The average professional checks their email around 15 times per day. Yet does that mean that they read every email that lands in their inbox? The answer is no.

Many people receive a huge number of different marketing emails which all get ignored, sinking lower and lower into their inbox. The brand gets forgotten and the time that went into that email was wasted.

If your business wants to excel at email marketing, you need to know what you’re doing. We’re here to help you. Our email marketing checklist will help you generate marketing emails that people will actually read, rather than ignore.

More readers mean more conversions and more conversions mean more business. In this guide, we’ll show you what you need to do to achieve that vital first step.

Are you ready to learn more? Then read on and start writing better emails!

1. Know What You Want to Achieve

No two email marketing campaigns are exactly the same. Before you type a single word, you need to know what you want this email marketing campaign to do.

Do you want to upsell existing customers? Do you want to convert leads? Do you want to increase sales of a certain product?

Knowing your goal allows you to decide on the metrics by which you’ll judge whether or not the campaign has succeeded. For instance, if you’re trying to boost sales of a certain product, the sales figures will decide whether or not the campaign has worked. If you’re trying to convert leads, you can compare the number of new customers garnered by the email campaign.

2. Who Are You Going to Target?

An email that’s got too broad a target isn’t likely to convert many people. You should segment your audience and target a specific type of person with your emails. 

Think about the target customer’s age, their interests, whether they’re an existing or a new customer, where they’re located, and more. Make the emails that you send relevant to them specifically, rather than writing generalized emails that can, all too quickly, turn into fluff that gets ignored.

3. Start With a Strong Subject Line

When it comes to writing the email itself, you should start with the subject line. This is the very first thing that the recipient will see, so it needs to be top-quality. 

Your email subject line needs to be clear: specify the content that awaits the recipient inside. It also needs to be clickable, a bland subject line won’t get you anywhere. Think about great newspaper headlines that you’ve seen: what was it about them that made you want to read the story?

The subject line needs to be pretty short. No more than seven words. If the recipient can’t see the entire subject line without clicking onto the email, they probably won’t click on it.

Another essential component of a great subject line is to make it friendly. If it sounds like a marketing email, it’s far easier to dismiss it as spam than if it sounds like an email from a colleague.

4. Build on the Subject Line With Your Preview Text

Your preview text refers to the small snippet of text that you can see in the email client before you open the email. This must build on the subject line. It’s your chance to elaborate on things that you’ve already discussed and to build more interest in the email.

Talk more about what you have to offer the recipient and show them why opening this email will enhance their day.

5. Don’t Make the Sender Anonymous

In email marketing, the sender is of utmost importance. If the recipient gets an email from [company name], rather than from a named individual who actually works at their company, it feels far more impersonal. Similarly, getting an email from [donotreply@companyname.co.uk] also feels incredibly impersonal.

There’s no point writing a friendly subject line if you juxtapose it with an unfriendly-sounding sender.

Set the sender as a real employee of your company, and use their name and email address. This way, you also open up the opportunity for a dialogue with your customers, which may help you convert wavering recipients.

6. Use Conversational Language

In the body of your email, you need to sound conversational. Write as though you’re speaking to a real person, rather than writing a marketing email to send out into the nameless and formless void of your CRM database, because each of those recipients is a real person, however unknown they are to you.

Avoid jargon and avoid sounding too much like a sales email. No one likes a hard sell, least of all people who aren’t even your customers yet. It’s also worth staying concise: respect your reader’s time.

You should also make sure to address your recipient by name, rather than beginning with “dear customer” or similar.

7. Time Your Emails Right

If you send your email out at midnight, you’re going to get a lot fewer clicks than if you send it at a more social time. The best time to send a marketing email is at around 10 am, but this may vary for your specific business and sector.

Try sending out emails at a variety of times over the course of the working day and see which one yields the best results, then stick to that time.

Use This Email Marketing Checklist and Create Better Emails

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this email marketing checklist. Before you send out your next marketing email, come back to it and check your email against it. Have you used all of our tips?

By following this checklist, you can take your email marketing to the next level.

However, email marketing isn’t for everyone. If you’d like some help creating fantastic emails, we can help you. We’re experts at email marketing and e-commerce, and would be happy to help you grow your customer base.

For more information, contact us at ask@greyheart.co.uk.