10 Good as Gold Email Marketing Tips, Strategies and Best Practices from Industry Experts

A study conducted by eConsultancy on the impact of and dependency on email marketing campaigns in the last year concluded that email is still considered an essential channel for driving revenue growth. About 73 percent survey respondents have claimed this marketing approach as an “Excellent” or “Good” strategy to generate higher returns on their investments in marketing efforts. Additionally, many other studies concluded facts that support efficacy of email including –

• According ExactTarget, 91% of users keep a tab on their inbox regularly.

• According to McKinsey & Company, email marketing helps about 40 times more in new customer acquisition than campaigns on Facebook and Twitter.

• Similarly, a study by Forrester Research has revealed that businesses using email marketing as a lead nurturing strategy help produce 50% more sales-ready, qualified leads at 1/3 less of the marketing costs.

Email marketing as a strategy is far from being abandoned by marketers, and email is still used as one of the key marketing strategies for lead and revenue generation. That’s why we have compiled these 10 “good-as-gold” email marketing tips, ideas, strategies and best practices – as followed by top-notch industry experts – to help you devise the best strategy for your campaign.

1. John Rampton from JohnRampton.com

John Rampton recommends –

“Try sending sales emails on Thursday night at 9PM Pacific. This pings our prospects when they are either in bed or getting ready for bed on the night before Friday: pay day. We’ve found that our prospects are 4x more likely to buy on Thursday night over any other night.”

2. Hiten Shah from Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics

Hiten Shah recommends –

“When I link to content in an email I always try to put my spin on it and provide an opinion. When I don’t do that, I noticed a substantial decline in clicks and even get emails from people requesting I add my opinion back in.

3. Devesh Khanal from Grow and Convert

Devesh Khanal recommends –

“Email is not just for sales and information — it’s also for entertainment. This is something very few brands do and it can cost you enormous revenue that is slowly lost as weeks, months, and years go buy and your stale emails get opened less and less.

I see two types of emails: (1) The sales email — enough said. (2) The “look we’re giving value!” email.

While (2) is important and should indeed be the core of your email marketing, I’ve noticed that masterful brands also include entertainment, fun, humor, and engaging stories in their emails. They include funny links, a personal story, a fun user story, a gif, or anything else to make reading the email pure fun.”

4. Chris Davis from Automation Bridge

Chris Davis recommends –

“Manage your own opt-in process by using tags instead of the built-in double opt-in most email marketing platforms provide by default.

By doing so you can set the exact criteria for what a confirmed contact is and have full control over your list’s hygiene.”

5. Jordie van Rijn from EmailMonday

Jordie van Rijn recommends –

“Before starting, write the main message down in a compressed version with your subject matter and benefits to the reader. Then add the “why now” and “what’s next.” This will help you to define your angle, structure your message and make your email more clear overall.

Exclusive Bonus: Click here to get these tips in a cheat sheet to read later.”

6. Kevan Lee from Buffer

Kevin Lee recommends –

“Number your newsletters. When I run a weekly/monthly newsletter, I like to treat it like a new issue of a publication. I’ll give it a number (e.g., “Issue #37 – Blogging Tips of the Pros”), which does a couple of things: 1) Helps build a bit of momentum in the mind of the reader who sees these emails as an ongoing series that they don’t want to miss (psychology!), 2) Helps establish an air of authority and consistency, if the issue number is high, and 3) is pretty catchy in the inbox.”

7. Matt Antonino from Stack Digital

Matt Antonino recommends –

“Prioritize sending regular emails. It’s not necessarily fun to spend a couple of hours setting up abandoned cart emails, creating that weekly tips newsletter, or starting to outline your nurture stream, but the results are worth it. Social media is the ‘fun’ marketing channel but email done right is the ‘money’ channel.”

8. Peep Laja from ConversionXL

Peep Laja recommends –

“Test your offer. The most important factor for getting more people to opt in to your email list is your offer – how compelling the value proposition is. The actual offer itself and the way you present it (copy + design) can make a huge difference. The offer needs to be relevant to your audience, create curiosity and offer instant gratification. Run lots of tests to find the right one.”

9. Joe Stych from Zapier

Joe Stych recommends –

“Don’t over-promise or mislead your subscribers just to get a click. Remember that the best way to build a list is to build trust—provide value in every message and the rest will take care of itself.”

10. Steli Efti from Close.io

Steli Efti recommends –

“Segment out subscribers that haven’t engaged with your recent emails and send them another email telling them you’re breaking up with them if they don’t respond.

Use a subject line that makes this very clear: “This is the last time you’ll hear from me …” / “I’ll never email you again, unless …” and then in the email ask them to click a link to re-confirm that they want to keep receiving your emails. You’ll maintain a much more engaged, focused and valuable subscriber base.”

Bonus tip: Noah Kagan from SumoMe

“Here’s how you can easily increase your email open rates by 30%. I call it “Double Opens.”

Step 1. Take an email you’ve already sent and change the subject line to something new

Step 2. Email it out a week later JUST TO YOUR NON-OPENS

You might think you have a great email open rate – but the fact is, 50%+ of people are NOT opening your emails.

With my first re-send, I got an extra 7,028 people to read my email, in just 1 minute of work.”

Have questions, or need some help in maximizing your email potential? Call us at (408) 502 6765 or contact us via our Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn to get some fast answers.