As marketers, we are always looking for innovative ways to generate sales, acquire new leads, establish thought leadership and so much more! 

Sometimes it’s easier to gravitate to new strategies and forget about the old ones. And while a classic strategy, email marketing is still just as effective as ever. In fact, email marketing generates $42 for every $1 spent making it extremely valuable. 

Email marketing is competitive. So you need to refine your expertise to stand out from the billions of emails that get sent every day. 

While it’s easy to establish that email marketing is valuable, the hard part is doing it right so that you get the results other brands are getting. That’s why we’ve rounded up 17 email marketing tips so that your strategy will grow stronger than ever.

Perfect Your CTA

Define your goal for each email you send and pair it with a CTA. Make the CTA easy to read through bold text or buttons within your email. 

Invite Your Readers to Reply

At the end of your emails, always invite your contacts to reply with questions or to set up a call--whatever is more relevant to the purpose of your email.

Be sure that the email is coming from your address so that when readers take you up on your offer and reply, the replies go to your inbox.

Create Intriguing Subject Lines

Subject lines are the first impressions that your contacts get when they receive an email from you. They can make the difference in whether or not your email is opened or deleted.

Be creative but to the point with your subject lines. Keep them to about 5 words. Consider creating a sense of urgency with your subject lines.

Need some subject line inspiration? Check out this post for ideas.

Measure and Scale

Before you do anything else, set your KPIs for your email marketing efforts. Common KPIs include:

• Number of contacts
• Open rate
• Click through rate
• Sales
• Signups
• Leads generated
• Number of unsubscribes

Measure each email that you send and keep a record of all the metrics. This will allow you to scale your efforts based on data and exponentially refine your email marketing strategy.

Be Mindful of Your Email Frequency

You want to stay top-of-mind with your contacts by emailing often but you don’t want to email too often and cause them to unsubscribe so there is a delicate balance involved with email frequency.

We recommend sending 1-3 emails per week. 

A/B Test Your Messaging

A/B testing involves sending multiple emails out to a handful of your connections so that you can analyze which emails perform the best and use this knowledge to scale your efforts. Common email components to A/B test are:

• Subject lines
• Body copy
• Layout
• CTA
• Button color
• Images
• Time sent

Create a Pre-Send Checklist

Organization is key to success. Create a pre-send email marketing checklist, hang it by your computer and reference it every time you send out an email. Some items to include in your checklist are:

• Customize your “from” name
• Write a clear and engaging subject line
• Personalize content with the recipients’ first names
• Have a clear unsubscribe link
• Check your hyperlinks
• Setup your preheader text
• Send yourself a test email

Segmentation is Crucial

Segmenting your contacts allows you to send more targeted emails to them. While it takes more time to create emails for different segments, the conversion rates go way up with the ability to tailor your messaging. Common ways to segment your email list include:

• Demographics
• Engagement
• Stage of customer journey
• Source
• Industry
• Job title

Optimize for Mobile

70% of emails are opened via mobile so this is a tip you can’t ignore! Your email marketing platform should allow you to view your emails how they would look on a mobile device. You can also send test emails out to yourself and access them on your phone to ensure they look good.

Things to look for are how the text looks on mobile, the email loads quickly, the graphics and buttons render correctly, and the font is easy on the eyes.

Set up Trigger Emails

Triggered emails are sent out when one of your contacts completes an action like downloading an eBook, requests a demo, visits a landing page, etc. 

Trigger emails have a 70% higher open rate because they reach the consumer while they’re engaged.

Nurture With Thought Leadership

While it’s tempting to send out an email promoting your brand, you’ll get more engagement and build more trust if you focus on being a thought leader and send useful content.

A good rule of thumb is that 4 out of 5 emails should be thought leadership and contain tips or resources and the 5th email can be a sales pitch. The goal is to create brand trust before pitching your contacts.

Diversify the Content You Send

Keep your contacts engaged and intrigued with your brand by changing up the types of content you email out. Consider the following options:

• Blog posts
• eBooks
• Infographics
• White papers
• Quick tips
• Links to earned media
• Videos
• Links to great content from like-minded brands
• Surveys

Use a Professional Email Marketing Tool

Email marketing involves more than just writing emails. That’s why you need a quality tool to help you with all components of your strategy. The right platform will serve as a CRM for all of your contacts and allow you to segment them. The right platform will also house your analytics, keep your emails compliant, streamline your workflows, and more!

Keep the Copy Concise 

The average person gets hundreds of emails per day. That means attention spans are limited and your audience doesn’t want to read a whole wall of text. So, instead, keep your emails short and to the point and break paragraphs up in an easy-to-digest way.

Prioritize Quality Over Quantity 

Don’t send an email just to send an email. Make sure that each email aligns with your goals and is engaging. If this means you send less emails but they’re better quality--that’s okay!

Personalize Your Emails

Personalizing your emails is dependent on the data you have. But, simple things like using the contact’s first name or inserting the name of their company can go a long way.

Embrace FOMO

FOMO or fear of missing out is a real thing and you can embrace this with your email marketing program. Create a sense of urgency in your subject lines and/or the body of your copy. Whether it’s a webinar with limited spots or a sale that will be over in 3 hours, position your verbiage that your readers need to act now or they’ll miss out.

Do you have any email marketing tips that we may have not included? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!