Top 5 Email Marketing Best Practices to Generate Sales

Who knows email marketing best practices better than Santa Claus? For a man that only works one day a year, he does a great job generating publicity. Everything from movies, shows, and books, to full-on government websites that track his trip around the world. Frankly put, Santa drives sales.

According to a study, around 90% of kids are believers in Santa. Doesn’t every business want 90% of their customers to be true believers? So how does he do it?

Luckily for us, Santa wrote to Emailable his top 5 proven email marketing best practices to generate unbelievable sales. This will definitely come in handy for your marketing campaigns to stay out of the spam folder. Let’s take a look at Santa’s list.

Top 5 Email Marketing Best Practices

1. Make a great gift

Have something to offer them! Provide value with every email you send. Whether it’s a big update, a promotion, or a coupon, it’s important that it engages the customers. In fact, when you provide an incentive in the subject line, it can increase your open rate by up to 50%.

So how do we know if we are truly giving customers a great offer or piece of information? That’s where A/B testing comes in.

It’s important to A/B test every part of your email; from your subject line, to your email body and signature. A/B testing your email allows you to pinpoint the most effective strategies, and deploy them to your audience.

Consistently testing your marketing emails will allow you to create more effective marketing campaigns and drive higher conversion rates.

2. Wrap your gifts with care

We must make sure that the gift we’re giving customers in our email marketing campaign looks pretty. Because who likes opening an ugly present? Here’s a quick checklist to ensure your emails always look great:

• Colors align with brand
• Company logo present
• Optimize preview text
• Keep emails 500x650 pixels
• Limit the number of typefaces
• Hyperlink text indicates URL destination
• The footer includes company details and an unsubscribe button

Now that you’ve worked through the email marketing design best practices, your gift will be wrapped nicely and with care. Following these best practices ensures that your customer will receive an email that looks visually appealing and increases sales.

We have our present, we’ve wrapped it, so now what?

3. Make a list, check it twice

Before you send out your emails, it’s crucial that you check and clean your email list. If you don’t, you’ll waste resources on emails to accounts that will never open it. This will hurt your engagement rate and waste time.

Additionally, consistently sending to bad email addresses will lower your sender score. A lower sender score means that you’ll get worse inbox placement with good addresses, potentially landing you in the SPAM folder or even getting your domain blacklisted.

Year-over-year, around 20% of your email list will naturally decay, so if you send to bad email addresses, you’ll hurt your ROI. Below, you’ll see a depiction of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throwing your unverified emails in the SPAM folder and blacklisting you.

Have you ever heard about Santa delivering presents to the wrong house? Nope. He verifies his lists before delivering them. You should do the same to ensure that your customers are receiving your emails.

4. Timing is everything

It’s important for your email marketing campaigns to deliver at the right time as well. If you send your emails at random times, with no consistency, your emails are more likely to be flagged as spam and not land in the inbox. ISPs protect against the unusual activity like massive email sends and sends at inconsistent times. You need to find a time that works best for your business and stick to it. Additionally, it’s best to gradually increase your desired total emails sent rather than all at once, which can look suspicious to ISPs.

Remember, consistency is key. Your customers will appreciate your consistency in their inbox as well, driving engagement and sales. When you’re a consistent sender, it shows your customers that you’re a reliable and trustworthy brand.

5. Spread cheer

In fact, 78% of people share their favorite recent experiences with people they know at least once per week. Other studies have shown that 90% of people are more likely to trust a brand recommended by another person. If you can get your customer cheerful about your company, your sales will skyrocket.

How can we spread cheer in emails? Here are some quick ways to make your customers feel cheerful:

• Don’t waste their time.
• Personalize their emails with information you’ve collected about them and their preferences. Who wants to open an email that says “Hello Customer”? 🤮
• Personalize the email signature with a real-life person’s name. Most people don’t like talking to robots. People are more likely to read and respond when they think the email is coming from an individual person.
• Speak like a human, with personality. The more your brand can differentiate itself from the competition, the better. No one wants boring marketing emails.

Great, now we know how to spread cheer in our email marketing campaigns. I think it’s time for a review.

Summary

Phew - Santa’s top 5 went quickly. As they say, time flies when you’re having fun. Let’s go over a quick summary, just in case you skipped to the bottom of the post:

• Make a great gift
  • Your email needs to be something valuable to your customers.
• Wrap your gifts with care
  • Go through the checklist to ensure your emails always look stunning.
• Make a list, check it twice
  • Verify your email list, as lists decay by around 20% per year.
• Timing is everything
  • Sender consistency is key.
• Spread cheer
  • Personalize your emails, add your personality, and spread joy.

If you follow these proven email marketing best practices, you’ll have an incredibly successful campaign. There’s no way the Grinch (or your boss) will be able to steal your Christmas bonus.