tip of re-engaging inactive subscribers and it hasn’t worked, now it’s time to take out the trash.

Leaving inactive subscribers in your list can severely impact your analytics.

You will see lower open rates, and lower engagement rates, and run the risk of damaging your sender reputation.

You might also believe that your email campaigns and content are ineffective when it could be down to the inactive list affecting your data. 

Set up a regular period of time to analyze the data on your list and remove subscribers that haven’t engaged over a certain time period.

Preview and Test Your Emails

Although this is one of the most widely-known email marketing tips, some marketers still don’t do it.

Testing emails can lead to a higher ROI, so it’s a no-brainer.

Imagine you set up an automated welcome email that had your company name spelled incorrectly. You didn’t test it. Then had it going out to subscribers for several months.

It doesn’t look good.

There are many other scenarios to consider, but remember that you should preview and test every email. 

If possible, have 2-3 other people check over the test emails too. This way they can pick up on things that you might not have seen. 

Even if you are behind on your email schedule, always allow time for checking.  

Most email platforms have a ‘live preview’ and ‘send test email’ function so you can take care of this easily. 

Ensure the Sender is an Actual Person

Emails that come direct from company email addresses have lower open rates and get deleted far more quickly.

If you picture someone’s email inbox full of communications from X company and Y company, yours will not stand out if it’s the same. 

Instead of reading all of them, users will most likely read 1 or 2 and then delete the rest. 

You should have your emails come from an actual person – even if it isn’t.

For example: [email protected]

This also means that should put a name in the email body copy too, when you sign off at the end. 

Not only does this improve open rates, but it also adds a touch of personalization and allows the reader to connect more with ‘somebody’ from your company.

Never Buy Email Addresses

When you start out building your email list, it can be a slow process. 

However, don’t be tempted to purchase email lists. 

One of the best things about growing an email list organically is those people WANT to hear from you.

An email list you have purchased will have no idea who you are, will not want to hear from you, and will either report you for spam or unsubscribe immediately. 

Also, purchased email subscribers go against the T&Cs of email providers, can damage your sender reputation, and even go as far as to damage your brand reputation.

You should also know that purchasing email lists is against GDPR laws, so another reason not to do this!

It’s best to focus on organic growth strategies for your email list.

Use Analytics and Test

It might be a relief once your campaigns are set up and sent, but the fun doesn’t stop there.

You should actively monitor the analytics of each campaign to understand how your emails are performing. 

Analytics will show you link clicks, open rates, unsubscribe rates, and other useful data that can be used to improve campaigns. 

You might use data to test sending times, try out different subject lines, or experiment with CTA’s.

It’s best not to act on data from one email alone, but rather a group of emails over a specific period of time. 

This will help you to identify trends and act upon more reliable data.

Create Unique Subject Lines

This is arguably one of the most important email marketing tips out there.

Your subject line is different for each email and is one of the main reasons a user will click to open the email and read it. 

Check out these tips for writing email subject lines.

The most effective email subject lines engage curiosity, include promotional offers, and are personalized to each recipient’s interests. 

Source

Some tips to consider for subject lines:

• Be Clear and Concise: Keep subject lines brief and to the point, ideally under 50 characters.
• Personalize: Use recipient names or segmentation to make subject lines more relevant.
• Create a Sense of Urgency: Encourage action by using time-sensitive language or limited-time offers.
• Spark Curiosity: Tease intriguing content to entice recipients to open the email.
• Avoid Spam Trigger Words: Stay away from spammy terms like “free,” “earn money,” or excessive exclamation marks.
• Use Emojis Wisely: Emojis can add visual appeal but use them sparingly and ensure they align with your brand and message.
• A/B Test: Test different subject lines to identify what resonates best with your audience.
• Avoid All Caps: Writing in all capital letters may come across as aggressive or spammy.
• Be Relevant and Value-driven: Clearly convey the benefit or value of opening the email.
• Segment Your Lists: Tailor subject lines to specific audience segments for better targeting and personalization.
• Avoid Misleading Language: Ensure your subject line accurately represents the content of the email.
• Use Numbers or Stats: Incorporate numbers to make subject lines more specific and eye-catching.
• Consider Mobile Users: Keep subject lines short and engaging for easy readability on mobile devices.
• Incorporate Humor or Creativity: Stand out with clever and humorous subject lines, if appropriate for your brand.
• Test with Preview Text: Make use of preview text to complement the subject line and provide additional context.
• Review Analytics: Analyze email open rates to gauge the effectiveness of your subject lines and make improvements.

Let Readers Reply 

There’s nothing worse than getting a burning question but not knowing how to find the answer. 

If your readers open an email and want to ask a question, you should make it easy for them to do so.

Readers will not go out of their way to find a method of contact on your website so you could potentially lose a customer if you don’t make it easy for them.

You should include an email address or ‘send us your feedback’ button at the bottom of the email. Ensure that it stands out somewhat from the main content too.

This will increase trust and personalization 20x, as readers will feel like they are directly communicating with a person.

Don’t Be Afraid to Use Emotion

Including emotion in email marketing copy is essential as it humanizes your brand and establishes a deeper connection with your audience. 

Emotionally-driven content resonates with readers on a personal level, which builds trust, loyalty, and engagement. 

The main goal of emotional marketing is to address the pain points of customers, which has been proven to increase response to brand content.

Here are some ways that emotion can excel in your email marketing:

• Capture Attention: Emotionally-charged subject lines and content stand out in crowded inboxes, grabbing the reader’s attention and increasing the likelihood of email opens.

• Create a Memorable Experience: When readers experience an emotional response to your content, they are more likely to remember your brand and message, leading to better brand recall.

• Build Trust and Relatability: Emotion allows you to connect with your audience on a human level, making your brand more approachable and trustworthy. People are more likely to engage with a brand they feel understands their feelings and needs.

• Drive Actions and Conversions: Emotionally compelling content motivates readers to take action. Whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a webinar, or sharing your email with others, emotions can be a powerful catalyst for conversions.

• Enhance Storytelling: Emotions are at the heart of storytelling. By infusing your emails with emotions, you can craft compelling narratives that resonate with your audience and keep them engaged.

• Empathy and Understanding: Demonstrating empathy towards your audience’s challenges and desires helps build a strong rapport. This shows that you genuinely care about their well-being and are not solely focused on sales.

• Differentiate Your Brand: Emotions give your brand a unique personality. By evoking specific feelings, you can differentiate yourself from competitors and leave a lasting impression.

• Encourage Engagement and Sharing: Emotional content evokes reactions, leading to higher engagement rates and increased chances of recipients sharing your emails with their network.

• Strengthen Customer Relationships: Emotionally connecting with your audience creates a sense of loyalty and attachment to your brand. Loyal customers are more likely to become brand advocates, recommending your products or services to others.

• Inspire Action Beyond Email: Emotionally impactful emails can inspire recipients to engage with your brand across different platforms, such as social media or your website.

Include Links on Images

If you include images in your email, be sure to hyperlink them to your website. 

Some users prefer to click on images to take them somewhere rather than searching for text-based links. 

You should make sure that the links are relevant to where the image is used too. 

For example, don’t just put your homepage on every image. Put a link to a product page if you are talking about a specific product. 

Think about what your reader will want to see after reading the content, this is where they will want the link to take them. 

Nurture Subscribers Through Custom Campaigns

If you are trying to sell to customers or get them to take overall action, you should have a nurture campaign set up.

Getting users to sign up for your mailing list doesn’t necessarily mean they will purchase or take the action you want. 

You will usually have to create a ‘lead magnet’ to get them to sign up, and then start with your campaign.

This will be where you move them through a funnel slowly but surely, making sure that you don’t push them away. 

You should offer small increases in value before pushing for the final goal. 

Here is an example:

Segment Your Subscribers

Segmenting your subscribers is vital if you want to send different campaigns out.

For example, you might have a welcome series, product discounts throughout the year, product updates, and more.

78% of people say that subscriber segmentation is one of the most effective email marketing strategies.

Source

These campaigns and emails will not apply to everyone in the same way, which is why you have to segment your list. 

This will ensure that emails go to particular subscribers depending on where they are in the funnel, which emails they have received, or whatever preferences you have.

You can segment by location, age, gender, inactive subscribers, those that have purchased more than 5 times, and so on. 

This can become quite complicated to set up and it would help to have a CRM system in place too. 

Try Plain Text Emails

Plain text might look boring, but it can appeal to certain audiences. Especially those that prefer the minimalist look.

By using plain text, you draw attention to the actual copy in your email and can directly communicate with the reader on a deeper level. 

If the readers engage with the email, you know they are enjoying the content rather than just looking at the images too, 

Also, you will avoid spam triggers and compatibility issues across devices by using plain text emails.

Ensure Text Links Stand Out

This is especially true if you are using plain text emails.

When you include a text link, you need to make sure it’s obvious that it’s a link. 

This can be done through bolding, highlighting, using different colors, and italics. 

You should still use buttons and visual CTA’s as mentioned previously, but if you must put text links in, make sure they stand out to the reader.

Check Every Device

Aside from previewing and testing your emails, another great email marketing tip is to check your emails on multiple devices.

If you are only using an iPhone for example to check your test email, you could be missing major issues on Android devices and tablets. 

Every device has a different format for displaying content and what works on one, might not work on another. 

Most email builders already take care of this, but it’s still worth checking just incase you lose subscribers for messy emails.

** You should also check ‘Dark Modes’ on devices, as sometimes your emails might not format correctly for the text to be seen. **

Optimize for Mobile Devices

In addition to the last point, you also need to optimize for mobile, especially as most users will use their mobile devices to read your emails.

According to a study, around 1 in 5 email campaigns was not optimized for mobile devices.

You need to make sure that the images fit correctly and are not blurred, the content doesn’t disappear off the screen, and buttons work correctly for example.

This may require some testing and tweaking but it’s worth it in the long run.

Use a Pop-Up Form

If your primary source of traffic is a website, you should have an email popup form for visitors.

A popup will look like this:

Depending on how you optimize your user experience, this could be a form that’s embedded into the site somewhere, a separate landing page just for email signups, or a popup that appears over the website. 

This is one of the best ways to collect emails and build your subscriber list organically. 

Make sure you test on devices and that the popup is non-intrusive for the user too. 

Comply with GDPR and Other Laws

Another point, linking into the one above, is to comply with relevant laws relating to email opt-in and data usage.

This may include showing your privacy policy, displaying how your company processes data, ensuring that consent is clear, and so on. 

Laws will be different for each country or even state (California), so be sure to research and hire a lawyer if necessary to comply with the laws of your target countries. 

Create Lead Magnets

When you start collecting email addresses from your popup form or landing page, you need to have something to entice people to sign up. 

This is where lead magnets are used. 

You might have seen email popups before that offer a free e-book if you sign up or a free PDF template, which is an example of lead magnets. 

It’s offering something of value to the user to encourage them to hand over their email address.

It should be enough to make the user feel benefited but not too much where it puts a strain on your resources to create.

Keep Emails Concise

People want snippets of information and fast access to reading these days. 

Therefore it’s important that you keep your emails short and to the point, to avoid readers losing interest. 

After all, the general goal of emails is to get the user to take action by visiting your site or purchasing something… so the more content you have in an email, the reader is less likely to take action and get lost/bored.

For example, if you have a blog post about a new product and want to reuse the content, don’t post the whole blog in an email. 

Instead, pull the key points and leave the rest, making the reader want more – clicking on your CTA.

Think about it, if you opened an email to a wall of text that was the length of an e-book, you probably wouldn’t even start to read it. 

Try Using Dynamic Content

Dynamic content is content that changes automatically for the end user. 

This may take some backend work to set up correctly, but it’s worth it. 

It means that you can add high levels of personalization for each user without having to manually do it. 

For example, you could have your emails show products for cold weather in extremely cold locations but hot weather clothing in locations that get sun all year around – in the same campaign. 

There are many different ways to apply dynamic content, but it might be worth avoiding if you have a small subscriber list. 

Utilize Trigger Emails

Trigger emails are very popular in e-commerce. 

They are automatic emails that are sent when a user has taken a specific action on your site. 

82% of marketers use automation to create triggered emails which result in 8x more opens and more earnings than typical emails.

Source

When a user gets to the purchase stage with items in their cart, then leaves without purchasing, you can have a trigger email remind them.

You can also use trigger emails after successful purchases to submit reviews, to provide website feedback, and much more. 

These would be tailored to your individual business and what goals you have, but should not be overlooked. 

Use A/B Testing

A/B testing is a way of testing various aspects of your emails with the same audience to see what works. 

This might include changing your subject lines, body copy, images, call-to-action placements, and sending time. 

It allows you to improve engagement and open rates by finding what works with your audience best.

Be careful with A/B testing – you should only change one aspect at a time to understand how it works. 

Follow the CAN-SPAM Regulations

CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing) is a law that defines the rules for email and messages.

You should comply with these rules as it gives people the right to have a business stop emailing them – with penalties for those who do not comply. 

Some of the key rules you need to follow include:

A clear way to unsubscribe.

A valid physical address in every email.

No selling or copying emails to other lists.

There are many more rules which can be found here.

Personalize Your Emails

When you add personalization to your emails, you are building trust, brand reputation, and connecting with your audience. 

Personalization can be automated too, so there’s no excuse not to do it. 

62% of marketers say that personalization is the most effective technique.

Source

Simple personalization tips could include:

• Sending from a real person
• Talking directly to the reader
• Displaying dynamic content for the reader
• Sending birthday emails
• Using first and last names

There are many different ways to personalize the emails that you send, the important thing is to avoid corporate tones and business jargon – that readers aren’t interested in.

Make the reader feel valued and like you are grateful for their email subscription.

Apply Your Values

With such a competitive landscape for companies, you need to do everything you can to stand out and appeal to people.

A great way of doing this is to use your company values throughout your messaging.

Whether you quote them directly in your email communications or just reference them, it can resonate with your audience and show you care.

When you apply your values correctly in your messaging, you display authenticity and build brand trust with your audience.

Optimize the Preview Text

On some devices, your audience will be able to see a snippet of text from the email before opening. Usually after the subject line.

If you don’t change this yourself, it will appear as the first part of your email content. 

In most email providers/builders, you will see the option to change this text when creating your emails.

You should experiment with different content and ‘hooks’ to get people to click on your email.