8 Tips for Creating High-Performing Emails

Despite the advancements of modern marketing, email is still one of the best ways to connect with customers. This infographic highlights eight tips for getting the most out of marketing emails to engage customers.

Every month it seems like there’s a new way to contact customers—social media, chat, text messages, push notifications—and yet email is still the top-performing communication channel for the majority of marketers. There are no signs of Email Marketing slowing down either, with more and more consumers expected to adopt email worldwide over the next three years. Knowing these trends, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your marketing emails are designed to actively engage customers and get a solid return on investment. Here are eight tips to ensure your emails are doing just that.

Simply adding a recipient’s name to an email’s subject line can do wonders. Studies show that emails are 26 percent more likely to be opened when the subject line is personalized. It’s also important to keep subject lines short, typically under 60 characters total, since most people check email on their phones, where lengthy subject lines get truncated.

The old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” is never truer than with emails. Images and videos boost an individual’s’ willingness to view content by 80 percent. Videos, in particular, can increase click-through rates by 300 percent.

One of the keys to making emails feel “personal” is ensuring the content each customer receives is relevant. The easiest way to do this is to segment customers by interests and/or needs and to then deliver unique emails to those segments with content that will appeal to each group. This can significantly improve open rates and likely reduce opt-outs and unsubscribes.

Creating automated emails is crucial to boosting the effectiveness of emails while also minimizing the time and effort spent creating content. For example, a “Thank you for subscribing” or “Welcome to the ‘your brand’ family” email can easily be programmed to send automatically when a customer signs up for your mailing list. In fact, these emails have an average open rate of 80 percent and click-through rate of 25 percent, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what can be done with automated emails.

People are increasingly checking email on their mobile phones, so it’s critical that all marketing emails are mobile optimized. Failing to do so means that more than half of your customers will probably never read your emails.

Consumers receive a lot of emails, and too many from any one business or brand can result in them unsubscribing. Research suggests that delivering too many emails can result in losing as much as 80 percent of your subscribers. A good rule of thumb is to send out no more than two emails a week, although that will vary based on your business type.

Marketing research shows that Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00 a.m., or between 8:00 p.m. and midnight, are the best times to deploy emails. Having said that, open rates do vary from business to business, so a sound strategy is to test your emails. Simply send various emails over different days and times to determine when you get the highest open and click-through rates, and then make that your regular delivery window for emails.

Make sure your emails have a standard footer or disclaimer with a way for recipients to unsubscribe or opt-out. This is required by law (CAN-SPAM Act) for all commercial messages. Furthermore, opt-out requests must be honored within 10 business days. Violations of these rules are subject to penalties of up to $42,530, for each email violation.

Email marketing isn’t going anywhere and should be used by nearly every type of business. By utilizing these eight tips, you will be incorporating the best practices into your emails—ensuring better open and click-through rates and forging stronger brand loyalty with your customers, all of which can add up to improved revenue.