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Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing techniques. Even with social media marketing taking up the digital world by storm, the significance and impact of email marketing stayed intact. Its subtlety and consistency are especially effective in producing a long-term positive result.

But just because email marketing is subtle compared to other forms of digital marketing doesn’t mean you can be careless with it. A successful marketing campaign is only possible through thorough planning and following the golden email marketing rules.

Let’s take a look at these golden email marketing rules so you can create the best and most effective email marketing campaigns:

1. Email Marketing Isn’t About Selling

As counterproductive as it may sound, email marketing is more about building a connection with your customers than about selling your products or services. To understand this point, you must stop and consider why people subscribe to emails from companies and businesses. They don’t do for the products or services to land in their inboxes. Customers can easily search for the products they are looking for on google and follow the links in the results. But they subscribe for emails to stay updated on the company.

Though many businesses require email addresses for order completion, customers can easily unsubscribe after receiving their online orders. Yet, they don’t.

Opting to receive marketing emails from companies shows audience interest. To maintain this interest, you must create marketing emails that are interesting to read and view. In other words, make your marketing emails more than just product advertisements.

2. Promote Two-Sided Communication

Now that you know that your customers are interested in what your business has to say, you shouldn’t make it only about your business. If your audience is interested in hearing from you, you must be equally interested in listening to them. Each marketing email you send out must include options for subscribers to voice their opinion. Options like feedback, review, customer support, and participating in surveys can significantly help your audience communicate with you as you please.

3. Include Call-to-Action

Communication from the audience isn’t limited to voicing their queries and concerns. The audience can also communicate positively with your marketing emails by heading to your website. Whether their jump from their inbox to your website results in a sale is another matter. However, one of the most important golden email marketing rules states that you must include a call-to-action in the email to inspire action from your audience.

Ideally, you must include a call-to-action twice in a marketing email, once in the beginning and once in the end. You can include a third call-to-action in the subject line, but it isn’t necessary.

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4. Write Compelling Subject Lines

As mentioned above, the subject line may or may not include a call to action. Writing a compelling subject line is more than teasing the audience or shoving products in their face. A well-written and compelling subject line piques the audience’s curiosity. While it may sound difficult, remember that the audience is already interested in your brand/company and what it has to say.

The easiest way to craft a compelling subject line is to avoid the clichéd words marketers use to grab audiences’ attention. These words include free, save, offer, discount, gift, profit, refund, cash, money, etc. Subject lines with any of these words clearly indicate promotional emails. However, marketing is different than mere promotion. Marketing is building a connection with the audience. Therefore, you must write subject lines that don’t indicate you are selling anything.

Words and phrases such as learn more, see the more, reminder, and contact us show a genuine approach by the company. They depict that the company is excited to share the news with the audience and wants the audience to provide feedback or share in the celebration. It arouses curiosity about the news and leads to audiences reading the marketing emails.

5. Don’t Hide Yourself

Small or struggling brands often attempt to deceive their audience by pretending to be a renowned names. But this strategy never works and is a factor in why these brands struggle. The golden email marketing rules state that the audience must know who communicates to them. This means that each marketing email should include the sender’s identity.

The sender’s identity should be clearly stated twice in a marketing email. The first and the most important place for the sender’s identity is the sender’s name. Just like you won’t recognize your friend’s email if they don’t have their name as sender, your audience won’t know you are the one trying to communicate with them.

Including the brand name as the sender is essential as people go through their email inboxes with utmost focus. They prioritize opening the emails they are expecting, glance at the ones they aren’t expecting, and ignore the ones they can’t tell who sent. Hence, your marketing email cannot stand a chance if you don’t include your brand name as a sender. The brand logo and name should also be part of the marketing email design and content.

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6. Organize Your Database

Organizing the database includes removing those who unsubscribed, preventing double entries, and prioritizing the email addresses according to the results they produce. A well-managed and organized database can save you or your marketing team plenty of time.

Firstly, removing the email addresses of audiences who unsubscribed is essential to keep a possibility of winning them back. Many brands and marketers don’t take audience un-subscription seriously and continue to send marketing emails. The unwanted marketing emails only end up in spam folders, with the brand losing all chance of winning the customers back. On the other hand, brands that comply with and respect audiences’ choices leave the inbox on a good note. If the audience finds themselves led back to these brands, they remember the good experience and give the brand another chance.

Preventing double entries prevents audiences from receiving emails twice. Receiving the same email twice or thrice can annoy customers and lead them to unsubscribe.

Finally, prioritizing emails based on their results allows you to segment audiences smartly and efficiently. While all subscribers are interested in a given brand, they may not be interested in the same way or be equally loyal to the brand. Analyzing the results of marketing emails allows you to separate the email addresses that produce greater results than others. You can then focus and personalize marketing emails to build a stronger connection and achieve greater results. On the other hand, you can reduce the frequency of marketing emails to audiences that aren’t as interested in saving yourself the effort while still maintaining a connection.

7. Tweak Your Strategy As Needed

Marketing emails must always be a part of an email marketing campaign. As a business owner, you must be aware of the lack of results produced by one-off advertisements. Therefore, each marketing email you send out must be a part of a series of something bigger than itself.

But as much as deciding on a strategy and sticking to it is important; you must not be shy to tweak it as needed. From customer data analysis to a sudden event in the industry, various factors can force you to tweak your strategy in the middle of a campaign. Your brand will seem aloof to the audience if you don’t change the strategy when required. Therefore, the golden email marketing rules require you to keep an open mind and approach.

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8. Pay Attention to the Design

It is no secret that well-designed marketing content can produce better results. Good design can make or break a brand in today’s digital world. But the significance of design isn’t new; humans have always enjoyed aesthetically-pleasing looks, no matter if they belong to a thing or a person. Marketers know it well, and that’s why they place grave importance on design regarding products, packaging, and marketing.

Email marketing is no different. Well-structured and aesthetically-pleasing looking emails draw the audiences’ attention and build their interest. Various factors are essential to creating a good-looking marketing email, from the layout to the font, to the images used, and to the size of those images. You must also ensure that the email looks great on web and smartphone browsers. Some email platforms, like AWeber, make this easier than others.

9. Innovate Frequently

The constant use of digital media has shortened its users’ attention span. Combine that short attention span with the constant bombardment of ads on every platform, and you’ll find an audience that gets bored too quickly. Hence, the golden email marketing rules state that brands must frequently innovate to prevent their audiences from getting bored.

You can innovate marketing emails by creating unique subject lines, designing exciting visuals, and crafting new content. A conversational tone, a well-thought-out message, and subtle promotions also work well. Moreover, personalized emails can also seem more interesting than generic ones. To know how well it’s working for you, you’ll need to measure your results against these key benchmarks like open rate and click-through rate.

Remember these 9 golden email marketing rules to create the most successful email marketing campaigns. Don’t be hesitant to look for successfully marketing emails for inspiration or email marketing services for help. Finally, stay patient and persistent until you see the results you desire!