It’s time! You have the perfect piece of content and the right audience to send it to. Now you must get your email communication ready to hit “send.”

As you craft this communication, there are some best practices to keep top of mind to ensure your audience not only opens the email but reads what’s inside.

Try using these tactics as you execute your email marketing campaigns to get the best results!

Effective Tactics to Use in Your Marketing Emails

1. Ditch the “no reply” and use a memorable sender's email address.
   Using a noreply@address prevents recipients from responding to your email. It’s like you’re telling your customers, “we don’t care enough about you to check this inbox.” Instead, pick a strong sender name that will help people quickly identify your brand and link it to an email mailbox that someone on your team routinely checks.

2. Write a compelling (but concise) subject line.
   A good subject line should contain between 30 and 50 characters, including spaces. The reason why you do this is that email providers often cut off subject lines that go beyond this length. Your email subject line should also create a sense of urgency while giving readers some indication of what to expect once they open the email.

3. Include your company logo.
   Logos are a must when it comes to emails. A 2020 study by Red Sift and Entrust found that logos positively impact email engagement as well as brand recall. With this in mind, add your logo to the upfront of your emails and link it back to your website.

4. Personalize the email greeting.
   Personalizing the greeting of your emails with your contacts' first names grabs the attention of each reader right away. Don't worry, personalizing an email's greeting line with 50 recipients' names doesn't mean you'll have to manually write and send 50 different emails from now on. Many email marketing tools today allow you to configure the greeting of your email campaign so that it automatically sends with the name of the people on your contact list – so everyone is getting a personal version of the same message.

5. Keep your message short and sweet.
   Your email readers don’t want to read a novel. They want you to get right to the point. If you don’t think brevity matters, then remember that the attention span of the average adult is less than eight seconds. So what’s the sweet spot for email length? While it isn’t a one-size-fits-all metric, a study by Boomerang found that marketing emails with 125 words or less saw a response rate of around 50% (that’s well above average).

6. Use impactful images.
   Including imagery that draws people in and connects readers to your message can help drive results. Impactful imagery invokes an emotional response from readers. Avoid images that look too staged or unnatural by using authentic photos from your day-to-day operations.

7. Have a strong call to action.
   If you don’t tell your readers what you want, they’ll never know. That’s why every email needs a strong, clear call-to-action (CTA). Include your CTA several times to increase your click-through rate and provide your audience with the convenience of reaching your content.

8. Make it easy to unsubscribe.
   Try as you might, not every subscriber on your mailing list will be excited, engaged, and energized by your emails. A percentage of your email list will unsubscribe, likely after the email you send. You should make this process as easy as possible, with a clear unsubscribe button in the footer of every email you send to stay in compliance with the law and leave a good last impression.

9. Review and edit.
   Look like the professional you are. Minimize errors and typos by listening to that inner high school teacher who red-lined your paper when you didn’t recheck your work before turning it in. Read through your message a few times, looking for errors. Ensure your message is clear and focused, easy to understand, and your readers can complete the action you want them to.

10. Test, measure, and repeat.
    Track the success of each email to see what’s working, what’s not, and what changes you should make as you go forward. As consumer and business behavior change, so will email and communication preferences, so always be on the lookout for the latest in email marketing trends and best practices.

Track the success of each email to see what’s working, what’s not, and what changes you should make as you go forward. As consumer and business behavior change, so will email and communication preferences, so always be on the lookout for the latest in email marketing trends and best practices.

Ready to take your marketing to the next level? Applied Marketing Automation® can do just that! But don’t take our word for it. Watch the on-demand webinar An Up-Close Look at What Applied Marketing Automation Can Do to see for yourself.