by Helen Holovach
Email marketing is all over the web already. Thousands of professionals rely on it and do their best to reach the highest results.
The key element in your email marketing strategy is an email. This is a masterpiece that demands professionalism, knowledge, time, and inspiration.
With grand experience, there are still a few things email writers forget about. Let me show them to you and help create a converting professional email.
1. The “From” field
The “From” line is one of the first things an email recipient sees in their Inbox. This is your business card that represents who you are, so try to not forget about it. There are a few ways you can write it:
- Your first or full name (Helen Holovach)
- The company name (io)
- Your first name and the company name (Helen from Snov.io)
The first option doesn’t give an idea to your recipients of who you are. The second one is impersonal and looks too tech. The last one is the best option: it combines professionalism and personal approach. As a professional, customize your sender’s name to be on the top of the mind and be recognizable.
2. Professional subject line
An email subject line defines the further destiny of your email: open, delete, or the spam folder.
Sometimes, professionals forget about it, and you can receive an email with no subject. From time to time, you can receive emails that burst with spam triggers, like free, cash, discount, etc. Often, the email subject line is so long and wordy that you cannot guess what the email is about and such small mistakes may hurt your email deliverability.
To avoid the spam folder and low open rate, follow these few tips:
- Do write the subject lines when creating email drip campaigns for your subscribers
- Use power words in the subject line to catch the eye
- Avoid spam trigger words that drive people mad
- Keep the email subject line short: of up to 34 symbols
3. Personal approach
A generalized approach won’t ever work again. People need personalization and individual ways of communication. They have to feel special and unique. They need to know you are a real person sending single emails to them. Thus, you need to personalize your email in general and the email subject line in particular.
Conduct research and analyze your audience. Find their personal and professional information that will help you reach out to them in a unique way. Use their names in the subject line and any other information in the email body. This will show that you do care about them and are ready for a face-to-face conversation. The more personalized email is and the more natural it looks, the higher results you will reach.
4. Pre-header
Pre-header is the part of an email displayed in the Inbox right after the subject line. If you leave it blank, your email will hardly look professional, and the desire to open it will be low. Use it as an extra element that converts people.
- Always remember to optimize the pre-header
- Never leave it blank. According to Litmus research, various options of pre-header can help boost the email open rate by 45%
- Keep it short. The best length is up to 55 symbols as this is the length mobile devices display
- Add the CTA that will engage the email recipients to open your message
- Do not repeat yourself. Your whole email serves one aim. Thus, every part of an email should serve it, but not repeat the same ideas. Make it the medium between the subject line and the email body
5. Greeting
When you start a conversation with your friend, you greet them first. So you do when writing a professional email to your clients and leads. And, I hope, there’s hardly a professional who forgets about this email element.
So what’s the problem with this email part, and why I decided to add it to this list? The main problem is with wording. Check these best greetings and choose the ones that suit your conversation best:
Remember to personalize your greeting with the recipient’s name. Also, use the fallback text that will be inserted if you don’t have the person’s name.
6. The purpose of the email
Explain the purpose of the email to your recipients and why they are getting this email. Something like this:
Yet, if you are reaching out to a cold lead, you need another strategy. Describe the purpose of your email and let people unsubscribe. I’ll disclose more information about the unsubscribe link further in the article. Stay tuned and go on reading!
7. The email length
An email copywriter or marketer can be carried away by the enthusiasm and get into the slightest details to describe a simple thing. Or vice versa, forget about crucial things and be too short (and non-informative) in their email. Both scenarios do not play into their hands.
To not get into a tight spot, learn what the numbers say.
In your emails, be short and to the point. A short message won’t provide enough information, while a too long one will be ignored.
8. Proper grammar and spelling
Spammers love writing emails with mistakes and non-appropriate symbols. This helps them avoid the spam folder. Professionals always double-check their messages or ask their colleagues to do that. You are a professional, aren’t you?
9. Simple language
Do not demonstrate your whole vocabulary of idioms and difficult words. Compose your emails as if 8-graders will read them: be simple and easy-to-understand.
If you doubt whether your email is clear, use a tool like Hemingway. It will check the text readability and help you simplify it.
10. Font
Of course, as a talented marketer, you have a desire to create a unique and attractive email. Pictures are a great way to bring your creativity to life. This is why do not forget about fonts. They can add value to your message and make it special, they influence the way we possess information.
“Maybe fonts speak a lot louder than we think they do,” Renaud, a Canadian student and blogger.
Read scientific research, experiment with fonts, and choose the ones that will bring you the best results. For now, the most appropriate business fonts are Arial and Helvetica.
11. Video
I know, videos in emails may hurt its deliverability. But still, why ignore this profitable email marketing strategy? Video adds extra value to your emails. It helps you disclose more information and educate your recipients. Finally, you can grow the conversion rate.
To avoid the negative impact, use email video marketing smartly. Instead of sending files, you can:
- Insert a link to YouTube
- Send gifs or cinemagraphs
- Use a static pic with a “play button” and anchor a link to a file storage
12. CTA
Rarely do professionals forget about the CTA. But I’d still like to mention this part of an email in the article with a few tips:
- One email for one CTA
- Cut the CTA off, make it short, and call to action
- A button performs better than a link
- The CTA is to be bright and easily found
- Round the CTA with text
13. Proper sign-off
You do understand that if you’ve greeted a person, you need to say a farewell too. Goodbye, Rgrds, Have a nice day, Looking forward to hearing from you, and so many more! But which one is the best option?
Have a look at the most popular farewells, and choose the most appropriate to your business conversation.
Source: Snov.io
14. Email signature
Sometimes, you can receive emails from someone. You don’t know who the person is, the company they represent, the ways you can get in touch with them. An email signature is the part of an email that makes all those problems disappear. In one small block (no more than 7 lines), you can provide all the necessary information:
15. Unsubscribe link or button
Besides laws behind the necessity of adding an unsubscribe link, there’s simple human respect. When a person receives an unexpected email, they want to unsubscribe. But if there’s no respective link, they mark the sender spammer. Do you want this?
Respect your email recipients: always add an unsubscribe link to your messages.
16. The company’s physical address
If you think your company’s physical address means nothing, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Especially, if you are in the USA or Canada. Within these two countries, this part of an email is a must-have for email marketers.
17. Social media links
Don’t know why, but quite many professionals forget about social media links. But you shouldn’t. Firstly, because they show you are a real person. Secondly, if a person unsubscribes from your mailings, you still have at least one social media channel to communicate with them. And re-engage them later.
You can add an extra text right after the social media icons:
18. Navigation
Navigation is the email element professionals often forget about. It can help you improve the CTR even if the email content is not of great value to a person.
Add the navigation bar to the top or bottom of an email, and include the navigation elements of your website or blog.
19. Change email preferences
Remember to respect your email recipients. Sometimes, people have their preferences changed. Professionals remember about that and provide this opportunity. This could be email frequency, time of receiving emails, or the email topics. Or all together.
Extra tips
I have four more tips in my mind to share with you. As far as they do not represent the email content, I’ve decided to describe them in a separate paragraph. These four things need mentioning as professionals often forget about them. They are the email list verification, segmentation, the sending frequency, and automation.
Email list verification
An email verification tool is a must-have for every email marketer. It guarantees the high-level quality of the list of recipients. With it onboard, you can be sure there are no invalid and abandoned email addresses. Thus, your emails will always reach their point of destination, inboxes.
Segmentation
Segmentation is one of the most profitable email marketing strategies. The CTR of segmented email campaigns is 50% higher than non-segmented ones. And that’s not surprising: who wants to receive an invaluable email offer?
This is what makes email list segmentation one of the key email marketing strategies. Divide your email recipients according to their pain points, needs, or preferences. This way, you will always be the best marketer who knows what their clients and leads need.
If you are dealing with cold leads, you can also segment them according to their buyer persona image.
Frequency and timing
Email frequency and timing are two other things marketers forget about. The rule the more, the better doesn’t work. According to the Campaign Monitor research, 69% of customers unsubscribe because of too frequent emails. That’s not the percentage you’d like to join.
Keep in mind a few things:
- Tuesday to Friday are the best days to send emails
- There’s no ideal time for sending emails: research your audience and find the time they prefer
- The perfect time for emails is 11 am to 4 pm
- Make regular pauses between emails. For cold emails, stick to the following scheme: day 1, day 8, day 15, day 22, and so on
Automation
It could be obvious that we are tied to the digital world. Devs know that and have already created thousands of marketing automation tools. One such instrument is an email drip campaign. This tool helps email marketing professionals automate cold outreach and communication with clients. With the help of triggered sequences, it gets easy to get in touch with any person.
The devil is in the details. So to create the best email ever, remember about every single detail. Add them and craft an appealing message, be simple and easy-to-read, call your recipients to action, and do not forget to let them be forgotten. To reach the highest open and conversion rates, launch A/B tests. This will let you see which elements of your messages perform best.
Helen Holovach is a dedicated copywriter for the Snov.io blog. She’s passionate about email marketing, deep research, statistics, mobile games, and singing songs to a guitar.