6 Email Marketing Tips to Create More Effective Campaigns

You’ve probably read numerous times that email is one of the most effective forms of digital marketing, with an ROI of $42 for every dollar spent. But what you probably don’t know is that only 29% of marketers know how to use email marketing effectively.

While everyone has the potential to use email marketing to their advantage, only a handful of marketers know how to apply the right strategies that yield great results and raise brand awareness. So, if you’re looking for unique ways to get better at email marketing, you’re in the right place!

Here are 6 ways to make your emails stand out, as well as tips for creating more effective email marketing campaigns.

Your subscribers likely receive upwards of 10 emails every day. So how do you make your emails enticing enough to capture their attention?  There’s no better way than playing around with subject lines.

Research has shown that 47% of subscribers open emails based on the subject line alone. And more shockingly, 69% will report your email as spam by just reading the headline.

The key takeaway? Your subject line can determine the success or failure of your email marketing campaign. Here are a few tips on how to create attractive subject lines.

This is a psychological principle famous with top marketers. The goal is to make customers feel like they might lose something important if they don’t take action right away. Emails that have words like “urgent”, “important”, and “alert” are proven to increase email open rates. Here’s an example of an email using the fear of missing out.

Humans are naturally drawn to gaps when consuming information. You can make use of this principle to persuade audiences to open your email.

However, don’t use clickbait – the headline should give a brief overview of valuable content in the email. Below is a sample email headline applying this principle.

As you can see, this subject line fuels curiosity. It makes recipients want to know more about how the sender achieved these results, and how they can apply this themselves. 

More strategies you can use to create powerful headlines include:

Also, you can explore DMARC reports to ensure your email delivery is optimized, maximizing the impact of attention-grabbing subject lines.

There’s more to personalization than mentioning your subscriber’s name. In fact, research by Janrain and Blue found out that 96% of customers receive mistargeted promotions through emails.

Personalization in email marketing should go beyond reaching inboxes – it should reach humans. Consumers expect relevant content that will give them a unique and memorable experience.

Luckily, email service providers give you valuable data and features to create emails that connect with your audience.

For example, a tool like GetResponse allows you to add emojis in your subject line or body text. IT also offers a powerful A/B testing feature to determine if using emojis improves your email performance. Right Inbox also offers a powerful mail merge feature for Gmail that allows users to contact many people with a customized message. While ActiveCampaign takes personalization to the next level by marrying it with automation. 

By utilizing the features of these email marketing tools, you can collect a wealth of information on your subscribers to tweak your automation methods.

Here are a few more things you can do to personalize your emails:

Between email marketers, the battle of custom vs. ready-made email templates never seems to end. However, both have their pros and cons. For instance, custom templates can give you unlimited possibilities, but also need to be coded from scratch making them more complex and often more expensive. Creating a fully functional and practical customized email template will generally take you between 2 -10 days and cost you upwards of $250.

However, if you’re concerned with saving time and money – ready-made templates might be for you. While templates might not offer full creative freedom or allow you to create what you want from scratch, they do offer something powerful that most email marketers want – platform and performance testing done by email service providers. In short, this means that the templates you use have been tested and proven to yield results in previous campaigns.

For example, Mailchimp gives you optimized templates ready for customization with images and copy – you just need to add your content and send it to your mailing list. But if you want more options, you can also check out Mailchimp alternatives.

Ready-used email templates are the best option for sending last-moment email campaigns with quick results, as they’re faster to create and offer enough features to pull together a quick campaign.

While generic calls to action like “buy now” or “shop now” may work for specific occasions, they don’t always pack the punch that your audience needs to take action.

Your CTAs should stimulate curiosity and interest your subscribers. Your CTAs should answer the following questions: 

Here’s a perfect example of a powerful CTA from Hubspot.

The button is simple but unique. Planting a tree is not something you’d expect as a CTA, but contextually, it works. 

Creativity is crucial for enticing email recipients to take your desired action.  Whether that’s signing up for a webinar you’re hosting, or downloading an online course you’ve built, the button is your one chance to get them interested enough to make that click. 

Have you ever chosen to buy a product simply because it had more reviews than another? The answer is probably yes.

Why? Humans look to others for guidance, and deciding is easier when many people choose one product over another. This is called social proof. 

As a marketer, you can use this principle to influence the behavior of your subscribers and potential customers.

There are multiple ways you can incorporate social proof in your email campaigns. The most common is mentioning how many people have joined your mailing list on your landing page or lead magnet.

Here’s an example of how weMail does it.

Showing their subscriber count tells their website visitors that they’ll get something valuable when they sign up to the list. But social proof doesn’t end there.

The best way to use this in your email campaigns is by asking for testimonials from previous customers who’ve purchased and loved your product.

You can send a testimonial request as part of your purchase confirmation email, which you can then include in your next email campaigns. The main point of social proof is to assure your subscribers that they’ve made the right decision by joining your mailing list, and an even better decision if they purchase your product.

Email marketing tools are the bloodline of email marketing campaigns. Most tools give you attractive features like autoresponders, hundreds of templates, drag and drop editors, and loads of integrations. However, the most powerful features that can significantly help your email campaigns are A/B testing, analytics, and reports.

These features will give you essential data like email open rate, delivery rate, conversion rate, and bounce rate. Others are more sophisticated and give intricate features like the overall performance of your campaign and templates that record more conversions.

In fact, email tracking tools are among the most powerful marketing strategies because they automate a large part of your campaign initiatives. Once you implement your tags, groups, and other automation features, you can roll out your next campaign with ease. You only need to reset these inputs when your campaign ends or the goals of your current campaign change.

It’s through these details in your data that you can shed light on your campaign performance and know what type of content works best.

Also make sure to regularly clean your email lists so you can reduce your marketing costs and maintain a healthy deliverability rate. According to estimates, 20% of emails become invalid each year, making maintaining a clean list even more important. Use a bulk email verifier to eliminate invalid email addresses from your email list, ensuring its cleanliness.

Email marketing is all about strategy. There’s no one single tip that will guarantee results, however offering an outstanding product and service, knowing how to communicate it well to your audience, and employing effective email marketing tools and features will be sure to help you generate better ROI. 

David Campbell is a digital marketing specialist at Ramp Ventures. He helps manage the content marketing team at Right Inbox. When he’s not working, he enjoys traveling and trying to learn Spanish.