When attempting to grow your business and enhance your online presence, there are numerous digital marketing techniques that you should take advantage of. Among the more effective digital marketing techniques is email marketing, which is a useful form of marketing that provides businesses with the opportunity to connect with their leads, nurture them, and eventually convert them into customers. In order for email marketing to be effective, it’s essential that the emails you send are relevant to your target audience.

To properly perform email marketing, you will need to build an email list of prospective and current customers. With this list in hand, you can start marketing to these customers and providing them with emails that are able to bring them to your website. This type of marketing is important if you want to keep growing your brand while also making sure that customers are engaging with your website. The many benefits of email marketing include:

• Low costs when compared to other digital marketing techniques
  
• Allows you to create personalized content
  
• Helps you improve brand recognition
  
• Can assist in boosting sales and revenues
  
• Increases traffic to website
  

To understand how important email marketing is for any business, keep in mind that around 99 percent of all consumers will check their email at least one time every day. At the end of 2019, there were around 5.6 million active email accounts in existence. The most popular client for reading emails is the Apple iPhone, which accounts for around 29 percent of all email opens.

If you’re looking to get started with email marketing, this article takes a look at some of the best email marketing practices that you can use for your business.

Stick to a Regular Schedule When Sending Your Emails

When you start to engage in email marketing, it’s imperative that you stick to a regular schedule when sending your emails. If you send too many emails, you risk the possibility that the receiver will place your emails directly into their spam folder, which means that the majority of your marketing content will never reach them. When sending emails consistently, less is more. These emails should be outfitted with premium calls-to-action and have fantastic subject lines that immediately pique the reader’s interest.

The rate at which you send marketing emails depends on the type of business that you run. For instance, your strategy will differ depending on whether your business is B2B or B2C. In most cases, B2C companies should send emails to the lists that they have compiled at a rate of a little more than once every month. People typically expect companies to send them deals and offers, which is why B2C businesses can be more comfortable sending marketing emails on a regular basis.

More than 60 percent of all businesses state that they don’t have a policy that limits that amount of email contacts that are made per month, which means that these businesses have decided to shape their marketing campaign around results instead of sticking to a strict formula. If you own or manage a B2B company, it’s important that you send a minimal amount of marketing emails. Other businesses that you want to sell to likely don’t have a substantial amount of time to look at sales offers, which means that you’ll want to send marketing emails at key moments throughout the year.

It’s important to understand that the common consumer is presented with information overload on a regular basis. Along with the dozens or hundreds of emails that they receive in their inboxes every day, information overload is a common problem on the internet. If you want your customers to take notice of the emails you send, it’s recommended that you reduce the amount of emails that you provide to customers, which should help to lessen content shock.

It’s possible that you will be able to improve your marketing results while also spending less money on your marketing campaigns. If you lessen the number of emails that you send to customers, each email could appear to these customers to be more valuable. To identify the best rate for sending marketing emails, make sure that you analyze the results of your marketing campaign.

Create Personalized Content for Emails

The emails that you send to current and prospective customers shouldn’t be basic ads that feel impersonal to the consumer. If you want your email marketing efforts to be effective, consider creating personalized content for your emails, which you can do by using the data that you’ve already gathered on your customers. Personalized websites are always going to be more relevant to users. Without personalizing your marketing materials, you may find it difficult to capture the attention of your target audience.

There are a variety of methods you can use to customize the emails that you send out. For instance, you can include the name or gender of the customer in the email that you send. The email you send can be personalized by location as well.

A great way to personalize marketing emails is by sending these emails based on where the customer is on their journey when it comes to using your brand. If the customer places items in their cart but has yet to check out, you can send them an email that reminds them to complete their purchase. Personalized emails are just one method that you can use to keep your current customers loyal while also bringing in new visitors to your website.

Be Transparent and Honest with Your Marketing Emails

When sending marketing emails, it’s essential that you abide by CAN-SPAM rules. Created in 2003, these rules established guidelines for commercial messages as well as commercial emails. Once this bill was turned into law, recipients of emails and messages had the right to request that a business stop sending emails to them. Penalties were also put into place to make sure that businesses didn’t attempt to break these rules.

When creating a marketing email, it’s important that you provide recipients with a clear and easy-to-understand method that they can use to opt out of your email list. By including this option, customers will know that you respect them and their time. If you want to avoid receiving a fine for violating CAN-SPAM rules, you need to provide a valid postal address for your business within every email.

Once a user decides to opt out of your email list, make sure that you honor this request within a period of 10 business days. These emails must also include basic language that identifies who is sending the email. This language includes words and phrases like “From”, Reply to”, and “To”. Along with placing language into the written content, it must also be included in the email address and domain name.

Don’t Sell or Transfer Email Lists!

If you don’t want the reputation of your business to be damaged, you should never sell or transfer the email lists that you’ve built up. If you attempt to purchase email lists, you’ll likely find that your marketing campaign is damaged by this move. These individuals never signed up for your emails, which means that they likely don’t want to receive emails from your business. In fact, they will probably send your emails directly to their spam folders.

It’s also important to understand that purchasing email lists is illegal in Europe under the GDPR privacy act. Even if your business doesn’t operate in Europe, you could be in violation of this law if any of the customers on the email list you purchase live somewhere in Europe. The provider of your email service might also penalize you, which is a problem that you should try to avoid.

Keep Your Emails Brief and To the Point

The emails that you write and send should be brief and to the point if you want to capture the reader’s attention. Most consumers aren’t going to spend time reading a lengthy marketing email from a business they enjoy shopping with. By keeping your emails relatively short and succinct, you’re showing the recipient that their time matters to you.

The sentences that you write should be kept under 25 words with paragraphs being three sentences or less. For the subject line, make sure that you keep it to 15-25 characters. With shorter copy, there’s less of a chance that the subject line will be cut off for mobile users. Each word that you include in your marketing email should be relevant and serve a discernible purpose. If you find that certain words can be removed without changing the meaning of the email, remove them.

Make your Call To Action (CTA) Buttons Descriptive and Contextual

Likely the most important aspects of a marketing email are the call to action buttons that you place inside of the email. CTA buttons should be descriptive and contextual to the remainder of the email. Always use action words that are bold and striking, which can include everything from “get” to “try”. These words should be used in place of more boring and unimaginative words like “submit” and “click here”. The buttons that you place in your marketing emails should be combined with text that’s specific to the current offer you’re sending out.

Offer Value Along with Your Marketing Emails

Everything that you do with your marketing emails should, above all else, serve the interests of your target audience. Even if the written content in your email is fantastic and engaging, it won’t be enough if the offer you provide is a poor one. The items that you’re selling must be relevant to the needs of the customers who are receiving these emails.

To improve the content of your emails, consider sharing success stories and testimonials, which are relevant to the customers while also displaying the quality of your brand. Before placing an offer in the ad, ask yourself if the offer is good and if it will compel customers to take the time to read the email in the first place. Tell the customer how they benefit from your brand and the offer that you’re providing. If you put the reader first, you should garner success with your marketing emails.

When implemented correctly into a larger marketing campaign, marketing emails can help you grow your brand and bolster your digital presence. Over time, you should start to notice a difference from the emails that you send out. If the campaign isn’t providing you with the results you’re searching for, retool the campaign to address the most pressing issues. Email marketing is very affordable yet also highly effective, why is why you should take the time to get it right.