Don’t do your email blasts before you check these best practices

Email blasts (or email broadcasts) have been a very effective method of targeted marketing for companies across all industries worldwide. They are a great, low-cost method to drive engagement and conversions. They are especially a great fit for professionals or companies who do business online. A lot of experts even say that email marketing is the channel with the lowest cost per conversion.

However, knowing that all your email blasts will work is way different than actually conceiving and executing them. So we have some email marketing best practices you can follow to kick off your campaigns.

What should you consider before writing email blasts?

We have created a list of email marketing best practices to help you ensure your emails resonate with your clients and generate revenue.

To create a successful email campaign, keep these points in mind before you start writing.

1. Prefer text-based emails over HTML:

Is text-based email marketing better than HTML email marketing? Simple text emails contain only text and have no other design elements, such as fonts, colors, or graphics. In addition, neither images nor links are embedded.

We recommend text-based email marketing over HTML Email marketing, even though HTML Email marketing provides more design control, offers more utility, is engaging, and is trackable.

Advantages of text-based email marketing:

1. Text-based emails are easier to create and less time-taking.

2. Don’t require extra skills of HTML and designing.

3. Load quicker

4. Easily open on every device.

2. Write Compelling and Concise Subject Lines:

It is best to limit subject lines to between 30 and 50 characters, including spaces. Most email providers will cut the subject line off if you go beyond this length.

Moreover, your subject line should convey a sense of urgency while letting the reader know what to expect when they open the email. However, clickbaits must be avoided. Spam reporting of such emails may land your email into spam traps and domains authority deteriorated.

3. Timing of email:

One of the most important factors of email marketing is the timing of the email.

Whenever we hear about "email timing," the first thought in most people's minds is: "When should I send my email?".

Our observations:

1. We observe that weekends, holidays, and vacations typically have lower open rates. It's unlikely that someone having dinner with their family will be checking their inbox on Christmas Eve.

2. Most people on your massive email list may live in other countries. So, while you're waiting for a response, the prospects are asleep. Hence, demographics matters!

3. On Monday mornings, your inbox is typically full of emails and notifications that your colleagues sent over the weekend. Friday evenings are also quite busy for some people. So, you might want to finish up your massive to-do list on Friday evening, turn off your notifications, and start enjoying the weekend.

A great way to do this is to conduct buyer persona research and compare your results.

4. Relevant content:

The relevance of your content refers to how your page matches the search intent and query of the user.

More than half of B2B marketers use email marketing. Beautiful email designs are useless without a message that is relevant and compelling. This means you need some seriously good email copy if you want to keep up with the competition:

1. Deliver a clear and compelling message.

2. Have a distinct, personal, and relatable voice.

3. Create a connection with your subscribers.

4. Tell us about yourself.

5. Share a product or service with others.

6. Increase the number of conversions

However, in order to accomplish so, your email content must be excellent.

5. Call to action:

The absence of a call to action is equivalent to a class without a teacher - unintentional and unproductive.

Some companies fail to use calls to action in their emails, even though they make perfect sense. CTAs provide direction to your audience and compel them to complete the desired action. They are the key to converting your audience to a landing page.

CTAs improve the client's experience. The main goal of all your marketing efforts should be to make your clients' lives easier. In this, you lay out everything for your audience; the next step to be taken and the landing page link. Clients will thus have a better experience.

6. Trackable links:

Google Analytics uses UTMs to track campaigns based on a code added at the end of the URL.

What are the benefits of tracking your links? Almost any marketer who runs a multichannel campaign over a large budget knows that it's vital to identify the content that attracts the most conversions.   

The addition of unique tracking codes to your marketing campaigns makes it possible to pinpoint your most effective campaign down to the exact message or topic.

7. Consistency In Campaign:

The product or service you provide is excellent. However, it's time for you to dominate your market. We have everything ready... but now we need new orders, which means new clients! An email list can be beneficial here.

Make your business different from the competition with a solid business strategy and consistent marketing. In addition to building trust and loyalty among the target audience, it is also an effective technique to attract new clients. Therefore, it is essential to conduct consistent email marketing for your business sales. These include educating clients and prospects, boosting sales while saving time and money, and building relationships.

8. Content-driven email:

Whenever you are writing mail, always ensure that your email is content-driven. Try to solve the receiver’s problem by providing valid information regarding your services. Not only this but also, you can add data or statistics to present yourself more accurately and precisely. 

You can include extra advantages you are providing, such as writing more information about new features, updates, and various offers available.

Things that you must avoid:

1. Avoid lengthy emails

2. Don't follow a sales based approach

3. Don't insert too many images

4. Avoid inserting too many links

Don’t Rush:

No matter how tempting it might be to quickly and easily bump your number of subscribers, remember, most purchased or rented email lists are poor quality. They aren’t targeted for your brand, niche, or industry, so you won’t get full value from interaction with them. They also consist of spam traps, once-valid email addresses that will automatically get your IP blacklisted for sending to them.

Although the Click Through peaks on the day of the blast but that’s too soon to arrive at a conclusion regarding its performance. People may not open your email blasts the same day you sent them. Give a few days, maybe a week before you take a look at the performance report to analyze how it performed. A lot of people might not have checked your email on the same day of the broadcast and would check on a later date.

Wrapping up:

As with any best practices for marketing, we can expound on what we *think* you should do, but you’re the only one with the power to actually *know* what works. Get inspiration from these examples. Find more with other resources, like Really Good Emails. But test everything. With email marketing you can split test subject lines, headers, CTAs, design, copy, segmentation, day of week, time of day, you name it.

Testing is the only way to make your own email marketing best practices, so you can definitively say what time of day has the highest open rate, what types of subject lines resonate with your audience, and which copy gets the most clicks.