Email is a powerful tool for small business owners when wielded correctly. Luckily there is a lot of data out there so you don’t have to do a lot of guessing at what goes into crafting an effective email.

Did you know that email marketing has one of the highest ROIs of any form of marketing with an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent according to Litmus. That can be enormous for a small business like yours! So how can you create emails to take advantage of that hefty ROI? For a start you can follow some of the tried and true best practices that have proved effective time and time again. Here are a few of them…

Personalize Your Email Sends

One of the biggest trends of the last decade in email marketing has been personalization, and for good reason! Personalized sends are open significantly more and can generate a transaction 6X higher than regular email sends according to Business2Community.

The simplest form of personalization starts in the subject line by simply adding the recipient's name in the subject. Instead of saying “Save 40% This Weekend!” you can personalize and say, “Lisa, Save 40% This Weekend!” So easy, right?

Beyond adding names to emails and subject lines, personalization expands to the content of the email itself. Businesses collect data within email lists to track the interests and other data points to send more relevant emails to each contact. This can be extremely detailed and include on-page data or simply general information like location, age, gender and education. The more specific you can get the more personal the emails you send become and the more effective they will be.

Create Clear CTAs

What do you want your reader to do? Every email you send should have a purpose - promote a sale, introduce a new product, share a piece of content etc. What action do you want the reader to take? This should be defined with a clear call to action within the email. 

Your CTA should be clearly highlighted! No one should have to search for it. They don’t need to scream “Buy Now” but they should be very clear and contextual. Try using a button to make it stand out or a link in a contrasting color. You can certainly play around with your CTAs to find what feels organic to your brand. Try out some different copy as well!

Link Everything

It’s 2021 so at this point any email you send should probably include some kind of visual whether that be a photo or an animated gif. When adding anything make sure it’s linked to go somewhere. 

People are trained from decades on the internet to think that everything is clickable so don’t leave them hanging! If they are clicking they want to learn more so make sure they are able to get someplace else.

Make Sure It’s Mobile Friendly

You are probably creating your emails on a laptop or desktop computer and will test it out there but do not forget about mobile! Right now around 50 percent of emails are opened on a mobile device, according to Campaign Monitor with that number rapidly growing. Many people don’t even use or own a computer anymore. 

So if you create an email that looks great on your laptop and send it out, how can you be certain it will look good to half or more than half of your recipients without checking? Make sure you are using a mobile-friendly layout from the start. Also, many email marketing services have a tool that allows you to preview your email on a number of different devices which is very handy when building an email. If you don’t have access to that then simply send yourself a preview and open it on your phone!

Keep in mind that big chunks of text look even longer on mobile so keeping things concise is even more important. Also huge images tend to take longer to load on mobile devices so those should be used sparingly or resized so they load faster.

Spend Some Time On The Subject Lines

The first step in getting someone to click on a link inside your email is getting them to open the email in the first place. This is the job of the subject line! Creating an effective subject line takes a little bit of testing and a little bit of understanding your audience. In fact there are a whole set of best practices for email subject lines themselves!

Don’t be afraid to A/B test a few ideas to see which resonates better with your customers.

Find The Best Time To Send

When is the best time to send your emails? If you Google this you will probably find an answer - but so will everyone else looking to schedule an email. The truth is different for everyone so play with it and see where you see the most success! Split your list in half and send the same email at the same time on one day and the next and see if you see a difference. 

Think about your customers and their lives and start there. A few tips is to send at an off-time like 10:22 because many companies tend to stick to the 15 minute increment marks and to send at the beginning of the week since open rates tend to drop off at the end of the week and the weekend.

Clean Your Email List

To ensure you are making it to the inbox, clean your email list periodically. This means cleaning out all hard bounces, multiple soft bounces, duplicates and anyone who has not engaged with a single email in a period of time (6-12 months). This will make sure you are not getting caught in spam traps, which will hurt your sender status. This will also make sure you aren’t paying to send to people who will never even open your emails!

Final Thoughts

Email is one of the most powerful tools you have as a small business owner if you use it effectively. Following a few best practices won’t take any more time out of your day and might change your business for the better in the long run!

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