If you’re going to create a marketing campaign, it’s important to know the anatomy of a marketing email so it can be drafted in the most successful way possible. You want people to not only open your email, but to read the contents and then take action inside of it.
Why Do You Need to Optimize Your Marketing Email?
It is important for you to optimize marketing emails so that people read through and identify with everything that you are telling them. Further, studies have shown that approximately 70% of mobile purchases are influenced as a result of promotional emails.
Components to Optimize in a Marketing Email
There are a few components that need to be optimized within a marketing email. These include:
- Subject line
- Template
- Links
- Calls to action
- Images
Tips for Subject Lines
Subject lines are important because this is ultimately what’s going to get someone’s attention and ensure that they open it without simply hitting the delete button.
Below are some tips that can make all the difference in the world with your email marketing:
- Don’t put more than 50 characters in of a subject line
- Use personalization tokens whenever possible
- Add preview text
- Be sure that the reply email is a real person
- Don’t make false promises
- Create a sense of urgency
- Explain the benefits
You can use more than one of these tactics inside of a subject line, and it is always helpful to use A/B testing so that you can see what your audience prefers.
Tips for Optimizing a Marketing Email Template
Email marketing templates are going to be a great way to make sure that you have consistency each time you send out newsletters. However, there are a few things that you want to make sure that you are doing so that it is easy on the eyes when people open up your email.
Your design should always be a way to enhance the email, not to distract away from it. You also want to make sure that you use the right coding software, otherwise it may be difficult for people to read what you have actually written.
The email width needs to be considered as well, and you should never go more than 650 pixels, otherwise it can be difficult for people to view in Outlook or any other mail service. Consider providing a link to a video as opposed to adding a video directly in email because it can result in rendering problems.
Finally, be sure you provide a plaintext email template along with HTML simply because not everyone reads their emails using HTML, and you want to make it reader friendly for everyone.
What Should You be Tracking?
When you send out marketing emails, there are a few different metrics you want to be sure you are tracking. This will help to measure your overall success and see where you need to make improvements.
- Click through Rate: the click through rate identifies who clicked on any of the links inside of your email. The more the clicks, the more successful your emails actually are.
- Conversion rate: this is the number of people who not only clicked on a link, but also completed the desired action, such as purchasing a product or filling out a lead generation form.
- List Growth Rate: the goal is for your email list to grow, and the rate at which is it’s growing. It is calculated by looking at the number of new subscribers versus the total number of email addresses on your list.
- Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate: it is always great when people will share your emails or forward them to others, and you can track this within your analytics on the mailing platform you use as well.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing is a great way to reach out to your audience, though it needs to be effective. If you aren’t going to bother looking at the analytics and tracking the results, then it is simply not worth your time. It’s important for people to open the emails and interact with the contents. There are various tips to help you throughout the process, including creating a template that is eye-catching and ensuring that content is unique and exciting.
It can be a little time-consuming to create a template, though once you have one that works, you simply need to change the content each time you send it out to your list. Indulge in A/B testing from time to time, too, so you can be sure that you are giving your audience exactly what they want.
Here’s a great infographic created by QuickSprout, to give you quick guide on how to begin optimizing your marketing emails like a pro.
