Goal

The goal of this article is to share some best practices to design your email campaign with the goal to optimize delivery, open & click rates.

Who can it help?

- Marketer

Best practices

Email is still one of the biggest channels when it comes to reaching out to your audience. In this article we'll share some of the best practices to design your email campaign to improve the conversion rates.

1) From Name

Using a recognizable from name and email address is essential for your brand recognition and establishing the professional look. The recipient should clearly recognize you from tons of other emails they might receive on a daily basis. Some examples of good/bad From names:

Good examples:

Bad examples:

2) Subject Line

Just like the From Name, the Subject should be very clear and correspond to the email content. It should give some insight about what can be expected once the email will be opened. It’s often the deciding factor if someone opens your email.

There is also a bad practice to use tricks or clickbait subjects just to initiate the open. Do not try to fool your recipients, at the end it will play a bad game for you. You will loose trust and may end up in the junk folder as a result.

On the example below you can see a clear indication about who sent you the message and what is the content related to.



On the other side the following example is bad in From Name as well subject is not clear about the content. Could also be a spam, when you didn’t receive anything, but some one will try to force you on something within the email.

3) Personalization

Using the personalization is very important in email success. It is proven to increase engagement metrics due to providing subscribers with more relevant and individual content. By definition, marketing emails that aren’t personalized just can’t make that same guarantee. Without personalization, you’re taking a shot in the dark regarding whether or not your intended audience will find your content useful, interesting, or intriguing.

Connecting customer data sources to the Customer Data Platform will help you to segment your list in a better fashion and improving your emailing tactics and take a step away from mass mailings to more targeting emails and create more unique experience.

You can personalise your emaiils in several ways:

1. Based on buyer behaviour
2. Optimize for the personal device (create an email for desktop and mobile)
3. Celebrate birthdays
4. Category-based discounts
5. Tell personalized stories
6. Recommendations based on abandoned carts
7. Product updates and maintenance reminders
8. Add an relevant employee signature as from person
   

So, Personalization can be so much more than “Hi [First Name].”

4) Email Design

In average people spend around 15 seconds to go through the email. In case the email content is not well designed and does not correlate with the recipients' needs it would take the same 15 seconds to mark your email as junk. Email content can also facilitate the ability for a sender to build a company brand and express it to your audience.

Good email design can also keep you out of junk folder, some spam filters might flag your emails as spam if you are only sending content as a big picture. Try to keep a good health between your text and images, like 40% text 60% to images.

Below are a few important steps you need to follow creating an email content.

Design Similarity

Your email should look like the rest of your marketing activities you do via other channels, like social media, etc. In the end it would always improve your brand identity, when all your communication looks alike.

Cross platform identity

Nowadays most of the emails are opened via a mobile devices. Make sure your email content looks adaptive and looks the good across mobile and desktop devices, as well as has the similar functionality.

Appropriate greeting.

Kick off the email with the appropriate greeting including the recipient name.

Content relevance

Make sure your content is the prolongation on what you just mentioned in the email subject, but with some extra relevant information for your receiver.
Adding a call to action to your email will also play a huge role in your email success.
Make sure they are clear, stand out and point exactly to what is expected from the content.

Aligned text and consistent font.

Create a readable message consistently through the whole email. Also stick to one font. In case you want to use a secondary one, use it sparingly.

Easy unsubscribe options.

Make sure the unsubscribe option is not hidden and it is clearly visible. It is much appreciated to have one click unsubscribe option without going through the tons of extra surveys.

Respect footer info.
Always add the company name, address and contactdetails to the email footer. Make sure the receiver has a possibility to verify you are who you say you are.

By engaging your audience with personalizing content and clear flow, your email will stand out. Don’t forget that emails are working best in combination with other communication channels, content marketing and managing your overall online reputation.