Effective Email Marketing: 101

Are you about to start your Email Marketing journey or want to optimize your future campaigns? Check below a few points to have in mind when creating your campaign.

Concise subject line

‘Be brief but concise’. Your subject line is the first thing that your subscribers will check once they receive your email. Long subject lines or irrelevant to the message body will not attract readers because no one will spend enough time trying to understand what your email is about. People receive so many notifications and usually prioritize what they will read based on the subject. In order to attract more readers and potential buyers make your subject line brief but concise.

Easy to unsubscribe

Yes, your readers should not feel that they are “trapped” on your lists. They should feel free to choose what to do with your messages. Same as you would make a “Forward” button quite visible hoping that your subscribers will forward your message to a colleague or a business partner of theirs, they should be free to stop receiving promotional messages from you. Even now that the “Unsubscribe” buttons are mandatory since GDPR was enforced in the EU in May 2018, whether you are dealing or not with EU citizens’ data you should always include an “Unsubscribe” button on your campaigns.

“Sharp looking” campaigns

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. – Albert Einstein

The above sentence can also apply to your campaign design in order to attract more readers. Your campaigns’ look affects your click rate statistics because campaigns that are hard to read can require quite some time from your readers and if they cannot dedicate that much time chances are that they will ignore it.

• Don’t make your campaigns looking like a 90’s website filling it with different fonts, multiple images in different sizes, or GIFs.
• Make your campaigns mobile-friendly. Chances that your subscribers will check your email from their mobile devices while on the go is quite high, and if they have to zoom in in order to read it they might not even give it a try. Create your campaign templates carefully in order to make them adjust to different screens.

Are you happy with the final result?

Before queuing your campaign make sure you send yourself multiple tests in order to check how the text is rendered, how pictures are displayed, whether hyperlinks work, etc. Ideally, send multiple tests to different email accounts from different email service providers and to email clients. This way you will have a better overview of how your campaign will look on your subscribers’ screens. Dedicate some time to double-check everything.

Get the most out of your Email Marketing efforts by applying small tips and focus on your product. Want to check more Email Marketing tips? Have a look at the phpList knowledgebase.