100% of your email readers are people. Personalize.
If you know someone’s name, would you just say “Hey” every time?
The person would think:
“Oh, she has forgotten my name again. She doesn’t care.”
In emails, you won’t get to meet the person. But you get a chance to connect, and to get read.
Avoid these like the plague:
- “Hey”
- “Hey there”
- “You there?”
Call them by their first name.
Change the above sentences to sound more relatable.
- “Hey Jane”
- “Hey there Jane!”
- “You there Jane?”
Much better, right?
If your email is inviting enough, your customers would love to invite themselves.
Increase CTR by double opt-in.
What’s double opt-in?
It’s when a person verifies that they own the email via an OTP or a verification email.
The most important goal of email marketing is to make sure your emails have:
- An almost zero bounce rate
- High deliverability
- A good CTR
Reduce bounce rates
An email sent by you will bounce, if the email address you’re sending the email to doesn’t exist.
This can happen if a person drops an email address which isn’t owned by them, and you don’t verify it.
Increases deliverability
If you are not ensuring double opt-in, you will keep sending emails - but you will never know if the user has ever received your email.
Increases CTR
CTR stands for Click-Through rate.
If a person has double opted-in to your emails before, and now you send them an email - they are more likely to open and read that email, because they already know you.
Emails don’t have feelings. Make ‘em responsive.
Make sure they look good in all the devices:
- Desktop
- Mobile
- Tablet
Track emails, but not too much.
- Clickbaity subject lines
- Intensive tracking where people can’t even read emails without unblocking images
- Put unsubscribe link (and actually make it no-questions-asked unsub), no reply-based unsubscribes
Keep your heart open, and replies ‘open-er’.
Don’t just have a no-reply email. Give them an email like [email protected], or [email protected] where they can actually reach out to you.
Email marketing is, and should never be a one-sided game. Let customers reply, and you’ll be able to serve their needs better.
How many links is too many links?
Decrease spam by putting 1-2 links (maximum) and avoiding a sales-pitchy tone in your email.
If you put more, the email client thinks you are just spamming.
Avoid email spoofing.
Set these up properly to make sure you don’t land up in spam:
- DMARC
- DKIM
- SPF
Use custom templates.
Having custom email templates will make sure that you stand out and that your customer reads your emails. If you use Amazon SES, use SES to create email templates and send emails.
Separate your transactional and promotional emails.
It will hurt your deliverability. Users will mark your promotions as spam but your transactional emails will also be treated as spam from next time.
Use dedicated IP for transactional emails.
You can get a dedicated IP for $24/month on Amazon SES, which will increase your reputation.
Help first, market last.
If you have an email newsletter, choose to pack it with value — instead of just disguising every email as your sales pitch.
Most email newsletters are free.
Don’t tell them that the solution doesn’t exist in your email, but exists in the product you’ve put a link to.
A newsletter is a promise of value, and customers today are smart.
- They have so less time
- They can tell seconds into the email if you are:
- Helping them ease their life with your tips
- Pitch-slapping them into buying your newest product
Value first, pitch last.
Build trust with zero mislead.
Have email text that your readers would actually find, if they click on your notification - and read the body of your email.
Don’t assume everyone is on Gmail.
You should test your emails on other clients as well, like:
- FairEmail
- Outlook
- Apple Mail
- Thunderbird
Stop sending emails to people who don’t want it.
Bought an email list? Excited to email those CEOs of big companies or small startups? If I was you, I wouldn’t do that.
You might not want to send emails to people who never signed up for your emails. You don’t want to be marked as spam on Gmail by 50% of your emails you send.
The most you can do is:
- Send one email
- Try to follow up (not with 10 emails)