Email Newsletter Best Practices
Customers always love to get exclusive information, deals and product updates about your business. Newsletters are a great way to communicate with your customers directly. They keep your customers updated and increase the chances of driving more traffic to the website.
If you are looking to set up a new channel and want to send out email newsletter campaigns, then this Email Newsletter Best Practices 2020 guide will help you to set it up and get great results.
To start with, it is essential to create an effective marketing strategy to design the structure of your newsletter. Study the latest email newsletter trends and come up with an outstanding idea. Discuss with your team members while devising the strategy to avoid confusion.
Write a Highly Compelling Email Subject Line
The most important factor for anyone to open your email is the subject line.
Come up with a subject line that draws the attention of your audience.
Header
An email newsletter header must always be clear and concise. It should always connect with your actual audience with ease.
Background and Font
Create a visually appealing template with fonts and background color consistent with your website and blog to maintain your brand image.
Optimize Email Templates for all Devices
Your recipients might read your email from any device; say mobile phones, ipad / tablet or desktops. Therefore, it is a good idea to optimize your email template for all the devices.
Your open rates might drop if you don’t have a responsive email template.
Test how your template renders on different devices using email pre-deployment checklist software.
Add Email Snippet / Pre-header
Email preheader is the very first line or summary text that follows the subject line when your email is viewed in an inbox.
Contact Details & Email Address
Add a physical address, contact details along with the email address in the email template footer. This shows the authenticity of your brand and helps your customers understand that they receive the email from a trusted business.
View in Browser Link
The “View in Browser” link will navigate the user to the web-hosted version of your email, which is kept on the server. This will help recipients, who can’t view the HTML version, to view your newsletter.
Email List and Validation
Build your email list and segment it into different categories if you have customers from multiple verticals.
It takes a proper email validation to make your newsletters reach your recipients’ inbox and reduce bounces.
SMTP Settings
Your SMTP software should have a dedicated IP address to send out email newsletters. If you feel that is too expensive, then send using your own SMTP server but with a separate IP and a new email address.
Warm up your email account before you start sending out your emails.
Use a web host if you are sending bulk emails as your email client might have restrictions. Check email limits and other restrictions of your email client if you are not going to use a web host.
Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is a key factor to get your emails delivered to your subscribers’ inbox. To ensure that your email reaches your recipients’ inbox, follow these simple steps:
Check Email Spam Score
Check the spammyness of your email using a spam score checker and consider yourself lucky if your email has a good spam score.
How to Improve Spam Score:
- Add plain text version of the email to improve your spam score
Check if you are fully Authenticated
- SPF
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses.
- DKIM
Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a method for associating a domain name to an email message, thereby allowing a person, role, or organization to claim some responsibility for the message.
- DMARC record
A DMARC policy allows a sender to indicate that their emails are protected by SPF and/or DKIM, and give instruction if neither of those authentication methods passes. Please be sure you have a DKIM and SPF set before using DMARC.
- Usage of proper Font Face – Font type, style and size
Manual Internal Testing
Send test emails to email addresses hosted on Gmail or G-suite and other domains of your friends and check if they reach their inbox.
Ask them to reply to the same email thread and make sure you receive it.
Perform internal testing multiple times until your email reaches the inbox and not spam folder.
These are the Email Newsletter Best Practices that will guide you in setting up your newsletter channel. Do not forget to A/B test your emails and try out different times to send out your newsletters. Stick to the ones that gets you the maximum results.
