At eMarketeer, we understand the importance of effective email marketing campaigns in driving engagement, nurturing leads, and boosting sales. However, the success of your email marketing efforts hinges not only on what you do but also on what you avoid.
In this article, we’ll explore the best practices for sending marketing emails and highlight common pitfalls to steer clear of, ensuring your campaigns achieve their full potential.
1. Don’t purchase contact lists.
The number one reason to not use purchased lists of emails is that it violates GDPR regulations which requires any marketing related email to have an explicit consent from the recipient. This also applies to personal business emails. This is also why eMarketeer has banned purchased lists in the contract with our customers.
What many do not think of however, is that purchased lists actually hurt your delivery rate and may even stop you from sending any email at all.
Sending emails to an audience who never signed up for anything and perhaps even do not know your company at all, have the lowest engagement rates of all. And engagement matters. The large email services monitor engagement and if you send large volumes of emails that no one opens, your future emails will have less chance to hit the inbox.
Not to mention many bounces and complaints which will hurt your delivery even more.
But that’s not all… Purchased lists are the main source of spam traps which are old email addresses converted to traps by the email providers to instantly know that a sender is acquiring emails from bad sources. Purchased lists often contains old emails which can now be used as spam traps. Hitting one of these traps can get you instantly blacklisted.
So while purchased lists can be tempting to reach new audiences, it will hurt you in the long run. This is why most reputable marketing system bans purchased lists by contract.
2. Send email campaigns using a custom domain.
It’s all about trust! If your email has your corporate logo and content it would be strange if the from-address was from a different domain. Right? With so many fraudulent emails sent today, people are checking the from address to see that the domain is matching the content. This part cannot be easily changed by a fraudulent sender, which is why this is the first thing to check.
On the other hand, if you use a custom domain (yourcompany.com), you’ll be able to build a stronger sender reputation and have a greater chance of landing in your subscribers’ inboxes. And the more people see your emails, the more opportunities you’ll have to generate a positive ROI from your email marketing program.
In eMarketeer you can easily set up your own email domain to use in your emails.
3. Clean your mailing list regularly.
Some of your email contacts might not opt out of your email campaign but will still never open your emails. Emailing as many people as possible is tempting, but keeping your least-engaged recipients on your mailing list can kill your open rate.
People who never open emails make your campaign look worse since you‘re not analyzing the campaign’s quality against your most loyal recipients.
The large email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft also monitor engagement in the emails you send. If a low number of contacts engage with your emails the email provider is less likely to deliver them to the inbox in the future.
eMarketeer makes it easy for you to handle contacts with low engagement. By default all send outs will exclude non-engaged contacts for this reason. (optional).
- Non-engaged are contacts that has started receiving emails 6 months ago (or longer) and received 6 emails (or more) in this period that they never opened or clicked.
Here’s a few suggestions how to treat non-engaged contacts.
- Use a Journey to capture all non-engaged contacts and send them a re-engage email asking if they want to keep receiving emails from you. If they don’t engage in this email the Journey can remove them from your list and/or unsubscribe them.
- Use the contact filter to find all non-engaged contacts and put them on a list with less frequent emails. Or, just consider removing them.
4. Send only with legal basis (consent).
GDPR strictly requires any marketing related email to be backed up with a consent by the recipient, or a legal basis that describes your legal right to send the email.
In the case of consent it must be given explicitly and you need to store the text that the recipient agreed to when giving the consent.
eMarketeer allows you to capture and store the necessary consent details with history.
Note: eMarketeer has two modes for sending emails. One that only blocks emails to contacts that has withdrawn their consent (unsubscribed) and one mode that blocks withdrawn consent AND those who has no legal basis at all. We recommend that you use the latter (default) setting to blocks any emails sent to contacts with no record of legal basis at all. You find this setting under “Settings” and “Subscription and send outs”.
5. Send welcome emails.
The welcome email is the single most effective message you can send that generate sky high open rates and click through rates.
Welcome emails also help keep your list clean and improve your email deliverability. If someone enters the wrong email address, the welcome email will generate a hard bounce. That then notifies eMarketeer to remove it from your list.
They also reassure your new email recipients that the signup worked and the information they want is on its way.
Plus, they help you connect with new subscribers. Offer something valuable or exclusive at the start of their journey and watch click-throughs rise.
6. Easy unsubscribe.
Making unsubscribe easy is another way to increase your deliverability. If a recipient no longer wants your emails but never unsubscribes because it’s hard to find, they will just keep ignoring your emails, lowering your engagement rates. Or worst case, report you as spam.
Always make sure you have an easy to find unsubscription link in your email.
To make this even easier, and to follow the requirements of Google and Yahoo, eMarketeer has a “one click unsubscribe” link which is sent in the hidden header of all emails. When present several email clients will offer a built in unsubscribe button that makes unsubscribe even easier.
7. Avoid using ‘No-Reply’ in the sender’s email address.
No-reply or similar prefixes is not a good way to build a relationship. I actually also violates the CAN-SPAM act in the USA.
Instead make sure to always use a real, preferably personal email prefix that can be replied to.
Note that eMarketeer will not send auto-replies to the from-email so you will not get flooded just because you use a personal email address.
8. Personalize the email greeting.
Personalizing marketing emails with the recipient’s name or other specific information can significantly enhance engagement and effectiveness. This approach can:
- Boost Open Rates: Seeing their name in the subject line can make the email feel more relevant to the recipient, increasing the likelihood they’ll open it.
- Enhance Engagement: Personalized content feels more tailored and less generic, encouraging recipients to engage more with the email.
- Increase Conversion Rates: By addressing the recipient’s specific interests or needs, personalized emails can lead to higher conversion rates.
- Build Stronger Relationships: Personalization shows that you value the recipient as an individual, fostering a sense of connection and loyalty.
- Improve Customer Experience: Tailoring messages to individual preferences and behaviors can enhance the overall customer experience, making interactions with your brand more positive and memorable.
Use the personalization features in eMarketeer to insert contact card fields into the content or subject in your email.
9. Segment your audience.
Sending an email blast to your entire list may work from time to time. But your chances of generating sales with your email campaigns are the highest when you create personalized content designed for individual customer segments.
You surely have heard about the Pareto rule. 20% of your customers generate 80% of your sales revenue.
The more relevant your email is to your segment, the more engagement and conversion you will see.
10. Use a matching preheader.
The most important parts of an email to attract attention is the preview of an email. This is specially true on mobile phones.
You have three parts of the email that is shown in the preview
- The from name (Senders name, who is it from?)
- The subject line
- The pre-header
The preheader is a preview of the first lines of text in the email, and typically for a newsletter would be “Click here to open this email in your web browser”.
That’s not so engaging right?
In eMarketeer you can write the pre-header yourself and use the first lines of text to get attention about the content of the email. The pre-header will only show in the preview and not in the email body itself.
Don’t miss out on using this opportunity to draw attention to your email. Also consider personalizing the pre-header!