Email Marketing Best Practices You Need to Implement in 2023

Email is a sweet spot within marketing. You get to personally interact with your target audience, you’re allowed a larger character count than a social post, and it helps you stay top of mind.

But how do you make sure your audience is not only receiving your content via email, but opening, engaging, and taking the next step you’re directing them towards?

Optimize the following parts of your email:

✓  Subject Line

✓  Sender Name

✓  Content

Subject Line

Users are bombarded with about a hundred emails per day, making it challenging to stand out from the crowd. To ensure your audience receives your email and opens it, here’s how to optimize your subject line:

 

Make it short and sweet
Up to 45 characters, or about 7 words

Minimize punctuation
If you use an exclamation point and question mark or even two exclamation points/question marks–you are more likely to get flagged as spam.

Action-oriented and engaging
Capture their attention and make them want to open your email.

Personalized
When applicable, segment your emails based on interest or include a personalization tag with their first name.

If an emoji is appropriate, use only one
Research shows that when it fits the audience, using one emoji can increase open rates while using more than one can be detrimental.

Use numbers when it makes sense
Numbers can help catch the eye when users are skimming their inboxes. When it makes sense, using a number can help increase open rates.

Avoid spam words
These include words such as: Buy Now, $$, Extra income, Bargain, Cash, Get paid, Passwords, Open, etc. Within the right context, you may bypass the spam filter, but it’s best to avoid spam words when possible.

Avoid using all caps
Not only does it look weird in the inbox, but it can also get your email sent to the spam folder.

 

Sender Name

The sender name is an important way to customize your email and build familiarity. In most cases there are two approaches to customizing your sender name:

 

From the Company
Build brand familiarity by using your company name as the sender. The name itself should be your company name and the “from” email address should be a general company email (i.e. info@ or help@)

From an Individual
Use someone’s name from your team to be the “sender” of an email to help establish and further build a personal relationship. This makes individuals feel like they are receiving an email from a person (instead of a company). When using this approach, make sure to remember:

  • The “from” email address reflects that person’s email, not a general info@ email address. You can, however, customize the “respond to” email on most platforms, which will direct any responses to a different email address.
  • The content of the email feels personal and is written in the first-person
  • The signature matches the individual (not the company at large)
  • The email design should match the sender, so if you’re sending an email “from” a person, it likely doesn’t make sense for you to have a fully designed email with a button unless that is part of your marketing strategy at large.

Content

The content of your email is the third piece of the email puzzle and is just as important as the other pieces we’ve covered. Make sure you’re giving your audience quality and relevant content to:

 

Maintain trust
In your emails, your content should match your brand and your subject line. Maintaining trust with your audience is the most important.

Have a clear, direct call to action
Each email should have a purpose.  Don’t forget to make it clear what action you want the user to take. Based on your email style, this can be an in-text link or a button.

Avoid spam words
Just as you optimize your subject line, make sure to avoid spam words in the body of the email as well. You can find the most updated list of 394 spam words here. This includes words such as: friend, Make $, Make money, Money making, Extra income, etc.

Always include an unsubscribe button
This should be part of your footer in every email, and once you set it up once you should be good to go. Subscribers should always have the opportunity to opt-out of communication, and if it’s not included you are more likely to be flagged for spam.

Use photos to accent, but make sure they’re optimized
Using images in your emails to accent your message can be a great way to add some visual pizzazz, however, you should make sure:

Images are no more than 200 pixels x 600 pixels (many platforms let you adjust the size within the email)

  • Images should be uploaded as jpegs
  • Only use as many images as are necessary
  • Add descriptive alt tags to provide image context if an image doesn’t load or a user has blocked images
  • Never have content only present in the image – it should be written in the text and emphasized by the image.
  • Link them to your website or other relevant pages

Once you’ve made these changes to optimize your email, make sure to test your email by sending a test copy to yourself. If it goes to your spam folder, double-check the subject name, sender, and content of the email.

We hope you’re ready to level up your email marketing with these best practices. If you need help crafting a subject line or defining brand messaging that will resonate with your audience, Brasco /// is ready to help! Drop us a line.