Improve Your Open Rates With These 6 Email Marketing Best Practices

Email marketing is one of the most powerful methods of lead generation for both B2B and B2C companies. Email marketing offers personalized, educational content to readers in a non-intrusive way and allows prospects to read content however they prefer, whether it be on a mobile device or a desktop.

More and more companies are reaching out to prospects via email and are seeing great results, especially when they follow these email marketing best practices below.

1. Make your subject line open-worthy: It doesn’t matter how amazing your email copy is if your readers won’t even open it! Subject lines perform best when they are between 30 – 50 characters. Make sure to use action words to encourage your readers to open your email.

2. Use SMART content: Most likely your email list includes the most basic attributes such as first name, last name, and email address. As your list grows and you gain more information about prospects, you can use this to your advantage. With the HubSpot email marketing platform you can add personalization tokens to your email copy that will automatically populate based on the prospect’s information. Adding the user’s name to your email copy will significantly increase the amount of open rates.

3. Optimize your email templates for mobile: mobile technology has revolutionized the way we consume content. More and more people are reading emails on the go; in fact, over 75% of mobile device owners use their phones to read emails. This number is actually higher than people who use their phones to make phone calls.
   
   Businesses should focus on ensuring their email templates are responsive (can be read on a desktop or mobile device with ease) and are no wider than 600px in length, as anything larger forces the reader to scroll, which significantly reduces conversion rates.

4. Send at the right time of day: Studies show that 49% of readers check their email as soon as they wake up, and 63% check email on the weekends. Businesses should research the best send-times according to their industry and keep this in mind when sending email blasts. The difference between sending an email at 7am on a Wednesday could be entirely different than at 6pm on a Saturday.
   
   
   source: http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics
   
   

5.  Use CTAs in your email copy: Readers should have a direct conversion path when they open an email. Make sure you are communicating the value of the offer to the reader in both the copy of your email and the buttons you use to push them to that offer. Use bright colors to draw attention to the button (pink works best, believe it or not!) and ensure the copy on the button is succinct.

6. Test, test, test: Some emails perform better than others, and it’s important to find out why so that your open rates improve over time. Testing different variables in your emails can help you discover what works and what doesn’t for your email list. Try A/B testing subject lines, calls-to-action, or SMART content to see which version performs best.

By utilizing these best practices in your email marketing campaigns, your open rates will improve, as will your marketing-qualified leads. Looking for more information to improve your email marketing campaigns? Contact Business Solution Partners today to discuss how to transform your digital marketing strategy!