As the online landscape continues to evolve, email marketing best practices are constantly changing. It can be tough to keep up with all the latest trends and tips, but we’ve got you covered.

To help you get the most out of your email marketing campaigns, we’ve compiled a list of our top email marketing best practices. From building a strong list of subscribers to designing emails that convert, these tips will help you take your email marketing from good to stellar.

Basic Email Marketing Best Practices

1. Segment Your List

List segmentation means sectioning off your master email list into smaller lists based on specific criteria. The benefits of list segmentation are two-fold. First, it allows you to send more targeted, relevant messages to your contacts, and second, it can help improve your open and click-through rates.

There are a few different ways to go about segmenting your list. These include,

• Geographic location
• Age
• Gender
• Purchase history
• Interests
• Lead source
• Engagement level

2. Clean Your Lists Regularly

Cleaning an email list is essential for maintaining the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns. Here are several ways to clean and maintain a healthy email list:

• Remove Inactive Subscribers: Identify subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails over a specific period, such as six months or a year, and remove them from your list.
• Check for Bounces: Regularly remove email addresses that return hard bounces. A hard bounce indicates a permanent problem with the email address, such as it being non-existent.
• Validate Email Addresses: Use email validation tools to check the validity of the email addresses on your list. These tools can identify typos, disposable email addresses, or addresses that no longer exist.
• Unsubscribe Link: Ensure that the unsubscribe link in your emails is easy to find. This allows uninterested recipients to easily opt-out, keeping your list more engaged.
• Re-Engagement Campaigns: Before removing inactive subscribers, try re-engagement campaigns to win back their interest. If they don’t respond, remove them from the list.
• Segmentation: I mentioned this above, but always segment your list based on engagement levels and send targeted content to each segment. This can improve engagement and reduce unsubscriptions.
• Regular Updates: Prompt subscribers to update their preferences and contact information regularly. This helps in maintaining an up-to-date and relevant list.
• Double Opt-In: Use a double opt-in process for new subscribers. This ensures that the email address is valid and that the subscriber genuinely wants to receive emails from you.
• Analyze Engagement Metrics: Regularly review your email campaign’s analytics to identify patterns of low engagement, which can help in list cleaning decisions.
• Avoid Purchased Lists: Refrain from adding purchased or rented email addresses to your list, as these are often low-quality and can lead to high bounce rates and spam complaints.
• Feedback from Unsubscribers: Collect feedback from users who unsubscribe to understand why they’re leaving. This information can be used to improve future campaigns and list management.
• Regular Audits: Conduct regular audits of your email list to check for areas of improvement and to ensure compliance with email marketing best practices.

3. Personalize

Email personalization is a must. By definition, email personalization means using customer data to create and deliver targeted messages that are relevant to each recipient. It goes hand-in-hand with list segmentation. 

Here are a few email personalization best practices to keep in mind:

• Use the recipient’s first name in the email’s subject line or body.
• Segment your email list so that you can send more targeted, relevant messages to groups of people with similar interests, qualities, or on-site activity. 
• Use customer data to create dynamic content that changes based on what you know about the recipients.
• Send emails at a time that is most likely to be convenient for the recipient, based on their location and time zone.

4. Use the Right Email Frequency

The perfect email frequency is a delicate balance. Send too many emails, and you risk getting your subscribers to mark you as a spammer. Send too few, and your subscribers will forget about you. How do you find the perfect balance?

The answer depends on your audience. If you’re sending emails to a cold list, you’ll want to want to be more cautious and send fewer emails. If you have a list of engaged subscribers, you can afford to be more frequent.

Experiment with different frequencies and see what works best. You may need to adjust your strategy over time as your subscriber list grows or changes.

5. Practice Consistent Branding

Brand consistency is important in email marketing because it helps create a cohesive experience for recipients and reinforces your brand identity. Your recipients should know who you are and what you do within seconds of opening your email. If they can’t tell who you are or what you’re offering, they’ll likely delete your message without reading it.

To create a consistent branding strategy, develop a strong visual identity for your business. Use the same colors, fonts, and logo in all your marketing materials, including your emails. This makes it easy for recipients to recognize your message and engage with your content.

In addition to visual branding, make sure your email voice is consistent with the rest of your communications. Your tone should be professional yet friendly and reflect your brand’s overall personality.

6. Follow CTA Rules

The CTA is key in any email marketing campaign. A good CTA can ultimately affect the success of your email campaign. Here are a few rules you should follow when crafting your CTAs:

• Keep it simple
• Make it bold and clear
• Be specific
• Use actionable language
• Include only one CTA per email
• Make sure your CTA is front and center

7. A/B test

An A/B test is a simple yet powerful way to improve your email marketing campaigns. By testing two different versions of an email, you can see which version performs better in terms of clicks, opens, or other engagement metrics and make changes accordingly.

You can test several things in your emails, including the subject line, the call to action, the length of the email, and even the time of day that you send it. Testing different elements will help you fine-tune your email marketing strategy and ensure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns.

8. Always Check Results

Email marketing is critical to any digital marketing strategy, but it’s also one of the easiest channels to get wrong. With so many moving parts and potential pitfalls, it’s important to always stay on top of your email marketing game by regularly checking your results.

This means looking closely at your email metrics, like open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, and complaint rates. These metrics will give you a good indication of how your email campaigns are performing and where you may need to make some adjustments.

Advanced Email Marketing Best Practices

1. Verify Your List

List verification is the process of verifying that your email list contains only valid, active subscribers. Invalid or inactive emails can cause a number of problems, including deliverability issues and decreased engagement rates.

One way to do this is using Benchmark Email’s Smart Sending Feature. This feature helps you identify unengaged and dormant subscribers using data from previous email campaigns and leaves them out of your current email. This ensures that your emails only go to people who will appreciate them, resulting in higher engagement rates.

The beautiful thing about Smart Sending is that the contacts remain on your list, and you can contact them in the future for other marketing purposes or if they re-engage with your content.

2. Check In On Deliverability 

It’s important to keep an eye on your email deliverability so you can make sure your messages are getting through to your subscribers. Here are some things to look for:

• Check your bounce rate.
• Monitor your spam complaints.
• Keep an eye on your open rates and click-through rates.
• Pay attention to how quickly your emails are being delivered. If you notice a delay, it could mean a problem with your server or ISPs is blocking your messages.
• Make sure you’re using a reputable email service provider (ESP), like Benchmark Email.

3. Organically Build Your List 

Organic list building isn’t a new concept, but it’s one that email marketers often overlook. By definition, organic list building is adding new subscribers to your email list through organic means, such as opt-in forms or sign-up buttons on your website.

When building your list organically, you should:

• Provide value
• Keep it personal
• Don’t be spammy
• Give subscribers an easy way out by including an unsubscribe link in every email you send

4. Automate With AI

To keep your email marketing campaign fresh, it’s important to automate certain aspects of it with AI. This includes tasks like lead nurturing, segmentation, and personalization.

With AI, you can automatically send welcome emails to new subscribers, set up autoresponders, automate follow-up emails and transactional emails, and automate drip campaigns, among others.

This helps you respond to your subscribers promptly, boosts engagement, and helps you save time that can be spent optimizing other aspects of your email marketing and campaigns.

5. Use a Valid Reply Email Address

It’s important to use a valid reply email address when sending email marketing messages. This ensures that people who receive your emails can reply to them if they have any questions or feedback. It also helps to build trust with your audience, as they can see that you’re accessible and willing to hear what they have to say.

You can set up a separate email address just for your email marketing communications to keep an eye on incoming messages and respond quickly. Also, make sure that your emails are set up to include a “Reply-To” header so that your subscribers know you are open to receiving feedback.

6. Work on Design

Without a compelling email design, your email marketing may likely fail. You don’t need to be a design expert to create on-brand, professional-looking emails that grab attention and drive engagement, but you do need to do the work.

When designing your emails,

• Keep it simple and clutter-free
• Use eye-catching visuals
• Use typography to your advantage
• Pay attention to mobile optimization
• Always test out different designs and layouts before sending out your emails to see what works best for your audience

7. Get Creative With Email Copy

One of the most important aspects of effective email marketing is crafting well-written and engaging copy. This can often be challenging, especially if you’re starting from scratch. However, there’s no need to worry – with Benchmark Email’s Smart Content AI email copywriting tool, creating new and wonderful email copy is easier than ever!

Smart Content AI takes the guesswork out of crafting great email copy by giving you copy ideas. It also helps you create new email copy and generate unique copy based on your best-performing email campaigns. That way, you can be sure that your new emails will be just as successful as your old ones – if not more.

Make sure that while you’re getting creative, you aren’t inadvertently introducing spammy words into your email marketing. Avoiding spammy words in emails is crucial to ensure your messages reach the recipient’s inbox and not their spam folder. Here are some common words and phrases that are often flagged by email spam filters:

• Free: Especially in the subject line, this can trigger spam filters.
• Guaranteed: Overpromising with words like this can be seen as spammy.
• Risk-free: Similar to “guaranteed,” it can create distrust and trigger filters.
• This is not spam: Ironically, saying this can make it more likely to be treated as spam.
• No credit check: Often associated with spam emails offering financial services.
• Act now!: Creates a sense of urgency that is characteristic of many spam emails.
• Special promotion: Overused in marketing, it can be a red flag for spam filters.
• Winner: Suggests a prize or win, which is common in phishing emails.
• Limited time offer: Used too frequently in spam emails promoting sales.
• Make money: Common in scam emails, so it’s often flagged.
• Save big money: Similar to “make money,” it’s often seen in unsolicited offers.
• Exclusive deal: Overuse in spam has made this phrase suspicious.
• Increase your sales: Common in emails offering questionable marketing services.
• Online pharmacy: Commonly associated with spam emails selling medications.
• Weight loss: Frequently used in spam emails promoting health supplements.
• Hidden charges: Can raise red flags about the trustworthiness of the email.
• Unsecured credit: Often found in spammy financial service offers.
• Luxury: Can be associated with high-end spam offers.
• Cancel at any time: Implies a subscription service, often used in spam.
• Congratulations: Often used in scam emails claiming you’ve won something.
• Dear friend: Impersonal and commonly used in phishing emails.
• Great offer: Overused in both legitimate and spam marketing emails.

Now that you know some email marketing best practices, it’s time to put them into action. Remember to keep your goals in mind, test different tactics, and track your results to continue improving your campaigns. If you need some help getting started with email marketing, be sure to check out Benchmark Email and sign up for free!