The Anatomy of a Successful Email

Did you bring your scalpel? We’re continuing our dissection of successful marketing tools to narrow in on what makes them work. Today we’re slicing open some successful emails to see how they’re built.

For our purposes today, I’m defining “successful” as achieving one of the below:

• Open Rate above industry averages
• Click Rate above industry averages
• The main goal of the email was achieved (driving people back to the website, getting them to make a purchase, getting sign-ups for an event, etc.)

What success looks to you will depend on what you want your email to do, but there are certain things that every successful email shares.

Compelling Subject Line

How many emails do you receive a day? The average person sends and receives 122 emails a day, according to a study by The Radicati Group. With all that noise, it’s important to stand out. But how? When in doubt, one of the easiest ways is to practice the 2-2-2 Rule: it takes two seconds to capture readers’ attention, the first two words are the most important and you want to inspire action today. 

Another way to capture attention is to play with humor. Try creating a subject line that makes your readers chuckle – and want to know more.

Clear Action

Before you start typing, ask yourself: what is the action I want my readers to take? Depending on your email this could be event sign-ups, product purchases, visitors to the website or even gaining more followers on Facebook. Even a routine newsletter email should have a clear focus. Here at BizzyWeb our monthly newsletter has two goals: increase event sign-ups and send people back to our blog. When you have a clear goal in mind, craft your email toward that goal. It should be obvious to your readers what they should do. 

Obvious Branding

“Branding” sounds like an in-depth process, but with a tool like Constant Contact it’s very simple. Every single email that you send out needs to:

• Come from an immediately recognizable address (e.g., “[email protected]” or “[email protected]”)
• Include your company’s logo at the top of the email
• Use your company’s colors (and ideally match your website)
• Include your company’s address at the very bottom

That’s it! You can still party like it’s 1999, but your emails shouldn’t look like they’re straight out of 1999. 

Mobile Ready

Are your emails still using tables or multiple columns? It’s time to stop. Mobile is here, and it’s only growing larger. According to Litmus, 53% of emails are opened on a mobile device. If you want to reach your entire audience, your emails should look just as good on a mobile device as they do on desktop. By far the easiest way to make sure your emails look good on mobile is to use a tool like Constant Contact to create emails in a mobile-responsive template. Generally, for emails to look good on mobile they should be one-column and include less than 5 images. 

Want even more email tips? Don’t miss our Power of the Inbox on March 8. Can’t make it? You can watch it anytime after broadcast on our YouTube channel. 

And be sure to check back next week when we dive into The Anatomy of a Successful Blog Post. 

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Still struggling with email marketing? Our Buzz Builders online marketing programs craft targeted monthly email campaigns for you, so you can keep your customers in the loop.