To ensure that you are getting the most out of your email marketing efforts, follow these five simple but effective tips below.

Keep it short and sweet

When considering the length of your email, it is always worth bearing in mind that the majority of your readers will only ever skim over the copy. Therefore, you will want to keep your copy concise so that your subscribers will be able to identify the purpose of the email quickly and work out what you’re asking of them .

Stick to one call-to-action (CTA)

By sticking to just one CTA within your email you will be able to help your subscribers see exactly what they need to do next, be it click on a link to read a full article or to take advantage of an offer.

However, you do not just have to have one CTA button. Consider testing the use of anchored text throughout the body of your email. A recent study found that by using a phrase of 7-10 words for a text link provided the best boost to an email’s click through rate.  

Don’t forget to also link-up your images, as many people will automatically click on an image rather than a headline to go through to a blog, for example.

Don’t forget your subject lines

Many businesses will stick to a format for their subject line, which if done right can help you to build trust with your subscribers and make them more likely to recognise when you send an email in the future, boosting your open rates.

Alternatively, depending on your industry, you can get much more creative with your subject lines to help increase your subscribers’ intrigue. By A/B testing your subject lines you will be able to see what works best for your audience.

Indoctrinate your new subscribers

Once someone requests to be added to your subscriber list, how long do you wait until you email them? If you aren’t making contact in the first 24 hours you could run the risk of them never opening an email from you. However, if you set up an autoreply that sends a ‘Welcome to our Newsletter Subscription’ email as soon as they’ve signed up, while your company is still top of their mind, they will be more likely to open it straight away.

This email can be used to introduce your company and provide a short description of what they can expect to receive from you and how often. That way, they will hopefully be keen to receive your next email and know exactly how often they should expect to hear from you.

Design for mobile first

In April 2016, 56% of email opens were on mobile, and as we continue to rely on smartphones we can expect this percentage to only increase. Therefore any email marketing communications that your company sends out should always be designed for mobile first. This means investing in a responsive design that will provide a good user experience on desktop, tablet or mobile. You will also want to consider your image file size to help keep loading time to a minimum and to ensure that all of your CTA buttons are over 45-57 pixels to allow for larger thumbs to be able to easily click through to your landing page.

By considering these five tips when putting together your next email marketing campaign, you will be able to see how small changes can affect your click through rate and ultimately improve the ROI of your email strategy.