7 Essential Email Marketing Rules

Email marketing can be the most effective marketing channel for B2B lead generation. However, it can also be a total waste of time. The good news is that you can watch your conversions grow and master the art of email marketing by adopting a range of simple rules.

Here are the top seven rules for successful email marketing that are guaranteed to get you great ROI on your next email marketing campaign.

1. Nail the subject line

Getting users to open your email is the first hurdle. Well, actually, avoiding the spam filter is your first hurdle. But that’s a whole blog in itself, as it’s more technical. Back to the subject line: It’s the all-important first impression that you only have one shot at. In just a few characters, you need to engage your prospect, intrigue them enough that they click on your email, and do so in a way that encourages trust. So no tricks, no gimmicks. Just something concise, catchy, authentic and not at all spammy. 

It’s actually the most difficult part of crafting a successful email campaign. Because of this, we suggest trialling multiple titles and gauging the interactions and responses to guide your decisions about what works for your audience.

2. Get personal

In most modern marketing techniques, personalisation is the key to success. Thankfully, tailoring an email to each person in your database should be easy with today’s technology. In fact, you should definitely be customising content beyond a name. You can use location, job titles and employers, local events, activity with your brand or website or previous purchases – all of this data can be used to create email content specifically for your contact. A good account profiling service can give you all this information. But you don’t want to go overboard – we’re going for friendly and invested, not creepy.

3. Make it easy to opt-out

If someone doesn’t want to engage with your brand through email, you aren’t going to make any wins by continuing to send them content. Embrace the unsubscribe button. It prevents you from wasting your time and resources.

4. Use automation

Thank the cloud for automation. Using an automated email marketing platform can help you save time and money by easily allowing all that wonderful personalisation of content as described above. It also allows you to create customised templates, create specific rules for reactions and record lots of lovely data.

5. Don’t forget mobile

More than a third (35%) of business professionals open their email on their mobile. When you make your email design mobile-friendly, you deliver better read and click-through rates.

6. Always include a call to action

You’ve beaten all the odds. Miraculously, you’ve circumvented the spam filter, crafted the perfect title, and ensured your email has been opened. Also, you’ve created spot-on value-driven content, and you’ve achieved successful engagement with a prospect! Hooray! Now… what do you want them to do next? Tell them! Just as in sales you should ‘always be closing’, in marketing you should ‘always be calling to action’.

7. Constantly learn and adjust

Even if your email marketing campaigns are historically very successful, there’s always room for improvement. Ensure you are comprehensively recording and tracking data from all your email marketing activity, and using it to fuel decision-making in the future.

Email marketing has a notoriously great ROI – which is why we offer a thriving email marketing service. Find out more about how we do it.