This is a guest post by Alek on Email Marketing. You can check out the guidelines for guest posting on our write for us page.

When it comes to online marketing strategies, email marketing plays a very important role in your campaigns. This form of marketing has, after all, been around for many years and has grown from heavily promotional emails to value-added marketing tools that help businesses connect to their current and future audiences.

Done properly, email marketing can be a highly effective tool for boosting website traffic, increasing your customer base and ultimately, increasing your conversions across a number of campaigns. To help you make the most from your email marketing strategies, here are 10 helpful tips to keep in mind.

Best Tips for Email Marketing Success

Email marketing, if done correctly can yield amazing results for your business. Hence before you start plotting a newsletter or, mailer in MS Word, take the time to consider the following email marketing tips to give your email blasts the best possible chance of ROI.

Do Your Homework – email marketing basics

Planning is the very first step in any email marketing campaign. This is essential to get the best results, and will help you identify your goals, plan your campaign and achieve your purpose. Decide on your primary goal, whether this is promoting a product, keeping customers updated on news or selling a discounted product. You will then use this as the foundation to start your campaign.

Create a Winning Subject Line

The subject line is the very first thing that people see when your email comes in – if it looks spammy, it may go straight to trash. Using spammy terms such as ‘free’, ‘money’ or ‘discount’ can often result in emails being sent to spam before they are read, so avoid these words at all costs. If the subject line is short, direct and persuasive, readers will want to open it to read more.

Keep it Simple and to the Point

Emails that are simple and to the point have a far greater clickthrough rate than those that waffle on across pages of content. Readers should be able to scan the email quickly to see what the email contains. Use ‘read more’ links to allow readers to clickthrough to specific pages.

Provide Informative Content

Another essential part of email marketing is to provide readers with informative content rather than pointless information. Provide value, and you will be able to build trust with your readers and give them the type of content they enjoy reading.

HTML vs Plain Text

Beautifully designed newsletters, email blasts and other email communication is far more appealing than plain text emails with no images, colour or design to break up the text. Multimedia designs in HTML are eye-catching, which brings far more chance of mails being read

Create for Mail Preview

Many email clients have email preview features that allow readers to view the email before opening. This means that your design should be able to fit into an area that is not much bigger than 600 pixels x 400 pixels for best visibility

Test, Test and Test Again

Another email marketing tip is to always test your emails properly to ensure that they are spam-free, well written and well designed. Do spam and compatibility tests before sending out – this will ensure that the final email is as perfect as can be

Simple Unsubscribe

This is essential to allow your readers to unsubscribe easily from your mailing list. This link should be visible, and the process should be quick and easy, without the need to log in. Of course, the main goal is to inspire them to want to keep reading your updates

Tracking Your Performance

All of your email marketing campaigns should be tracked to see how they perform. Lost management tools usually provide stats for open rates, unsubscribe rates, clickthroughs and other data, which will help you plan better and better newsletters every time

Avoid Spam at All Costs

Buying mailing lists and doing unsolicited emailing to readers who have not actually subscribed is spammy, pure and simple. This will result in unopened or deleted emails, and angry readers. Reputation can also be lost, which will affect your overall marketing efforts in a bad way.

By following these tips for your newsletters and other email marketing campaigns, you will soon start to see the huge results that can be enjoyed from email marketing, growing your brand and reaching more audiences every month.