In this digital era, every click holds the promise of a new opportunity. As a business, how you present those opportunities through email marketing can be the difference between success and obscurity.
Email continues to be a workhorse in marketing campaigns across many industries. With nearly 5 billion email users worldwide, a business that neglects to harness the power of email marketing will miss out on a significant avenue for engagement, conversion and brand building.
However, crafting an effective email is far more than just the mechanical process of clicking “New,” typing a message and hitting “Send.” It’s an art form requiring an understanding of the nuances of language, design, timing and audience psychology. Mastering these elements is important to maximizing the impact of your email campaigns and unlocking their full potential.
Here are some best practices you should be following to make email the most powerful tool in your marketing belt.
This might be as simple as dividing up prospects and customers into two separate groups, with the former getting messages that educate them about the benefits of your products and services, while the latter gets engagement messages that promote upsell opportunities. Of course, your list segmentation might go deeper to target people at specific stages of the buyer cycle for hyper-optimized campaigns.
According to the most recent HubSpot State of Marketing Report, segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs than unsegmented emails. A clickthrough rate, which is the percentage of recipients who click on a link or call to action within an email, is the No. 1 metric marketers use to track the success of their email marketing campaigns.
What’s a good clickthrough rate? According to Constant Contact, average industry rates can vary. The average clickthrough rate for emails sent to Constant Contact customers was 2% in 2024. Industries like legal services and nonprofit membership organizations experienced higher clickthrough rates at 3.34% and 2.94%, respectively. Industries like repair and maintenance experienced lower average rates at just 0.84%.
Segmenting your lists or dividing your subscribers into smaller, targeted groups based on characteristics like demographics or behavior can help you increase engagement and drive better results.
When you send your email messages, it can significantly impact how many of your targets open and engage with your emails.
According to HubSpot, marketers report that an email sent between 9 a.m. and noon has the highest engagement rates, followed by the noon to 3 p.m. time period.
The same HubSpot survey found that marketing emails sent on Tuesday get the most engagement, followed by Monday and Thursday.
However, when you send your emails, it can depend on your audience and industry. If you are a B2B business, it makes sense to send email campaigns on times and days when your potential clients are in their offices. In fact, HubSpot found that nearly 48% of the B2B marketers surveyed said the best engagement time was between 9 a.m. and noon.
However, if you’re a B2C company, consumer behavior may impact when you send your emails. Just over 30% of B2C marketers found the most success in the same morning time window.
Nearly half of all email recipients say they open an email based on the subject line alone, according to market research. A whopping 69% mark an email as spam based on the subject line.
You do not want to fall into the latter category, and one mistake can send any future emails you send into oblivion.
Some tips to crafting an attention-grabbing subject line that won’t tempt readers to hit the “spam” button include:
DON’T mislead or deceive what content is in the email, which can erode trust and lead to unsubscribes. Avoid using all caps and steer clear of spammy language like “free” or “urgent,” which can trigger spam filters.
It’s also a good idea to include a preview line. This is the little snippet of text that you see after the subject line if you're looking at messages sitting in your inbox. In the past, marketers rarely created something custom to fit in this space, but it’s becoming common practice to write a custom preview line to avoid issues like this.
How do they take the next step? By clicking a call to action (CTA). A CTA typically takes the form of a button, but it could also be a simple link. No matter the format, use actionable language – verbs over nouns. “Click here,” “Download the guide” and "Learn more” are all examples of language you can use on your CTA since it prompts readers to do something.
CTA buttons perform better when they’re easy to see, so use a color that catches readers’ eyes. Limit the amount of text on the button to keep things simple.
One of the most important things you should do when adding a CTA is to also create a landing page where visitors are directed after clicking. On a landing page, you can provide further information, capture additional data or prompt specific actions, ultimately guiding leads further down the conversion funnel.
This dedicated page allows you to tailor the user experience and focus solely on the desired action, whether it’s completing a purchase, signing up for a webinar or downloading a resource.
Nearly 41% of email views are opened on a mobile device. That number significantly rises to 75% of Gmail users’ email views on a mobile device.
Ensuring that your emails are optimized for viewing on mobile devices is crucial for engagement and conversations. Everything you include in your emails, including CTA links or buttons, forms, and images, will also need to be optimized for mobile viewing. If you don’t, your campaigns' abandonment rate will suffer.
Considering 9 in 10 U.S. adults own a smartphone, you could miss out on an opportunity to engage with potential customers if you don’t optimize your emails for mobile devices.
It’s important to note that smartphone ownership is rising among ALL age groups. Even among adults ages 65 and older, the latest research shows that nearly 76% of seniors in that age group own a smartphone, up from 61% just a few years prior.
Even if your business caters to a specific age group, don’t assume optimizing your emails for older clientele isn’t important. Mobile devices are universally used among all age groups, young and older.
Be wary of vendors that are selling email lists because they could be peddling lists that contain old, unused or even nonexistent email addresses.
This may sound harmless and you might imagine that at least some of the people on the list are in your target audience, but it’s better to steer clear of any practice that seems the least bit spammy.
If you use a purchased list with expired email addresses, and your emails bounce back, your deliverability rates plummet. This can trigger email spam filters and email services might restrict your sending privileges for a certain period of time.
Those with legitimate email addresses may also take offense that you are contacting them in a “cold call” kind of way when they never provided you with their contact information.
Don't waste opportunities on bad user experience. Create a web version of your emails for people who cannot view it correctly through an email service.
And while you're thinking about visuals, consider video in email marketing. The Leap reports that 73% of consumers prefer watching a short-form video to learn about a product or service.
If video is not an option for you, then consider animated gifs or jpegs. Run a simple search on Google and you’ll find lots of free options. They are a great way to engage your readers when they scan your email.
AI, or artificial intelligence, can be helpful in generating content for your emails. In fact, 43% of marketers who use AI say that it’s most helpful for creating email copy.
If you’re in a time crunch, AI can be a helpful email marketing tool, especially if you’re a business owner who wears several hats. However, there are a few reasons why you should be careful with how you use artificial intelligence to draft email copy.
First, AI pulls information from data on the Internet, and we all know that not everything on the Internet is true. Some AI sites do not pull the most recent data as well, and instead rely on copy from sites updated years ago. If your email copy needs to be accurate, it’s important to not rely solely on AI for information.
AI-written posts can be wordy and repetitive, and when writing email copy, it’s always better to be short and sweet. If you don’t get to the point quickly and recipients feel they aren’t getting something of value from reading your email, they’ll quickly hit “delete.”
Finally, AI also lacks personalization. MailJet reports that using customers’ names in email copy is the most common email marketing strategy they use to personalize their emails or email newsletters. This shows that people want to feel as though you are speaking to them, rather than feel their email address was simply on a huge list of targets. (This is also why segmenting your emails is an effective strategy.)
If you’re relying on AI for content creation, your emails may lack human authenticity, ultimately diminishing your unique voice and connection with your audience.
Here are a few additional tips to help your email marketing campaign experience success:
Don’t send too many emails. It can be tricky to know just how many emails you should send prospective clients. Considering receiving too many emails is often why consumers unsubscribe, it can be downright scary. No one wants high unsubscribe rates.
HubSpot research shows that 22% of marketers send two or three marketing emails per day, and 21% send daily emails. Some statistics show the most effective email marketing campaigns typically send 1 to 2 emails per week. The industry you are in plays a significant role in this, with retail and e-commerce sites typically sending out more frequent emails because clients expect regular updates. Other industries like professional services and nonprofits don’t want to overwhelm their supporters, so they may be more likely to email regularly, but not as frequently.
Know the rules. The CAN-SPAM Act, which was passed in 2003, requires that you include an unsubscribe link in the message, so people who don’t want to receive your content can easily opt-out.
If people unsubscribe from your campaign, you must have a system in place to opt them out promptly – immediately if possible. You could be penalized if you continue sending them messages after they’ve opted out of the messages.
Seek help. If this process sounds overwhelming, email marketing services can provide expert guidance, strategic planning and creative execution to optimize your campaigns for maximum success.
The best marketing companies will use email marketing to help you build trust and credibility, drive traffic and leads, and use the right metrics to track success, nurture customers, and increase conversions so that you can build your business.