Best Practices in Email Marketing

Sending good sales and marketing emails isn’t hard. So few people send good emails that following the most basic best practices in email marketing and sales campaigns will set you head and shoulders above your competition.

Every day, I get emails from hopeful salespeople who ignore the most basic tenets of how to send effective emails. Their emails go on for endless paragraphs, meandering from subject to subject without ever getting to the actual call to action. They could be sending better emails with less work.

The first and most important part of an effective email is brevity. Important decision-makers are busy people, they don’t want to spend time reading your lengthy explanation of your product’s intricate feature set. Keep emails short to make sure your prospects actually read what you wrote.

But it’s important that your short emails don’t look unprofessional. That’s why you need to include professional details that show your prospect that you aren’t just any schmuck with a Gmail account. Even with a two or three-sentence email, you can differentiate yourself as the best salesperson with the strongest pitch.

Keep It Short

The best way to make sure your prospect reads your entire email is by making sure it fits on their phone’s screen. There are different tools you can use to visualize this, but in general, keep your emails under 500 characters long.

Ideally, you should be able to keep emails under 300 characters. That means your email will only have about five complete sentences, maybe less. While that might sound prohibitively restrictive, it’s actually the best way to make sure your prospects will actually read your email. Remember, your email only works if your prospect reads it.

After an attention-grabbing first line, your pitch should only be one sentence. This concise explanation should let your prospect instantly understand the broad outlines of what you do and let them consider what problems you could solve. For example, “Holmes and Associates is London’s most renowned private investigative service.”

Remember the Details

There are a lot of small details that go into making your email look as legitimate as possible. Given how little space you have to make your case, you can’t do much trust-building within the space of the email. Instead, that needs to happen in the small details that signal to readers–especially high-level prospects like CXOs–that you’re a professional.

First, a professional email signature will immediately set you apart from spam emails. The signature should have your name, title, and the business you work for, multiple ways to contact you, a link to the company’s website, and professional formatting. Some people fear that a website link could get their emails caught in spam filters, but as long as your company’s website is secure, you’ll be fine.

If you are worried about spam filters, you should run your email through an email checker to scan for unsecured links and spam keywords. These websites check your emails for factors that spam filters look for, ensuring that you’ll know before you run into any deliverability issues.

Including an unsubscribe link is one of the most important and undervalued parts of a professional email. On top of the legal need to include unsubscribe options in certain jurisdictions, people should also include them for professionalism. An unsubscribe link signals that you’re a professional the reader can trust.

When you keep your emails brief and include important, professional details, you show your prospects that you’re an expert who values their time and has something to offer. Get in touch, and let me know if you think there are any best practices you follow with your email campaigns!