40 Tips for Dramatically Better Emails

Update: Nearly 100,000 people enjoyed the original 20 email best practices. We decided it was high time to update this guide, so we’ve added 20 more suggestions to help you optimize your email marketing. The tips below are drawn from our customers’ best campaigns as well as our own experience.

When it comes right down to it, email marketing is all about getting the basics right.

Yes, you need to segment your lists and yes, you should upgrade your transactional emails, but every email marketer also needs to invest time in big picture strategies like positioning, voice, value and conversion optimization. The 40 tips below may seem basic, but you’ll find many at the core of the best email marketing campaigns out there. You’ll also notice that many of the examples employ five or more of these tips in a single email. For best results, apply liberally.

Making your email subscribers feel special is a great way to generate excitement for the content or offers you send them. It’s also a powerful community-building tool.

Exclusivity can be subtle, like the Apple example below, or it can be overt, like Groove.

Whenever Apple launches a new product, customers camp outside their stores to get their hands on the latest device. By offering a pre-order, Apple can cash in on that excitement without putting additional stress on their retail stores. With free shipping as an added incentive, these emails will no doubt drive huge sales before the next iPhone is even released. (Within three days of the iPhone 6 launch, Apple had sold 10 million phones.)

Groove’s Alex Turnbull takes a more direct approach. He emails new posts out to blog subscribers before they are available to people who read via RSS feeds or social media.

“As a subscriber, you’re getting this link about an hour before the post goes live on our blog’s homepage.”

Each email he sends begins with the words “Early Access”.

It makes email recipients feel like they are part of an exclusive club because, well, they are! Over the course of that hour, Alex can collect feedback and make any changes he feels would improve the post as more people see it. We asked Alex about the strategy. Here’s what he had to say:

The early access emails help us build a better relationship with our readers. It’s a value-add on top of just getting the content each week. I’ve heard from dozens of folks who appreciate the exclusive look at the new content before we release it, and we even see people urging others to sign up because of that benefit.

We send emails every single Thursday. It gets people used to hearing from us, and our open rates are higher because of that. Even if you’re not writing new posts each week, you can still send useful emails to maintain that relationship.

The early access emails help us build a better relationship with our readers.

21. Use the 1-2-3 method.

You might know what to say in an email, but aren’t sure how to say it. Fear not, the 1-2-3 method is here to save you. It’s a tried-and-true email format that promotes action.

All you need to do is tell the recipient the next three steps. The steps must be crystal clear, as providing an obvious path eliminates the anxiety of the unknown. Now that you’re aware of this technique, you’ll start noticing it in your inbox all the time.

It works especially well in onboarding campaigns and welcome emails. Twitter is one of my favorite examples. They match each number to a visual example.

You don’t actually need to use numbers. Three bullet points or sub-headers can work as well. HOLSTEE keeps it simple with plain and links.

While three might be the optimal number for some, the format is more important than the actual number. The key is to not overload people with information or tasks. Sticker Mule uses four to good effect.

The strategy works in HTML emails as well. Pinterest provides three simple steps to get new users started. As a business built on visuals, their emails stay consistent with their branding and imagery.

Read more about the 1-2-3 method here.

22. Use the Inverted Pyramid Method.

There are a lot of things that get in the way of a great email. Copy, content and design come to mind. That sounds counterintuitive, but users need as little friction as possible. We came up with a simple model called the Inverted Pyramid Method to help keep your emails focused.

Highly focused emails don’t rely on design, images or copy. They rely on tone, timing and clarity. And that creates a real advantage for businesses smart enough to send them.

Let’s take a look at some examples. (And in case you haven’t seen this before, here’s a good example of what not to do.)

Nike puts this strategy to good use in a Black Friday email. They grab your attention, then guide your eyes towards the button. There is nowhere to get lost in this email.

Help Scout takes the strategy even more literally. Like Nike, there is very little copy – just 32 words including the button text. Every word brings the user a little closer to click.

Often, less is more. Use the Inverted Pyramid Method when you need your emails to spark action.

Your business – and every business for that matter – is powered by small wins. Marketers often ask for too much from potential customers. Big wins like conversions and upgrades are earned over time. Don’t be surprised when you ask your email subscribers to upgrade and only 0.001% convert. Instead, think about building momentum. Asking subscribers to read a blog post or follow you on Twitter is a bigger deal than you think. And though it’s a small win, it’s a step in the right direction.

The Small Win Email is one that asks the recipient to take a minor step. This strategy is particularly useful in onboarding campaigns and newsletters. Here are a few examples.

Brian Dean asks new subscribers to reply to his welcome email with something they are struggling with. This doesn’t drive sales, but it does give him really useful data for future marketing.

Death to the Stock Photo offers a premium plan, but that’s not what they’re selling here. As a stock photo company, Instagram is the perfect platform to engage with their users.

Read more about how to use small win emails in retention and lifecycle campaigns.

24. Send a 'squeeze' email.

If you’re using event tracking to start and stop your email campaigns, a squeeze situation is common. It happens when a user is stuck between two events.

Abandoned cart emails are a good example. A customer adds items to their cart but doesn’t check out. This strategy is highly useful for SaaS businesses as well.

Take Strava. If a user has `Signed up` but hasn’t `Recorded first run`, the marketing team can create a segment of people that triggered the first event, but not the second. Those people fall into a very specific place in the customer lifecycle, so they can be sent highly targeted emails. In the example below, Strava asks users who have yet to record a run to enter a monthly challenge.

Airbnb’s retention email is another classic example we’ve talked about several times on this blog. When a user Views listings but doesn’t book, they send an email with recommendations in the same area and price range.

Once you dive into event tracking, it’s a good idea to track as many events as you can. You’ll start to find that users are almost constantly between two events, which give you the chance to send a targeted squeeze email.

25. Send emails in the right time zone.

Don’t make the mistake of prioritizing one time zone over another.

Most marketers approach email timing this way and it’s far less than ideal. They test send times, then choose the single time that delivers the most opens and clicks. That only works if you customers are all in the same time zone. Otherwise, there’s a better way.

Vero’s time zone feature allows you to send newsletters and campaigns to users in their own time zone. Instead of dropping an email at 10 am in New York and 11 pm in Singapore, your emails can arrive at 10 am regardless of the user’s location.

26. Personalize with dynamic content.

This topic can be a rabbit hole, so let me quickly show you the four levels or content personalization:

Segments and Static Content

Divvy up your lists into segments and send content based on the group’s common interest. This is the baseline.

Insert Basic Customer Merge Tags

Merge tags are placeholders that are replaced by actual content when the email is sent. Hey {{user.name}}! becomes “Hey Jimmy!”

Collect and Insert On-Site Data

Use a tool like Vero to capture events – pages viewed, product usage, etc. – then use insert event attributes – product images and details, URLs, etc. – into your emails.

Abandoned cart emails are a good example of using this on-site activity. An event is tracked – Viewed Cart – with an event attribute that is an array of all the items in their cart – including, for example, a `6″ Service Boot`. You can use the event to trigger the email – Send after 24 hours of inactivity – and use the event attribute to populate the product field. You can even use the product image (another event property) in the email.

Pull Data From Your Own Database

This is where dynamic content gets really interesting. We’ll use Vero customer Uniplaces as an example.

Uniplaces is a marketplace for students to book accommodations and for landlords to find tenants. When users sign up and begin searching for a house or apartment, Uniplaces tracks events and event properties that allow them to send impressive email campaigns.

When a logged-in user views a listing, they record an event – Views listing – and an event property – event.city. If the user fails to complete the next event – Completes booking – Uniplaces sends an email with suggested listings.

This is done by pulling in data from an external API (which you can read all about here).

27. Leverage the Zeigarnik Effect.

Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik’s research shows that humans are bothered by loose ends. The Zeigarnik Effect is that uncomfortable feeling we get when things are left unfinished. That could be the cliffhanger in a season finale of your favorite TV show or the half-written proposal that’s been sitting on your desk for a week.

The Zeigarnik Effect is not only easy to understand – we’ve all experienced and acted on those feelings – it’s also easy to apply to email marketing.

The easiest place to start is progress bars. These provide context to your user – it helps them understand where they are in a process and how much more there is left to accomplish.

Evernote employs a low-tech version of this in the subject lines of their onboarding emails.

Notifying users when there is an issue with their account is another clever way to use the Zeigarnik Effect. Mint does an exceptional job with these messages.

Discover a few more ways to leverage the Zeigarnik Effect here.

28. Send a recurring email.

Recurring emails are an extension of your product. They usually arrive in the form of a usage report and they cannot be treated like promotional emails. Without a clear focus on user experience, recurring emails are guaranteed to fall flat on their face.

Grammarly sends one of the best recurring emails we’ve ever seen. We liked it so much we wrote an entire case study on this one email. They pull data from their users’ weekly activity and summarize it in an email. This is the only place Grammarly users get these metrics, so it’s truly an extension of the product.

“The weekly reports product is meant to be our bread and butter from an email perspective,” says Grammarly’s head of product marketing Drew Price. “It’s a retention/engagement hybrid.”

Click to see the full email.

In addition to presenting the data, you can use it to make recommendations for unused features or new products. If Grammarly notices I’ve made a few mistakes with commas, they recommend content to educate me on proper usage.

Or, if they record no data at all, a retention email arrives in place of the report.

Read more about how Quora, Mint, SumoMe and Buffer use recurring emails in their marketing.

29. Use the Unboxing Technique.

Consumer anxiety is the baseline. If you work in marketing, this is your starting point. Your potential customers are skeptical of you, your product and your claim that it will make their life easier.

The key to solving almost all anxiety is clarity. If people know what to expect, they are more likely to kick the tires and ultimately become a customer. That’s where the Unboxing Technique comes into play. This simple strategy involves previewing your product or service right in the inbox.

Dollar Shave Club is a good example. They literally unbox their product in their promotional emails.

You can do this with software too. Elevate shows previews of their mobile app to give new users an idea of what to expect.

Gumroad does the same thing, but uses a GIF to give a quick demonstration.

30. Segment on signup.

Any and all data should be used to personalize your emails. When it comes to newsletters, it’s a good idea to ask a few simple questions even if you aren’t ready to use the data just yet.

Strava is a simple example. Their tool helps runners and cyclists track their workouts. When new users signup, Strava asks if they prefer to run or ride.

Then, they send sport-specific follow-up emails.

Airbnb does the same thing when people inquire about their business travel program.

IKEA takes segmentation very seriously. When you subscribe to their newsletter, they ask a series of optional questions. (This is just the tip of the iceberg. See the full series here.)

The more you know, the more relevant the emails can be.

31. Measure campaigns with scatter plots.

It’s hard to visualize the success or failure of an email campaign. Pulling data into a spreadsheet makes this much easier. Here’s a look at a process we use internally to measure our email campaigns.

First, pull a few data points into a spreadsheet. You’ll need the time delay (i.e. when was the email sent), open rate and click rate.

Using the chart feature in Google Sheets, create a simple graph where the time is represented by the X-axis and open/click rates by the Y-axis. Then, use a polynomial trendline in the Customization tab to create a scatter chart.

The final result will look something like this:

This is a great way to visualize momentum. Look for emails with low open rates and aim for better subject lines and more interesting content or calls to action. You can borrow a few best practices from this very post – social proof, the Zeigarnik Effect or the Unboxing Technique to name a few – to boost click and conversion rates.

32. Steal like an artist.

You don’t have to start building an email campaign from scratch. When you need a bit of inspiration for a new campaign, just look at the great brands already in your inbox.

Set up a label (in Gmail) or folder in your inbox and title it “Swipe File.” Anytime you see a great subject line, a good offer, a beautiful design or great copy, just add the message to your swipe file. Pretty soon, you’ll have a repository of inspiration that you can tap into when you are working on your own campaigns.

To make this even more powerful, set up individual labels or folders depending on why the email caught your attention. Example: Create a folder for “Great Subject Lines” so you’ll always remember why you set aside the email for later. Add a few emails each day and, soon, you’ll have hundreds of ideas for writing better emails.

Here’s how my swipe file looks:

When you receive behavioral emails, spend a few minutes reverse-engineering them. Why did you receive it? Where did the data come from? How long after your last interaction was it sent?

Don’t re-invent the wheel when your own inbox is already full of good ideas.

33. Stop campaigns.

Autoresponders are a gift to email marketers when they are used correctly. The primary challenge is that emails are sent on a schedule regardless of what the user does in the meantime.

Imagine if Twitter sent a welcome campaign without accounting for each new user’s behavior.

• Day 1: Welcome!
• Day 2: Here’s some popular people to follow
• Day 3: Send your first tweet
• Day 4: How to use and follow hashtags

If the user signs up, follows a few friends and sends a tweet on day one, the entire campaign is rendered irrelevant. This creates a bad user experience.

To prevent irrelevant emails, consider stopping your campaigns when users take certain actions. Vero customers can use our conditional filters to remove users before each send.

Stopping is the new starting. Instead of sending tons of emails, send a handful of highly targeted, relevant messages.

34. Send at least one great retention email.

Whether you run a blog or an online store, retention is a constant concern. You can use email to plug holes in your funnel and keep users engaged.

We recommend starting with a single great retention email. By creating just one, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. Before you create a series of retention emails for all your customers, find a place where you’re weak and run a few tests.

A great place to start is inactivity. Use Vero or another tool to track logins, then trigger emails when a user has been inactive for 28 days. This segment will look something like this:

As users enter this segment, you can trigger a retention email. If you need some inspiration, check out these 15 examples.

35. Integrate with social media.

There are a number of ways to integrate email and social media, but here’s a look at one of our favorites: retargeting subscribers on Facebook.

The first thing you need to do is queue up a great email. Let’s say you’re offering a free trial to people who downloaded an e-book. Segment your list in your email provider and get the content ready to send.

Use Google’s URL Builder to add parameters to any links in the email. As an example, you could use freetrialoffer as the campaign source, email as the medium and retargeting as the campaign name. Append these parameters to the links in your email. It will look like this: http://www.getvero.com/?utm_source=freetrialoffer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=retargeting

Next, you’ll need a tool like Perfect Audience. Use the querystring filter to identify people that came from your campaign and show them targeted ads based on your offer.

Read about other ways to integrate email and social media here.

36. Replenish.

Hardly anyone is using the replenishment email strategy. And if you sell items that need to be replenished, you are leaving recurring revenue on the table.

We’ll look at a few examples but first, what exactly is a replenishment email?

A replenishment email is one that simply reminds customers to re-order items when they run out. If you buy dog food from Petco, they should (but don’t) remind you to order more based on the size of the last bag you ordered.

ProFlowers is one business that has replenishment emails down to a science. They know that flowers are often given as gifts for birthdays and holidays. These occasions occur on a regular basis, meaning ProFlowers can predict when you’ll need to order again.

The key is to provide a helpful cue at just the right moment. This is low-hanging fruit for almost any business, whether you sell holiday gifts, monthly or annual subscription plans, or even consulting.

37. Ask people to reply.

Email is a platform for two-way communication. Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising – television, podcast and banner ads to name a few – users are actually used to responding to emails.

Asking people to reply to your emails is a tactic that doesn’t scale, but you can learn a ton in the process. Here’s an example of an email we automate when new users start their first campaign:

Even if you don’t solicit replies, you can let people know that you accept replies. FullContact bucks the trend of sending from a “noreply@company” address and sends their product update emails from “pleasereply@fullcontact.com.”

People are likely already responding to your emails. If you aren’t checking those responses, track them down. If you send a weekly newsletter to thousands of people, there is intel in those responses that can help you close leads and improve your content.

At Vero, we filter responses to our newsletter through Help Scout so that we can assign the right team member to handle each one. Most responses are “Out of Office” replies but each week, we find a few people who need help getting started with Vero or have ideas for improving the newsletter.

38. Send progressively smarter emails.

Every email you send should be better than the last.

TripAdvisor’s emails get progressively better as they learn more about each user. New users receive generalized information based on the little TripAdvisor knows about them. Take this email, for example, which suggests destinations based on my home airport.

Knowing where I’m traveling from is a good start, but it’s the destination that matters. TripAdvisor can show me where to stay and how to get there if they can figure out where I’m headed. As they collect data from on-site behavior and email clicks, the emails start to get smarter.

Once they can be reasonably sure about the destination, emails like this one begin to arrive.

Then, price alerts based on the destination and dates.

Soon, they are suggesting restaurants and activities, inquiring about reviews and suggesting more destinations based on your Facbeook friends’ activity. In our epic TripAdvisor case study, we looked at 20 emails to see how they were applying their learnings to subsequent emails. It was incredible to watch the emails get more and more refined – dive into it here.

39. Use all the data.

If you’re new to behavioral email, here is a quick primer on capturing events.

When you record an event – let’s say viewed product for example – you can also collect event attributes. If an event is a noun, attributes are all the adjectives that describe it. Here are just a few examples of attributes you can collect based on the event viewed product:

• sku number
• product name
• product color
• product price
• product image
• product category
• time
• location
• URL string
• referring page or source

All of this data is recorded with the event and added to the user’s profile. From here, you can insert attributes in an email – imagine referencing a product’s image, color and price – and use it to build segments – think of creating a segment of all users who have viewed purple shoes in the last 14 days.

When it comes to recording data, don’t be shy. Record as much as you can now so you can put it to good use later.

40. Hold yourself to a high standard.

Do you watch TV for the commercials?

Probably not.

Do you check email for marketing newsletters?

Doubtful.

As Samuel Hulick wrote on the Help Scout blog, “On the highway to user/product love, [emails] are road signs providing timely guidance, not annoying billboards.”

Email isn’t about selling. Receiving marketing materials is a side effect of our dependence on email.

Despite all you’ve heard about email as a channel, it’s just a platform for communication. It’s a great place to learn about what your leads and customers want and provide helpful cues.

Hold yourself to the highest standard when it comes to sending marketing emails. Focus on identifying pain points in the customer lifecycle and using email as an extension of your product or service. The more helpful you are, the more you’ll be rewarded.

Have any questions? Drop a note in the comments.