Email marketing remains one of the most practical and most cost-effective marketing strategies in the modern era. That’s partially because it’s so inexpensive to launch an email marketing campaign, even at scale, and partially because email is an ubiquitous and reliable communication medium.
But the distinguishing characteristics of email as a medium aren’t enough to guarantee your success in this field. In fact, there are many “wrong” ways to approach email.
Email marketing best practices
So what are the best practices for creating and following an email marketing strategy?
Know Your Target Audience
Everything starts with your market research. If you want your email marketing strategy to be effective, you need to market specifically to a target audience. It's tempting to try and email to the broadest possible audience, increasing the potential number of people you can reach. But it's much more effective to target a narrow audience, so you can create the relevant content necessary to appeal to them.
Once you decide on your target audience, get to know that target audience inside and out so that you can craft messaging that is appealing and persuasive to them.
Cultivate an Organic List (i.e., Never Buy a List)
Much of your success in email marketing boils down to your ability to generate interest in your audience. If every person you reach has already expressed at least some interest in your brand or your products, you'll have a much easier time of converting them. If you're emailing strangers, you're going to run the risk of getting blacklisted because so many people are flagging you as spam.
It's good to build a big email list, but don't use that as an excuse to take the shortcut of buying a list of email addresses. Instead, make the effort to cultivate an organic list from the ground up. Use content marketing, social media marketing, and other outreach strategies to get more people to sign up for your newsletter.
Perfect the Art of the Subject Line
In many ways, your subject lines are the most important part of your email marketing campaign. That's because people won't bother to open your emails unless your subject line is sufficiently compelling. In other words, without a good subject line, the rest of your email is irrelevant.
There are many strategies you can use to perfect your email subject lines. It's important to be concise, informative, relevant to your target audience, and unique in some way. But it's going to take some practice before you get this down.
Use Embedded Videos
Increasingly, marketers are turning to the help of embedded videos to boost their email marketing results. Why? The simple answer is because videos are a superior form of content. Compared to written content and static images, video is dynamic and engaging. It's easier to process and it can transmit more information in a shorter period of time.
Embedding videos that automatically play is also a useful way to distinguish your brand and help your email content stand out. And thanks to tools like Viewed.video, it’s easier than ever to get started with this strategy.
Personalize Everything You Can
Personalized emails tend to generate much better results than their non-personalized counterparts. That's because people find personalized content to be much more relevant and much more unique. You can start with something simple, like adjusting the name or the greeting of your email based on the person receiving it. But eventually, you're going to want to personalize even more things, such as personalizing the content of your embedded email videos – which you can do using Viewed.video and a simple CSV file.
Send Multiple Messages – But Not Too Many
Email marketing begins to become more effective when you send repeated follow-up messages to your recipients. Sending out a few emails every week will increase your engagement rates, increase your conversion rates, and ultimately drive more traffic to your site. This is also an opportunity to distribute and promote your best content on a regular basis, collect information from customers with surveys, and engage with your audience in other ways.
That said, it's also important not to spam your audience. If you send too many emails in a short period of time, you might end up getting flagged as spam or alienating your audience.
Prioritize Content and Value
People are much more likely to remain subscribed to your email list and are much more likely to take action in response to your emails if you prioritize quality content and value for your recipients. That means giving your audience things that they actually want to see, such as in-depth, well-written content, announcements of new products, and discounts and sales that help people save money on the things they need.
Test Before Sending
This should go without saying, but make sure you test before sending any email blast to your recipients. You should be testing to make sure the content loads properly with all devices, browsers, and formats. If your email doesn't load correctly, or if there's a mistake in your email, it could compromise your reputation for years to come.
Experiment
Many of the best practices for email marketing in this guide are general enough and useful enough to help most brands see better results. But if you want to boost your results even further, you're going to need to experiment. Use AB testing and other methods to try out different subject lines, different message content, and different approaches so you can figure out what works best for your audience.
Measure and Analyze Everything
In line with this, measure and analyze everything. The more objective data you gather, and the better you understand that data, the better you'll be able to plan your email campaigns in the future.
Email marketing is a big field, and there are hundreds of tactics that can help you be successful in this area. But one of your best and most reliable approaches is utilizing embedded video in all your outgoing emails.
Viewed.video has the set of tools you need to make it happen – so sign up for free today and get started!
