1. Consider design within email preview
In fact, it’s hard to imagine how many еmails get into our mailboxes every day. 70% of them go to trash without even being opened. Therefore, it is crucial to make an email sell itself literally from the first millisecond of the first glance. Most email service providers have similar format of an email preview pane. Usually it is 3 inches deep and 600 pixels long. Consider this factor when composing an email. It is the place where you need to make the user open your letter. Remember about preview weight, since you certainly don’t want your letter to upload longer than the others do. Otherwise, a heavy letter can be ignored.
2. Define links
Remember an important rule – an email link must look like a link. It means that you shouldn’t hide it behind buttons or images. You also can consider a hyperlink text. Such links have the highest click-through rate. Don’t try to invent a wheel. Just make your link visible. Let it be bald, blue font or underlined if possible. Remember that your link must be clear and distinct.
3. Use light images only
Undoubtedly, the visual image is very important for your email campaign, but note that internal images of some email clients may not display inside the letters of others. And you certainly don’t want the recipient miss the meaning that you have put into that image. Don’t let users receive blank spaces. If you can’t do without visualization, try making it lightweight, so it could upload quickly, and fit into the window without scrolling.
Try to be independent from images. Sometimes they need help to transmit your message. Always use alt and title description in case images don’t load.
4. Engage users quickly
As we have already mentioned, the basis for the success of each email distribution is an optimized text. The text must be written according certain limits. Every day people are overloaded with a huge flow of information, their attention and time are stiffed. Your task is to create a short, laconic, and to the point text that will immediately let the reader understand the essence of your proposal. Give up on long lyrical digressions. Divide the text into short blocks, and back it up with links in case the reader wants to know about it in more detail.
5. Stay in legal communication space
This time it’s not just a tip or an advice, it’s a law that needs to be obeyed. Make sure that your subscribers can unsubscribe easily if they want, and this procedure takes one or two clicks. Moreover, commercial emails must clearly indicate that they are commercial. The offer in the body of the letter must have a link to the official website that makes it. In addition, it is necessary to have an actual physical location, so as not to end up in the CAN-SPAM list. Otherwise, you’re going to pay a lot of fines.
6. Let users unsubscribe
Easy come easy go. Let your users quickly unsubscribe if they no longer want to receive the newsletter. Otherwise, you have all chances to be marked as spam and get more serious problems in the future.
7. Make emails personalized
If you want to improve your open and click-through rate, concentrate on personalized emails. If you are not an anonymous organization, obviously you have personal data of each subscriber. Use first name in the subject line and email body.
8. Stop using CSS
CSS especially by hands can be so time-consuming and inefficient, that maybe you should consider stop doing it. Moreover, many email clients don’t support it. Of course, every single buyer is important, but think what is really worth of your time? You can spend it in a more productive way. Using and
tags can make a good service to visual perception in general.
9. Reduce email spam score.
If you are legitimate and ethical email marketer, learn spam words and try to avoid them. Spam filters never sleep. Try to eliminate as much words marked as spam as you can. Probably you will not be able to do it 100%, but avoiding spam triggers will keep you safe from identifying as a potential spammer.
10. Always optimize
Before you start sending your emails, you must test them, to be sure that they work properly in various email service providers. See if every element of your letter is opened and loaded properly, and if there are chances to get to spam. Measure thrice and cut once.
Conclusion
For sure, lots of other techniques and principles can be applied to your newsletter campaign to make it successful and productive. However, these ten are core and inviolable. Applying them will save you hours of editing, rewriting and adjusting.