23 Email Marketing Tips

Practicing inbound marketing means sending emails to people who actually want to hear from you. You’ve probably Googled “best email marketing tips” so your emails don’t end up getting lost in a customer’s inbox — or worse, their spam folder.

Here are our top email marketing tips that are perfect for small and growing businesses that anyone can embrace. With this advice, you can improve your emails’ open rates, click-through rates, and lead generation potential.

Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

1. Do not buy email addresses.

I know what you’re thinking: In the early stages of an email marketing newsletter, you want to do whatever it takes to get eyeballs on your business. However, you should resist the urge to purchase an email list.

There are many ways to buy an email list, but none of them will benefit your campaign. Why? Since the owners of these email addresses didn’t explicitly agree to receive content from you, there’s no telling how interested they are — or if they’re even a fit for what you have to offer.

A bought email list is also in violation of GDPR (we’ll talk more about this in just a minute).

Purchasing email lists is always a bad idea.

2. Abide by CAN-SPAM rules.

CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing) is an act that was passed in 2003. This law establishes the rules for commercial email and messages.

CAN-SPAM gives recipients the right to have a business stop emailing them, and outlines the penalties incurred for those who violate the law. To be compliant, your email messages must follow these rules, which are available on the FTC’s website. A few highlights:

• Include your valid physical postal address in every email you send out.
• Give recipients a clear and obvious way to unsubscribe from every email you send. (HubSpot customers: Don’t worry. You can’t save an email template unless it includes this element.)
• Use clear “From,” “To,” and “Reply to” language that accurately reflects who you are.
• Avoid “no-reply” or similar sender names, which prevent recipients from opting out of an email newsletter if they’d like to.
• Avoid selling or transferring any email addresses to another list.

If you have questions about CAN-SPAM compliance, reach out to your business’ legal council.

3. Ensure your opt-in process complies with GDPR.

You’ve probably heard of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a law enacted across Europe in May 2018 to better protect internet users’ personal data.

We don’t expect you to have this long piece of legislation memorized. However, if some of your email recipients live in Europe, there is one key guideline by which you should develop your email marketing campaigns.

When your website users land on a page that solicits their personal information, tradition might tell you to include a pre-checked box that opts the user into an email campaign so they can receive updates and special offers related to your business.

Today, having this box pre-checked violates GDPR. So, to comply with GDPR, make sure your European users and customers are given the clear option to opt into your email newsletter themselves — don’t decide for them.

This rule might sound like bad news for your email marketing campaign, but it can actually improve your open and click-through rates.

Limiting your subscriber list to just those who specifically asked to join you will ensure only the most interested people are receiving your messages. This maximizes the chances that you’ll convert readers to qualified leads as a result of an email send.

4. Email new contacts within 24 hours.

It’s important to take advantage of the window of opportunity when your brand is at the top of your prospects’ minds.

Send an initial email within the first 24 hours of subscribing to your newsletter, signing up for an offer, and so on. Plus, this is a great opportunity for branding and setting expectations.

If you don’t have any automated email workflows set up, you’re missing out on some major opportunities to nurture and engage your existing contacts.

HubSpot customers can use HubSpot’s Workflows App to create automated email workflows that can get triggered in a number of different ways. That includes when a contact gets added to a list, clicks a link in an email, views a blog post, or becomes a marketing-qualified lead.

5. Send your emails from a real person, not your company.

When you send emails from a real person, your email open rate increases. Plain and simple. Based on past tests we’ve conducted, recipients are typically more likely to trust a personalized sender name and email address than a generic one.

People are so inundated with spam nowadays they often hesitate to open emails from unfamiliar senders. They’re more likely to trust a personalized sender name and email address than a generic one.

At HubSpot, we found that emails sent from “Maggie Georgieva, HubSpot” perform better in terms of open and clickthrough rates than emails sent from just “HubSpot.” So, it may be best to do this…

• Sender name: Paul Smith
• Sender email address: psmith@company.com

Instead of this:

• Sender name: Marketing Team
• Sender email address: marketing@company.com

If you’re a HubSpot customer, learn how to personalize the “From” name and email address.

Note: Our tests showed personalization works, but we’ve also found that a combination of a person’s name and a company name together in the sender name works well, too. A/B test what works best for your brand, as well as what’s ideal for your audience.

6. Pre-set the preview text.

Email clients like the iPhone Mail app, Gmail, and Outlook will display the first few lines of text from the body of your email alongside the subject line. This is a text preview of the content inside the email. The exact amount of text shown depends on the email client and user settings.

Use it to provide a short, to-the-point synopsis of what you’re offering. Keep it to 50 characters or less.

When you don’t set the preview text, the client will automatically pull from the body of your email, which not only looks messy but is also a wasted opportunity to engage your audience.

HubSpot customers can follow these steps to set email preview text.

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Read The Full article at HubSpot – https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/make-emails-more-clickable-list