Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach and engage customers.
According to a study by the email service provider, GetResponse, email marketing yields an average ROI of 4,300%, making it one of the most profitable digital marketing channels businesses can use today.
But despite this high ROI, many small businesses still need to take advantage of this marketing. In this article, we will discuss five top email best practices that will help you generate more leads and sales through emails.
Before we get on with the best practices, it’s also considered a ‘best practice’ to determine first the types of emails available at your disposal.
The 3 Types of Emails Used in Business
Before someone can even begin designing an email marketing strategy, it is vital that they first understand the three types of emails available. Without knowing the basic types of email, one’s email marketing best practices may eventually prove lacking.
The three types of emails used for marketing are transactional emails, relational emails, and promotional emails. From time to time, email marketers will use these email templates to build the best email campaign.
Transactional Emails
A transactional email is an email that is automatically sent to a customer after they have completed a specific action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to a service.
These emails confirm the customer’s action, provide information about their order, or deliver receipts.
Examples of transactional emails:
- account registration
- order confirmation
- receipts
- shipping updates
- unsubscribe link
Relational Emails
A relational email is a type of email sent to email clients to build a relationship with them. These emails are typically used to provide customers with valuable content and to keep them updated on the latest news from the company.
Examples of relational emails:
- welcome emails
- blog post or newsletter
- exclusive content
- social updates
- referral request
Promotional Emails
A promotional email is a type of email that is sent to customers in order to promote a product or service. These emails typically include images, videos, and text that promotes the product or service.
They also often include a call-to-action that encourages customers to purchase the product or service.
Example of promotional emails:
- announcement of sales
- product release
- promotional content
- upgrades
- announcement of events
After seeing the different types of emails used for business, one might ask, “Why do we need to be so systematic with sending emails?” Let’s find out why.
Why Businesses Take Email Seriously
Email marketing is one of the most effective means of reaching and engaging customers. Even if you’re using mobile devices, it’s a cost-effective way to sell, build relationships with leads, and stay in touch with current and potential customers.
When understood and performed well, especially with email marketing tools, email marketing best practices can help businesses assist their leads, prospects, or customers move from one stage of the value journey to the next.
And to maximize results, experts follow email marketing best practices.
This type of marketing allows a business to gather information about email clients, such as their interests, needs, and preferences, that their marketing teams can use.
Email marketing can help businesses grow by reaching new customers, retaining current customers, and increasing the loyalty of the customers they already have through nurturing.
Through email marketing, businesses can improve:
- Acquisition
- Retention
- Reactivation
- Referral
- Direct sales
- Engagement
- Traffic
- Branding
We just went through the different types of emails and why it’s important to put systems behind our email marketing. Now, without further ado, here are the most important email best practices for business.
The 5 Most Important Email Best Practices
Emails are potent tools for marketing businesses of all sizes. But to get the most out of email marketing, you first need to know what will make your lead or prospect open your email.
By putting these email marketing best practices at the top of your email marketing strategy, your campaigns will have far better chances of sparking interaction, attracting website visitors, increasing the click-through rate, and converting leads.
1. Use a good sender name
First up. Don’t use a ‘no-reply email address’ or an email address that looks like ‘hello@company.com.’ We see this a lot from different companies.
A good sender name is one of the most important email best practices because it helps build the recipient’s trust. When people see an email from a company they trust, they are likelier to open it and read it.
When choosing a sender name, avoid using generic names like ‘info@company.com’ or ‘sales@company.com.’ These sender names can make your email campaigns seem less personal and decrease the response rate.
A good sender name can help increase an email campaign’s response rate when created properly.
To find a good sender name, use the name of a real, live human being from your company.
For example, suppose you are sending out email marketing campaigns. In that case, it is important to use the name of a real person in a sender name to create personality and reliability.
Instead of ‘hello@company.com,’ you can use the first name of the key person spearheading the campaign. For example, if that key person is Ryan, make your sender name ‘ryan@brand.com.’
This can be helpful if you send email marketing campaigns to a particular target audience, as it can help your emails foster better connections with your prospects.
You can also try A/B testing your options for sender names.
A/B testing is a method of testing two or more email campaigns to see which one performs better. You can send out two email campaigns with different sender names and track the results.
You can also use well-reviewed email marketing software to A/B test other sender names.
If you are picking an email marketing platform to use, check to see if it offers A/B testing.
2. Greet new subscribers with a welcome email
Sending a welcome email is also among the most important email best practices you can apply. When a customer signs up for your email list, you can introduce them to your brand and build a relationship.
In addition, it is a great way to increase engagement with your email list and encourage customers to buy your product or service.
This kind of email can also serve as an assurance for your leads or customers. When someone is a new subscriber, usually, it’s because they opted-in from your landing page that promised them something for free.
After subscribing, email subscribers are going to check on that promise.
Welcome emails are a way to provide that assurance.
By using a welcome email that reflects your brand voice, personality, and appreciation of your subscriber as a brand, you can ensure that your prospect will see you more as a value-based business and not just some company that asked for their email online.
3. Craft good subject lines
An email’s subject line is often the first thing people see when they receive an email, and it can be a major factor in whether or not someone opens an email.
Therefore, keeping an eye on your email subject line is one of the first things you can do to optimize your emails.
Because of this, really thinking about your email subject lines is considered an email marketing best practice when crafting subject lines that will get your prospects to open your email message and, eventually, increase your click-through rate.
However, if you do not spend enough time on your email’s subject line or write them poorly, they can negatively affect your email marketing campaign.
For example, a poorly written subject line can cause people to unsubscribe from your email list, ignore your emails, mark them as spam, and decrease click-through rates.
As a result, it is important to take the time to write effective subject lines that will get people’s attention and encourage them to engage.
4. Plan when to send your email campaigns
Regarding this email marketing best practice, we look deeply into our “when?” question or the “when?” of sending an email.
Timing is also an important factor in email marketing best practices. Even though you have a target market for your campaign, individuality can still get into the mix when distinguishing the best time to send an email.
Because of this, ‘the best time’ is never just one thing.
One Adobe Business resource tells us this:
To get ahead of this, it’s best that you use tools from trusted email marketing platforms that can send automated emails according to the ‘best time’ of your intended recipient.
Depending on the tool you choose, this may cost you money, but ultimately, the goal is to give proper importance to your timing, just like all the other best email marketing campaigns out there do.
These tools can take into account how your lead previously interacted with your email and uses that data to schedule your next email perfectly—making your marketing messages more productive and useful for targets.
But let’s say you can’t use these tools/software yet. In this case, you can still find great value in using data and statistics that show when the best time to send an email is within a market or demographic relevant to your target.
Here’s another quick takeaway.
Based on multiple marketing studies, like what we mentioned above, the best time to send an email is not one-size-fits-all. Different studies conclude different results.
However, despite the many varying answers, results lean towards 9-11 a.m. as the timeframe to use for the best time to send email campaigns.
5. Always end an email with an official email signature
Email signatures are also an important element of email marketing best practices because they allow you to include additional information about your company or product.
Additionally, email signatures can help increase brand awareness and encourage new subscribers to buy your product or service.
Email signatures should be included at the bottom of every email. Just like your sender name, it should include a real human representative’s name from your company and not just some generic brand signature that uses your company’s name.
Your email signature should include a real name, the company name, the website URL, the sender address, and contact information. You can also include a call-to-action (CTA) in your email signature, such as “Buy Now” or “Sign Up Today.”
Including an email signature is a simple way to increase the response rate of your email marketing campaigns and generate more leads and sales.
To develop an effective email signature, you can also use email marketing platforms that offer tools to generate them.
At this point, we now know what best to do with our email marketing in order to bring out the best results. But if to-do’s exist, what are some of the not-to-do’s that we should be aware of?
5 Email Practices to Always Avoid
Email marketing is a powerful tool for reaching a large audience and building customer relationships. However, there are certain practices that businesses must avoid to ensure that their emails are effective and well-received.
Here are five email practices that businesses should avoid as much as possible:
1. Using too many images and large files
Emails with too many images and large files can take a long time to load, resulting in low engagement rates. It’s important to optimize your images and files for email and consider using a file-sharing service like Dropbox or Google Drive for larger files.
An ideal email file size between 70 KB to 100 KB is a good benchmark to observe when crafting emails that don’t result in lagging and poor customer experience.
2. Misleading subject lines
Using misleading subject lines to entice subscribers to open your emails is unethical and can lead to a higher unsubscribe rate and damage your brand’s credibility. Make sure that your subject lines accurately reflect the content of your emails.
3. Spamming
Sending unsolicited and irrelevant emails to many people without their consent can result in high bounce rates and damage your brand’s image.
Always ensure that you comply with anti-spam laws and that your subscribers have consented to receive emails from you.
According to the FTC, the ‘CAN-SPAM law sets the rules for commercial email, requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations’ by any US business.
4. Neglecting mobile optimization
With most emails being read on mobile devices, neglecting to optimize your emails for mobile can result in a poor user experience and low engagement rates. Ensure your emails are easy to read and navigate on mobile devices.
5. Ignoring unsubscribe requests
Ignoring unsubscribe requests can lead to recipients developing a negative image of your business. To avoid annoying your email list, ensure you provide an easy way for subscribers to unsubscribe and promptly remove themselves from your email list.
Moving on from best and worst practices, have you ever wondered, “Is there a sequencing that I need to observe to move my lead from one funnel stage to the next using email?” The answer is “yes.”
The 5 Phases of Email Marketing
Email marketing has five phases that serve as a guide to every email marketer or anyone in a business’s marketing team. These phases indicate that an email marketing strategy is not something to be rushed.
In addition to applying the top email best practices, understanding these five principles of a well-executed email marketing campaign can help you get the most out of your leads.
Eventually, when you review your email marketing metrics, it becomes easier when you know which phase of the campaign you need to look into.
- indoctrination
- engagement
- ascension
- segmentation
- re-engagement
Phase 1: Indoctrination
The indoctrination phase is the first phase of email marketing. You brief a prospect about what they can expect from your brand, how they can benefit from it, and the necessary action they will need to take.
In this phase, you want to capture the prospect’s email address and other basic information. The goal is to get the prospect onto your email list so that you can begin to market to them.
Phase 2: Engagement
The engagement phase is the second phase, where you turn subscribers into buyers. It is when you start marketing to the prospect. In this phase, you want to engage the prospect by providing value through relevant content.
The goal is to acknowledge the prospect’s positive move by opting in. Next, move the prospect further down the funnel and closer to purchasing by helping them overcome hesitations and guiding them to realize the importance of making the next step.
Phase 3: Ascension
The ascension phase, or the third phase, is where you accelerate the sales journey for the prospect. In this phase, you want to provide offers and discounts relevant to the prospect’s needs.
This stage aims to get the prospect to buy your product or service by nurturing and exciting them.
Phase 4: Segmentation
The segmentation phase is the fourth phase that focuses on subscribers that don’t seem to be progressing in the value journey of the email campaign.
After you determine these subscribers, it is when you start targeting different segments of your email list.
In this phase, you want to target people most likely to buy your product or service. The goal now is to increase your conversion rate.
Here, you use different kinds of content and offers to gauge to help segment subscribers according to their responses.
Phase 5: Re-engagement
The re-engagement phase, or the last phase, is when you try to re-engage people who have stopped interacting with your email list.
For example, to re-engage an email client, you increase deliverability, remind them of the benefits of opting in, and draw a picture of what they could miss.
In this phase, you want to provide relevant and valuable content. The goal is to get them interested in your product or service again. If a subscriber is still unresponsive after the re-engagement phase, this is the time for you to clean them out of your email list.
To help us understand the importance of email marketing the smart way, let’s check out some statistics that will encourage us to take emails more seriously.
More Reasons to Design Your Emails Well
We already discussed the best practices you could apply to your email campaigns above. But knowing the numbers that make these practices common throughout the industry can better help you understand why you do them.
Every marketer knows that not all email campaigns will instantly get desired results. Unfortunately, that also implies that not all of your emails will be opened.
So, to increase your open rate, the first step is to move away from generic email campaigns.
According to a data compilation by Data Axle, emails with personalized subject lines have 50% more open rates than generic ones. But, unfortunately, it adds that only 2% of emails are personalized.
Adding videos to your email campaign can also increase engagement and interest from your email recipient. Today, everyone loves video because it’s easy to consume and can contain much value.
The craze over YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and Tiktok is a testament to that. But, according to AB Tasty, emails with videos garner 300% more click rates than those without.
With 58% of consumers checking their emails first thing in the morning after waking up, every business should take advantage of the great opportunity to market through emails.
FAQs
The following are a few of the most commonly asked questions online regarding email marketing. A quick search shows that most people’s concerns with email marketing circle around its legitimacy and other techniques that help it work.
In Summary
Email marketing can be a great way to reach and engage customers. Still, it’s important to remember the best practices to generate more leads and sales through your campaigns.
Following the tips outlined in this article, you can create emails that are more likely to be opened and clicked on. This will help you achieve better results from your email marketing efforts.
Brian Shelton is an entrepreneur, marketer, and life-long learner committed to helping businesses achieve impactful results. He founded Grow Predictably to provide tailored marketing strategies to generate predictable, profitable growth. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Brian has helped businesses, large and small. reach their goals and drive positive change in the world.