Email Marketing: Design and Deliverability Strategies

Email marketers often focus only on the number of opens and clicks that come from email subscribers. They tend to forget about the conversions which are, of course, the most important. Purchases, registrations, reads, downloads, etc. will increase only if you have them set as a goal. It will be much easier to achieve the outcome you want, if you know exactly what you want your email subscribers to do after receiving your message, with the appropriate subject lines, call to action buttons, images, content and other email elements.

 

Subject lines

You should spend 80% of your time perfecting your subject line, call to action and headlines, and 20% writing copy. You need to create subject lines and call to action buttons with your email subscriber in mind.

 

Be very specific, relevant and useful to your customer. In this case, shorter is not always better, so replace the usual one word call to action with something more specific in order to get your email subscribers to act on your emails.

 

• Be visually unique, for example, make your subject line stand out visually and by trying square brackets, symbols, etc.

 

• Use digits, action words and timely topics, for example, use an end date for a campaign to motivate email subscribers to react to the message right here and now.

 

• Use a call to action by asking a question.

 

• Make the call to action appropriate to where the email subscribers are at in the buying cycle.

 

Use the golden real estate effectively

When creating your email design, use the golden real estate wisely. The golden real estate is the upper left hand corner of a newsletter, because as we read in an F-shaped pattern, this is the place where attention is paid first of all. So don’t waste this space with images or logos. Leave it for text you directly call on your email recipients to act.

 

Pre-header

In some email programs, you are able to see the first phrase of a newsletter even before opening it. Usually the phrases in this area are “View this email in a browser”, “Show remote content” or other information that is at the top of the email.

 

However, you can use this pre-header for marketing reasons. If before opening the newsletter you saw “Hi, your name”, wouldn’t you be more likely to open it? Any personalization increases the likelihood your email subscribers will react to your emails.

 

Keep it simple

Don’t give your email recipients too many choices. The simpler a message, the easier it is for email subscribers to take action. Choose to have only one call to action instead of several. Also in regards to keeping it simple, use the “rule of 3”, which states you shouldn’t use more than three bullet points within email content. While the “rule of 2” says the two most important content elements are a heading and the first paragraph, so in this case, less is more.

 

Content evaluation

After you have established your targets and how they like to consume information, you need to now deliver the right kind of information to them. First and foremost, stop using emails to sell and start using them to teach. People love to learn and want content and information that is of value to them.

 

However, don’t give everything away in the email, draw them back to your site. Give them a small taste of the information that makes them want more, then direct them to a landing page.

 

Constantly test and optimize

Less than half of online retailers perform some sort of optimization in their email marketing campaigns.

 

It is best to set up goals, pay attention to details, benefit from any opportunity to effectively analyze and optimize campaigns. These are tips that every email marketer should follow closely to get email subscribers to act on your emails in the manner you need them to.

Email marketing can be a powerful tool. It doesn’t have to just be something you check off a list. When done right, you’ll notice more than just a higher open rate. You’ll see higher lead acquisition and conversion rates as well.