“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Remember that saying? It’s very relevant to email marketing, which gets a bad reputation these days thanks to the surplus of spam everyone experiences.
For B2B companies, however, email remains an integral method of reaching prospective customers. It’s used to build relationships, gather important data on your audience and generate sales leads. Email marketing doesn’t need fixing — it isn’t broken.
What your emails may need, though, is a review of the design process to ensure you’re following these best practices to optimize the success of your efforts.
Make Email Mobile-Friendly
A recent study by Litmus shows 56% of all emails are opened on mobile, so you need to choose a template that displays well on several device brands. That means using a single column layout if possible, one with an ideal width of 320 pixels.
By designing a responsive template, you can still aim for the 640 pixel width that displays on retina screens; it will work perfectly on mobile, too.
Use Images ‘Carefully’
That cryptic-sounding heading means exactly what it says. Big, beautiful images are all the rage on websites, but they don’t work as well in email marketing. Many users block email images, and large graphics cause communications to load slowly, which means your recipients are going to be looking at white space.
Don’t rely on images to sell your message, and make doubly certain you don’t have critical information or calls-to-action hidden as part of an image that could be missed.
Skip the Spam Words
Most companies that are likely to be your B2B prospects have spam filters in place, which detect words commonly found in junk mail. Words like new, affordable, cash, cheap and clearance are just a few of the top 100 words that can trigger your spam filter. Best practices for getting your marketing emails opened indicate that you should avoid using any words that can get you blacklisted.
Pay Attention to Previews
Getting your email marketing messages opened is the first step to getting them read. The subject line is important for grabbing attention, but you also need appropriate preview text to hold the readers’ attention long enough to get them to open the mail. Keep the preview down to between 75 and 100 characters, including spaces, to enable readers to determine exactly what the blog post is about.
Designing marketing emails that follow best practices might be tedious, but there’s value in ensuring your communications are getting through and being effective.
For more insights on creating successful healthcare marketing campaigns, call Wax Custom Communications at 305.350.5700 or visit waxcom.com.
