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Best practices for sales and marketing emails

Best practices for sales and marketing emails

I was curious, passionate and eager. So I gathered my courage and asked the Marketing team: “can we test different subject lines in our free trial emails? just a small test?”.

The results? After 4 weeks, open rates tripled…leading to a substantial boost in activations and revenues.

This was a few years ago and it changed the way I looked at email forever. Since then, I have made email training a priority for my teams and spent countless hours doing research on email best practices and AB testing throughout.

This is the first in a series of articles on email best practices. It includes highlights from a more comprehensive guide. Here is a link to download the entire guide for free.

Why email?

Email is critical in developing a relationship with your audience, nurturing your relationship with existing customers, and rekindling your relationship with past customers. It gives you an opportunity to speak with them directly, and on their terms. It has become the most valuable marketing and sales tool for many reasons: it offers the greatest reach, it’s customizable, permission-based, measurable and personal.

It is no surprise then, that email is a major part of our professional lives. How many friends do you have without an email address? The amount of research on email usage is exhaustive. According to McKinsey, email is 40x more effective than social media at acquiring new customers than either Facebook or Twitter. Furthermore, email generates the highest ROI of all other marketing channel — as high as 44$ for every 1$ spent.

BUT…(there’s always a but)

Engaging with your leads via email is becoming harder and harder: They are ignoring emails, pressing the spam button…basically shutting the “virtual door” in our face. That’s hard to “hear or feel” through email, so how do you know your email is effective?

Start with the Purpose

Email purpose

Before writing or sending anything, you should start with thinking about your purpose: Why are you reaching out to your audience?

Take time to understand the purpose of your email. Try to be as specific as possible in this exercise, as it will affect the structure and content of your email. Ask yourself the following:

• Who are you writing to?
• What do they know about you?
• Why would they use or need your product?
• What is the value to the reader of your email?
• How can your message inspire a response?

Define your measures of success

Purpose is nice…. But how do you know if your efforts are successful? One of the great benefits of email is its measurability. You have exceptional indicators on whether your campaign is performing or not.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common and important email engagement metrics:

• Open rate: It measures how many people actually open the email you are sending. It’s helpful when you’re testing subject lines.
• Click through rate (CTR): It will provide valuable insights on how many of your recipients are engaging (clicking) with the content you sent.
• Conversion rate: Think of conversion as turning your readers into “believers”. It allows you to measure if your readers have taken action such as a call booking, sign up, a download, or a purchase.
• Reply rate: How many readers actually wrote you back? This is a powerful indicator of their interest, or disinterest) depending on the response.
• Bounce rate: The bounce rate tells you how many emails were not delivered. (e.g. the email address is wrong, recipient’s inbox is full).

There is an abundance of studies and research on what the benchmarks are for email campaign performance. However, the type of industry you are in has a direct impact on the results. Do some research on what your expected results should be and how you compare to peers in your industry.

Structure

Email structure

Once your purpose is clear, your email is now ready to be structured. The structure is the order, progression and linking of all your ideas together in a clear format. Generally, your email should be structured as follows:

Subject Line

The goal of your subject line should be to get your readers to open the email and read the first sentence. Remember, they might be getting hundreds (or more) of emails a day…how does your email stand out? It must be uncommonly clear and to the point. Personalize and get creative, otherwise your email will end up in the spam folder, or worse…in the infamous “promotions” tab. The easier it is for them to understand what the email is about and why it was sent — the more likely that the open rate will be higher. Tips:

• Keep it short: The length of your subject line has the biggest impact on the likelihood of your email to be opened. Many emails are opened on mobile, so it’s crucial to keep it short to avoid overflow into a second line.
• Personalize: There is only 1 or 2 two seconds to get your reader’s attention, so make sure to include the reader’s name or other specifics (their city, company…) to catch their eye.
• Incorporate the “pain” of the customer: This triggers more curiosity and leads into how your solution helps alleviate that pain.
• Keep it specific: a vague subject line can make your email feel like spam
• Ask a question: questions spark curiosity and motivate the reader to open

Body

Email best practices

The body of the email has a direct effect on the engagement and as such, it will impact the response rate (around 10%). Here are recommended best practices

• Provide immediate value: You must articulate what the benefit is for the recipient. If you don’t know, take time to figure out what a common pain is for similar audiences. A frequent mistake is to talk about your product features and not what the benefit is.
• Use their name: When you have it, use it! A generic greeting will not only go unnoticed, it can actually hurt your future efforts by being categorized as “junk”.
• Optimize for mobile: Most emails are opened on mobile (62%). Follow Avoid having too much text and include links that are large enough to click. Test it all before sending.
• Research: There is plenty of information available about your leads. Check out their website, search their name, LinkedIn page, etc…
• Add interactive content: Research shows that adding videos to your email can increase click rates by 300%! Other ideas: sliders, collapsible menus, GIFs.

How can you provide value in your email?

1. Success stories: These stories are meant to summarize successful experiences of your customers, with just enough detail to create an interest to know more (as opposed to a case study which provides the details of the methods and solutions implemented to succeed).
2. Case studies: Cases are compelling because they demonstrate clear value by showing how an actual customer solved a relatable problem with measurable success.
3. Testimonials: You are not praising yourself — your satisfied customer is. And this usually has a massive impact because people will follow others like them. In Marketing psychology, this is called “social proof” → when we observe many people engaging in a particular behavior, we assume it’s the right behavior.
4. Curated content: If you don’t have testimonials or case studies to share, providing relevant content is exceptionally efficient in delivering value to your reader and demonstrates your understanding of their pain and what they can do to solve it.

Call To Action

Let’s get real: If your email doesn’t end with a direct and simple call-to-action which clearly expresses what action you are expecting from your prospect to take — why are you even writing to them? The purpose of having a call-to-action in your email is to encourage your reader to take action. If you don’t ask…you won’t get.

It is crucial that you take time to define the purpose of your CTA. Are you looking to get more subscribers? Increase orders? Deliver a piece of content?

It is not as simple as “buy now”.

The formulation of your call to action is key to getting the desired response, which is usually to click on a button or clickable text. No matter what type of campaign you are running, an email’s purpose is to continue a conversation between your brand and your audience. Your email should have at least one CTA to incite some interaction. Keep it short and relevant. Some guidelines:

• Have only ONE call-to-action: Make it easy to find and for readers to take action.
• Test different call-to-actions: A/B test your CTA to learn what your readers like and how to optimize your desired outcome.
• Make it clear: Stay honest and direct. It will be a win-win.
• Keep it simple: The simpler it is, the more clicks it will get.

Closing

We have covered the importance of a subject line, the right content and the call-to-action… but how do you “wrap it up?” Your closing statement will go unnoticed if you don’t put in the effort to leave a lasting “last impression”. You might be using the same HubSpot template as someone else, so how will you stand out? Here are some tried and true examples:

• “We would be thrilled to have you as a partner”
• “We look forward to providing all the solutions you need…”
• “Let me know if you have any unanswered questions”

Additional elements to consider in your closing:

Sign off

This question comes up often… there is no one best answer. How you sign off really depends on what you are comfortable with. Be you!

Signature

An email signature is so beneficial yet so overlooked. Many salespeople don’t spend enough time thinking about it and miss out on an opportunity to further strengthen their email’s credibility. There are easy and simple ways to give your email signature a makeover. Keep a brand standard and think about including:

• Your picture
• Press
• Audio / Visual links
• Contact info

Email sender name

In “real” life, you would use your “real” name… right? Email is not that different: the recipient will look at the sender name to understand who is trying to reach them. Actually, a sender name has a significant influence on the open rate — 42% of users first look at a sender name and only then will decide if it’s worth opening. Needless to say, don’t use an unbranded, or generic address.

I hope this was as helpful for you as it was for me. I would love to get your comments and feedback.

Here is a free download of the (almost) complete guide to email best practices.

Happy emailing :)