Category: Email Marketing

In this highly digitalized world we live in, email marketing design is one of the core vitals for your business strategy. However, designing an email campaign is easier said than done. 

It requires a lot of time, effort, technical knowledge, and design skills. Whether you’re just starting out, or you already have some experience, we’ve got you covered in your email marketing design endeavors.

To help you foster and put into effect your email design ideas, we’ll share with you the top 10 proven email marketing design techniques, backed up by some real-life best email examples.

Before we get started, let’s first explore the basics of email marketing design.

What Is Email Marketing Design?

Email marketing design is the process of thoughtfully creating and designing an email that will grab the attention and interest of your target audience and current subscribers. This includes how you place your text, images, CTA buttons, and other visual elements. All these in combination will have a direct impact on the readability of your email – whether it’s easy to read, scannable, and catchy. At the end of the day, your email design is one of the most important components of your approach to email marketing.

Why Is Email Marketing Design Important?

A well-designed email will help you not only catch your readers’ attention, but also engage your subscribers, and eventually increase your conversion rates.

Nowadays, people don’t spend much time reading emails, but rather scan through your information. That’s why email marketing design is of utmost importance for your email marketing strategy.

Let’s dive into how to design emails that grab attention and boost sales.

How to Design a Great Marketing Email

As mentioned, creating a successful email marketing design is not an easy task. Here are some email design best practices that will help you greatly.

1. Start Using an Email Marketing Platform

Using an email marketing platform is a smart approach no matter whether you’re a beginner or more experienced in email marketing design. Either way, it will make your life easier and help you leverage all email marketing benefits for your business by saving you time, effort, and resources.

Here are the main features and capabilities that you need to look for in an email marketing tool:

• Templates & Layouts OR Drag-and-Drop Editor 

Most email marketing tools offer ready-to-use templates and customizable layouts, and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. With any of these, you can create an appealing email marketing design in just a few clicks and with ready-to-go email template ideas. You’ll be able to manage colors, fonts, headings, images, and other similar elements. On top of that, an email marketing tool allows you to craft a design that’s responsive on various devices.

• Emails Personalizations

An email marketing platform lets you personalize your emails with dynamic content, based on subscriber data. By using their first name in the subject line or body text, for example, or leveraging other information that they’ve provided you with, you’ll be able to better engage with your subscribers.

• Statistics and Analytics

Another important option is the ability to track email marketing metrics from your campaigns. This is extremely important for analyzing results and optimizing your future email campaigns.

• Automations 

An email marketing tool should allow you to perform email automation, ensuring that your beautifully designed emails reach the right audience at the right time without manual intervention. For example, if a new contact has subscribed to your newsletter, they need to receive a welcome email from you that can be an automated process.

Are you on the lookout for the right email marketing tool for your business? Check out SiteGround’s email marketing platform that offers premium features and functionalities to help you grow your business.

2. Be Consistent with Your Brand Guidelines

As a rule of thumb, your email marketing design should be in line with your brand guidelines. When the readers open your email, they should be able to recognize that it was sent by your business. In other words, your marketing email design should be branded.

Here are the main techniques you can use to achieve that:

• Use the same colors and fonts that you’ve implemented on your website and via other marketing materials.
• Mind your tone of voice and word choice by making them consistent and recognizable across your emails.
• Incorporate your logo and have it link to your website, and include links to your social media channels.

These will help you raise brand awareness, boost your lead generation, and eventually increase your sales.

3. Choose Your Email Marketing Layout

One of the key elements of your email marketing design is the email marketing layout that you choose for your campaign.

An email layout represents the structure of your email – the way you organize your email’s elements, such as texts, CTA buttons, headings, bullet points, images, or videos, so that they look aesthetically appealing.

There are different types of layouts. Based on the user’s reading pattern, layouts can include the following:

• Inverted pyramid – the most important information is at the top to catch the reader’s attention, and then it gradually narrows down the focus towards your CTA. Here’s an example:

• Zig-zag – follows the left to right reading pattern, where the most important information is on the top horizontal line, followed by the diagonal that leads readers to your copy, and the bottom horizontal line gives them the final copy and CTA. Here’s an example:

• F-pattern – the most essential information is at the top, followed by less important info on the shorter left sides below, including a CTA at the bottom. Here’s an example:

Let’s imagine that you need an email newsletter design, for example. A typical newsletter would use a one-column layout or two-column layout, which are perfect for introducing products or services, or listing articles and case studies. On the other hand, promotional emails would benefit mostly from an inverted pyramid layout, where you can have an appealing visual for your offer, followed by an engaging description of your promotion, including a CTA button at the bottom.

4. Write a Catchy Subject Line and Preview Text

The next step of your email marketing design is your subject line and preview text.

Your email’s subject line is the first thing that your recipients will see in their inboxes. That’s why it needs to be catchy, valuable, and informative. Let’s expand a bit on these characteristics of your subject line:

First, it needs to grab the reader’s attention. You can achieve this by adding their first name, asking them a question, using an actionable verb, or adding an emoji.

Second, your subject line should bring value to the reader, to spark their interest and desire to open your email. To address this, keep your subject line short and simple, yet smart and subtle enough.

Lastly, use your subject line to give your readers an idea of what to expect in the body of your email. Consider your subject line a short summary of your email content. Remember that this is your first and last chance to have your email opened.

Here are a few examples of catchy subject lines:

Next comes your preview text that appears right next to your subject line and is a preview of your email content. Have your preview text complement your subject line and still build curiosity in your readers. It’s also essential that you keep it under 50 characters, so that it’s fully displayed on most devices.

5. Add Call to Action Button(s)

One of the most crucial parts of your email marketing design is your CTA button. It should appeal to your email readers and make them want to click on it. The CTA button will bring them one step closer to converting – signing up, making a purchase, or another desired action. Actually, not using strong CTAs is one of the absolute worst email marketing mistakes you could make.

It’s crucial to consider where to put your CTA button, what copy and design it should have, and if you need more than one CTA. 

If you want to maximize the benefits of email marketing, focus on these three key guidelines for your CTA buttons:

• Incorporate short, concise, and actionable copy
• Use colors that contrast with the email background
• Make it well outlined and shaped to be easily clickable

Here’s an example for some email design inspiration:

In the example above, the first CTA is in the form of a play button for a video overview of their product, followed by a classic CTA button prompting readers to watch the video. The brand has three more CTA buttons after each section, in a logical order. The first one is enticing readers to install their product, the second one is a push to upgrade to one of their more advanced plans, and the last one is a CTA to join their community, which is a win-win for both the brand and the reader.

6. Include Visual Elements

When talking about email marketing design, there’s one thing that’s a must-have – visual elements. Don’t hesitate to incorporate images, GIFs, videos, or even emojis in your email body. Get creative and complement your content with appropriate visual elements. 

For example, if you’re launching a new product, you definitely need to include its image. Or let’s say that you’ve updated an existing service – show how happy your clients are with it by including a pie chart with their reviews. Then why not add an emoji in your subject line to generate more clicks?

However, there’s one strict rule to follow in regards to all visual elements you’re using: Do not overload your email with visuals. This can have a negative impact on your engagement and conversion rates, as too many visuals can annoy your audience or distract them from the main desired action. 

Here is one of the best email design examples:

7. Personalize Your Email Content

To make your email marketing design as engaging for your audience as possible, make sure to personalize the email content for them. That way every reader feels more appreciated and seen, as the message they get is tailored to their personal preferences.

Segmenting your audience is the first step towards successful personalization. You can divide your subscribers into different groups, based on their interests, purchase history, and their stage in the customer journey. Then, tailor your email content for the different audiences that you’ve identified. Remember to also send your messages at the right time for your groups, based on their location and time zone.

If all these best email design guidelines feel overwhelming, don’t worry. We’re taking one of the most difficult tasks off your shoulders – writing the perfect email content. Our AI professionals have already prepared a guide full of free ChatGPT email prompts that you can use to create engaging emails that convert into sales. Download them from the link below to get you started:

[ai_prompts_download]

8. Incorporate Your Signature

Another smart way to raise brand awareness and increase click-through rates is to incorporate a signature into your email campaigns. This way the email seems more personal, just as if an actual person had sent it. 

Make sure your signature includes not only the first and last name, but also the job title and contact information of the person who’s going to sign the email, resulting in a more professional email design. This could be anyone that’s relevant to your audience. 

For example, if you’re sending welcome emails, you can use the CEO’s signature, or if it’s a promotional email, someone from your sales team can sign the email.

In terms of design, ensure that the signature is appealing. One way to achieve this is including a picture of the person that’s signing the email. You can also incorporate a link to social media professional profiles, e.g. a LinkedIn profile. Here’s an example:

9. Use a Mobile Responsive Design

Using a mobile-friendly email marketing design is perhaps one of the most overlooked email marketing tips. 

In 2024, it has been estimated that between 50% and 60% of email opens come from mobile devices. It’s a huge percentage that shouldn’t be overlooked. That’s why it’s essential to focus your efforts on crafting a mobile-friendly email marketing design.

When your email design is mobile responsive, it’s made to fit different screens and will be visible on various mobile devices without compromising user experience.

One way to ensure that your email is mobile friendly is to use ready-to-go templates that are optimized for mobile. Another way to make sure that your users have the best experience possible is to test the preview of your email on mobile devices, and fix any issues that you notice.

Most email marketing platforms offer both templates and preview options to spare you some time and technicalities.

10. A/B Test Your Email Design Ideas

Now that you have all that information, you probably have many email marketing design ideas. There’s no need to choose just one design and forget about the rest. 

What you can do is perform A/B tests. In fact, doing an A/B test helps you determine which elements of your design work best, which ones need improvement, and how to optimize them.

For example, you might want to test an email graphic design versus a more simple email design to figure out which one works better for your target audience.

Here are the main design elements that you can test:

• CTA button – experiment with the placement of your CTA button, whether above the fold will get you more click-through rates, or the bottom position.
• Images – test different image types to figure out which ones resonate best with your audience and drive more engagement.
• Content design – strategically create, organize, and place your email content in a way that will make people read your emails.

Once you have A and B versions of your email marketing design, you can send version A to 50% of your subscribers, version B to the other 50%, and then check the results in a couple of days. Analyze the data you get and optimize your future email designs accordingly. Don’t rely on assumptions – use this data to find out for yourself which is the most effective email design for your business and audience. Remember to regularly A/B test in order to be in line with the latest email marketing design trends.

Convert Better with Effective Email Marketing Design

Now that you know how to design a marketing email, you can go ahead and apply these tips in your next email campaign. 

For maximum results, build your next email with the SiteGround Email Marketing tool, which offers everything you need to send successful email campaigns.

Also, don’t forget to let us know in the comments below what email design worked best for you.

Email marketing keeps evolving, but here’s what hasn’t changed: the right tactics can turn your campaigns from “meh” to “wow, that actually worked.”

Whether you’re crafting your first campaign or fine-tuning your hundredth, these email marketing tips & strategies will help you cut through the noise, land in inboxes, and actually get people to click—without the trial-and-error headaches. 

From building a quality subscriber list to keeping your emails out of spam folders, this guide covers everything you need to connect with your audience and drive real results.

Ready? Let’s dive into the email marketing tips that actually move the needle for small businesses.

What Are the Best Practices for Email Marketing Success?

1. Build and Maintain a Quality Email List
2. Write Catchy Subject Line and Preview Text
3. Craft Compelling, Scannable Copy
4. Have Clear Calls to Action
5. Design Beautiful Emails with Appealing Images
6. Design Beautiful Emails with Appealing Images
7. Apply Smart Segmentation and Personalization
8. Utilize Email Automation
9. Optimize Your Send Times
10. Track and Analyze Performance Statistics
11. Perform A/B Testing
12. Maintain Strong Email Deliverability

Let’s break down each of these strategies to help you create emails that convert.

1. Build and Maintain a Quality Email List

Your email list is the foundation of successful email marketing. A quality list filled with engaged subscribers will always outperform a large list of uninterested contacts.

How to build your email list the right way:

Create valuable signup incentives

People need a reason to share their email address. So offer something specific and relevant, like a discount code, free guide, exclusive content, or early access to sales. Make the value clear upfront. Generic promises like “stay updated” rarely convert as well as concrete offers like “Get 15% off your first order” or “Download our free social media calendar.”

Use double opt-in

While it adds an extra step, double opt-in confirms that subscribers genuinely want to hear from you. That’s because after someone fills out your signup form, they receive an email asking them to confirm their subscription. This simple practice improves engagement rates and protects your sender reputation by filtering out fake or mistyped email addresses. Yes, you might lose a few signups, but the subscribers you keep will be far more engaged.

Never buy email lists

Purchased lists violate most email marketing regulations and damage your deliverability. These contacts haven’t agreed to hear from you, which leads to high spam complaints, low engagement, and potential legal issues under laws like GDPR and CAN-SPAM. Beyond the legal risks, bought lists simply don’t work—people who didn’t ask to hear from you won’t engage with your emails.

Clean your list regularly

Remove inactive subscribers every few months. If someone hasn’t opened your emails in six months, send a re-engagement email campaign with a compelling subject like “We miss you! Here’s 20% off to come back.” If they still don’t respond, remove them. A smaller, engaged list of 500 active subscribers will always outperform 5,000 inactive ones. Clean lists improve your deliverability, open rates, and overall campaign performance.

Make signup forms easy to find

Place signup forms on your homepage, at the end of blog posts, on your checkout page, and in your website footer. Or even consider adding a popup or slide-in form for visitors who spend time on your site. The easier you make it for interested people to join your list, the faster it will grow.

That said, be patient with growth. Building a quality email list from scratch takes time. Focus on placing consistent signup opportunities across your website rather than expecting overnight results. If growth feels slow, remember: 500 engaged subscribers who open and click are far more valuable than 5,000 people who ignore your emails. Quality always beats quantity in email marketing.

2. Write Catchy Email Subject Lines and Preview Text

Your email subject line and preview text are your first – and often only – chance to grab attention in a crowded inbox. Together, they determine whether recipients open your email or scroll past.

Spark curiosity and show value

Your subject line should be clickable, but not spammy. It should make recipients want to learn more about what’s inside, without misleading them about what to expect. Address your audience’s pain points and state the benefit clearly. This builds trust and credibility. For example, “3 ways to cut your email workload in half” is specific and valuable, while “Amazing email tips inside!” is vague and forgettable.

Use personalization strategically

While adding a recipient’s first name helps (“Hi Sarah”), go further with location, past purchases, or interests: “Sarah, your Chicago store favorites are 20% off” outperforms generic subject lines. Use the data you have about your subscribers to make subject lines feel relevant to their specific situation. 

Personalized subject lines consistently outperform generic ones—making this one of the highest-impact tactics for improving email performance. Industry studies regularly show double-digit percentage improvements in open rates from personalization alone. Keep it concise and actionable

Use action verbs and benefit-focused language. “Get your free guide” outperforms “Our guide is available.” And keep in mind that it’s best to produce subject lines that are 50 characters or less to ensure full visibility on most devices—mobile users will only see the first 30-40 characters before deciding whether to open.

Create urgency carefully

For promotional and sales emails, create a sense of urgency to encourage immediate action. Use phrases like “last chance,” “ends tonight,” or “only a few hours left.” Meanwhile, avoid spam triggers that combine urgency with money words like “Free cash now” or “Urgent—act now for free money.” Write naturally rather than desperately. Instead of “FREE MONEY – ACT NOW!!!,” try “Your exclusive offer expires Friday.” Same urgency, but professional and trustworthy. Avoid using all caps for your entire subject line.

Don’t use default preview text

Many businesses forget to customize preview text, leaving recipients with “View this email in your browser” or random body copy from the email. This wastes valuable inbox real estate. Preview text (also known as preheader text) appears alongside your subject line in the inbox, offering a sneak peek at your email’s content. It’s your last chance to make a convincing argument that your email should be opened.

Write preview text that complements—not repeats—your subject line, giving readers another compelling reason to open. Use it to provide a bit more detail about what readers can expect inside your email. While this text can be up to 90 characters, the ideal length is between 35 and 40 characters to ensure it displays fully across most devices.

3. Craft Compelling, Scannable Copy

One of the most important email marketing tips is to thoughtfully craft your email content. After all, it’s the relevant content that captures your readers’ attention and keeps them engaged with your message.

Let’s explore the best email copywriting tips:

1. Start with relevance

Whether you’re writing an informational, educational, or promotional email, rule #1 is to make your content relevant to your audience. Your content should address your subscribers’ needs and pain points, offering them value that motivates them to take action—whether it’s making a purchase or subscribing to your newsletter. Having a strong value proposition will get you one step closer to increasing your conversion rates.

2. How long should your emails be?

Keep promotional messages between 150-300 words and email newsletters between 300-500 words. Readers decide within seconds whether to engage, so front-load your most important message—put the key benefit or offer in the first two sentences.

3. Make your content scannable

Most people don’t read emails word-for-word; they scan in seconds. Structure your content accordingly: use short paragraphs (2-3 sentences max), clear headings, bullet points, and plenty of white space. Don’t overstuff your content with unnecessary words—get straight to the point. Readers should grasp your main message within 10 seconds of opening. If they have to work to understand your point, they’ll simply move on to the next email.

For example, here’s an email from YouTube Studio. See how scannable it is? That’s because of the bigger, bold email font in the title, followed by a catchy image, and a short paragraph. Then, it naturally flows to the blue call-to-action (CTA) button, which stands out well against the white background—a great example of how strategic colors in email marketing can guide reader attention. What’s more, the content is broken down into bullet points that are easy to scan because of the small icons at the beginning of each row.

To help you better understand and implement these tips in your next email marketing campaign, we have a guide on how to write marketing emails, including specific examples and best strategies.

AI can also help with content creation, but knowing how to write effective ChatGPT prompts is key to getting useful results. We’ve compiled an extensive guide on how to write email prompts to help you get better output from AI tools.

[ai_prompts_download]

4. Have Clear Calls to Action

Your next crucial step is having clear calls to action. Here’s how to achieve that:

Since the main purpose of an email CTA is to drive readers to take a specific action, your first goal should be to define what you want them to do. Do you want your readers to make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter, download an eBook, or visit a sales landing page of your new product or service?

Equally important is the design and wording of your CTA buttons, as both play a vital role in driving user action. Make sure to include short and actionable words on your CTA buttons, preferably verbs. Use phrases like “Buy now,” “Read more,” or “Get started.”

The visual design of your buttons is also essential—they need to stand out and grab attention. Use contrasting colors that differentiate them from your email’s background, and opt for bold, clear fonts to ensure they are easily visible and clickable.

Last but not least, instead of a button, you can also use an image as a CTA. In this case, one of the most notable email marketing hacks is to include an alt text for that image. Since some email providers might not display your image, your alt text will “show” people what the image was all about. Make your alt text short, yet descriptive and actionable—just as you would with regular CTA button copy.

Limit CTAs per email

Too many calls to action confuse readers and dilute your message. Stick to one primary CTA. If you absolutely need a secondary action (like “Read our blog” after a “Shop now” button), make the visual hierarchy clear through size, placement, and color. Your primary CTA should be impossible to miss.

Position your primary CTA within the first scroll—readers shouldn’t need to hunt for it. If your email is longer than 300 words (common for newsletters), repeat your CTA at the bottom so people who read through don’t have to scroll back up to take action.

Optional: Add social sharing buttons

While not essential for most promotional emails, social sharing buttons (Facebook, X, LinkedIn) can extend your reach when subscribers share your content. This works best for newsletters, blog roundups, or educational content—skip them for sales-focused emails where you want readers taking one action (buying, not sharing). Keep buttons small and place them in your footer so they don’t compete with your primary CTA.

5. Design Beautiful Emails with Appealing Images

No matter how closely you follow the best email marketing techniques, if your email doesn’t have an appealing design and compelling visuals, your engagement will suffer. Beautiful emails combine smart templates, relevant images, and strong brand consistency.

Start with responsive templates

If you’re just starting with email marketing, one of the best email marketing tips you can embrace is to consider using an email marketing platform. It will not only make your life much easier, but it will also help your email campaigns become measurable, optimizable, and ultimately more successful.

Most email marketing platforms will provide you with ready-to-use templates or easily customizable layouts. With SiteGround Email Marketing, you can create stunning emails fast with our free email templates, which leverage expert best practices. We have a template for every need—promotional, newsletter, welcome emails, or seasonal (such as Black Friday emails and Cyber Monday emails).

You can also lean on layouts for building your email campaigns. Layouts allow you to play around with the different elements of your email and customize them based on your own preferences and brand criteria. 

What’s the difference? Templates are pre-designed emails you can customize (colors, text, images). Layouts are structural frameworks that show where images and text blocks go, which you build from scratch. New to email marketing? Start with templates. Want complete brand consistency? Create a custom layout once and reuse it. To help you create engaging email campaigns, we’ve also compiled a list of email layout examples.

Choose compelling visuals

Whether you’re using an email template or email layout, you must complement it with appealing images. This is one of the best email marketing tips, as most people interact with your emails primarily through visuals. You need to grab their attention with the images in your email campaign.

Images should be relevant to your content and value proposition, whether you’re using individual images or creating engaging photo collages to enhance your message. They should correspond with your brand guidelines, so that readers can recognize right away that the email is coming from your brand (even if they don’t notice your logo immediately).

Appealing images are hard to find, though. That means you either need to use free stock images, invest in paid images, or even hire a professional photographer.

Another way to address this is by using SiteGround’s Email Marketing platform, which offers a free built-in AI image gallery, and provides you with a wide range of photographs and illustrations in a variety of categories.

Include alt text for all images

Just like with CTA images, the rest of your images should also include alt text. Some email clients block images by default, so alt text describes what’s in the image so readers understand your message even when images don’t load. Keep alt text short, descriptive, and actionable—especially for CTA images.

Make images clickable

You should also make sure to have your images linked to whatever page you want your readers to visit, whether that’s your sales page, downloadable assets page, or otherwise. If you decide to include a button on the image, ensure that the whole image is a link, not just the button, as users tend to pay more attention to images rather than text. People tap images more often than small text links.

6. Ensure Mobile Responsiveness

More people check email on their phones every day, and poorly formatted emails drive subscribers to delete messages or unsubscribe. If your emails don’t work well on mobile devices, you’re losing potential customers before they even read your content.

Here are some strategies to verify your emails are optimized for mobile devices:

Use responsive email templates

Start with a responsive email template that automatically adjusts to different screen sizes. Many email marketing platforms offer pre-designed templates that are mobile-ready, saving you time and ensuring consistency across devices.

Optimize image sizes

Large images can slow down load times, particularly on mobile devices without fast internet connections. Compress images without losing quality and use formats like JPEG or PNG. Additionally, consider using CSS for background images to further improve load speed.

Design clickable CTA buttons

Make sure your call-to-action buttons are easily clickable on small screens. Use a minimum size of 44×44 pixels for touch-friendly buttons, and ensure they are visually distinct with ample spacing between other elements to prevent accidental clicks.

Ensure adequate sizing of links and text

Text links should be large enough to tap easily. Avoid placing links too close together, and use a font size of at least 14 pixels for body text to maintain readability without zooming.

Prioritize key content at the top

Place the most important content and CTAs at the top of your email. This approach works because even if recipients don’t scroll, they will see the key message and action you want them to take. This is increasingly important with features like AI email summaries, which can push your content further down the screen—making that first visible section even more critical for engagement.

Test across devices

Before sending out your email, test it on various devices and email clients to catch any display issues. By implementing these email marketing tips for mobile, you can improve the mobile responsiveness of your emails, leading to higher engagement rates and improved customer interactions.

Don’t have access to multiple devices? Use your email platform’s preview feature or free tools for basic testing. Most email platforms show how your email renders on different devices before you send.

7. Apply Smart Segmentation and Personalization

One of the best tips for effective email marketing is to apply segmentation and personalization in your email campaigns.

When you segment contacts based on criteria like subscriber activity and engagement levels, you can deliver messages that are more relevant and valuable to each recipient. This targeted approach transforms generic broadcasts into personalized communications that resonate with specific audience groups.

When customers receive content that feels personal, they are more likely to feel valued and understood. This creates a stronger connection with your brand, leading to increased loyalty and long-term customer relationships, as well as higher conversions.

Here’s how to implement smart email segmentation and personalization:

Start with basic segments

If you’re new to segmentation or have a small list, start simple. With SiteGround Email Marketing, you can segment contacts based on how they interact with your campaigns—who opens your emails, who clicks through, or who hasn’t engaged recently.

After sending a campaign, check your Analytics to see who performed specific actions, then assign those contacts to groups. For example, create one group for subscribers who opened your last few campaigns and another for those who haven’t engaged in months. This lets you send re-engagement offers to inactive subscribers while rewarding engaged ones with exclusive content.

Even basic segmentation like this significantly outperforms sending the same message to everyone. Start with simple engagement-based groups and refine your approach over time. The key is to treat your subscribers as individuals with different engagement levels, not just email addresses.

8. Utilize Email Automation

Your next step in the field of email marketing best practices is automations. By leveraging email automations, you can streamline your marketing efforts, deliver personalized experiences, and achieve better results with less manual effort.

Automations not only save time but also make certain that every subscriber receives the right message at the right time, improving their journey with your brand.

Here’s how to implement email automation:

Identify key opportunities

Start by identifying opportunities within your email customer journey where automation can add value. Welcome emails for new subscribers and re-engagement campaigns for inactive contacts are two high-impact automations that save time while keeping your audience engaged.

Choose the right tools

Select an email marketing platform that supports automation features. SiteGround Email Marketing offers automated welcome emails and allows you to create email sequences based on specific triggers—making it easy to nurture new subscribers and maintain consistent communication automatically.

Define your workflows

Map out the email customer journey and design workflows that align with your marketing goals. Determine the triggers (such as signing up for a newsletter or reaching a certain engagement milestone) and the corresponding email sequence.

For example, a three-email welcome sequence might include: 

1. Immediate: Deliver your promised lead magnet or discount
2. Day 2-3: Share your story, best content, or customer success stories
3. Day 7: Introduce your products or services with a special new-subscriber offer

This works for most small businesses. B2B companies or higher-ticket services often extend this to 5-7 emails over 2-3 weeks, adding educational content and case studies. 

The welcome sequence runs automatically when someone subscribes, separate from your regular broadcast campaigns. So if you send weekly newsletters every Tuesday, a subscriber who joins on Wednesday would get the welcome sequence (three emails that week) PLUS your regular Tuesday newsletter. This doesn’t violate the frequency guidelines—new subscribers expect to hear from you more often initially.

Create personalized content

Develop email templates and content that are tailored to each stage of the workflow. Personalize messages using dynamic content and segmentation for maximum relevance.

9. Optimize Your Send Times

Timing matters more than many businesses realize. Sending your email when your audience is most likely to check their inbox can significantly improve open and engagement rates.

Test different days and times

While email marketing benchmarks suggest Tuesday through Thursday mornings perform well, your audience might behave differently. Test various send times and track which gets the best response. B2B audiences often engage during work hours (9 AM – 3 PM), while B2C audiences may respond better in evenings (6 PM – 9 PM) or weekends. Don’t assume—test with your specific subscribers.

Consider time zones

If your subscriber list spans multiple time zones, segment by location and schedule sends so emails arrive at optimal local times. Sending at 10 AM EST might work for New York subscribers, but means 7 AM for your West Coast audience—and most people don’t want marketing emails with their morning coffee.

This matters most for time-sensitive emails like flash sales or event invitations. For weekly newsletters, time zone optimization is less critical.

Watch for inbox competition

Avoid sending when your subscribers’ inboxes are flooded. Monday mornings often see heavy email volume as businesses catch up from the weekend. Similarly, sending right before major holidays when people are traveling or away from work can hurt your metrics. 

Pay attention to your industry’s patterns—for example, retailers need to strategically time campaigns like finding the best time to send Black Friday emails, since inboxes become extremely crowded during major shopping events. Many successful retailers send early Thursday evening or very early Friday morning to stand out before the inbox flood begins.

Maintain consistency

Once you find a schedule that works, stick with it. But what’s the right frequency? Start with weekly emails if you have regular, valuable content to share. Many small businesses find success with one email per week, while others thrive with 2-3 monthly emails for higher-value content.

Here’s how to decide:

1. Send your welcome email immediately when someone subscribes
2. For regular campaigns, weekly works for most ecommerce and content-driven businesses
3. B2B service businesses often succeed with 2-4 emails per month
4. Watch your unsubscribe rate—if it spikes after increasing frequency, pull back

Whatever you choose, consistency matters more than frequency. If subscribers expect your newsletter every Tuesday at 10 AM, that consistency builds anticipation and habit. They’ll start looking for your email at that time. Breaking this pattern without warning can confuse subscribers and reduce engagement.

10. Track and Analyze Performance Statistics

Tracking and analyzing your email marketing metrics and KPIs is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your campaigns and making data-driven decisions. Without tracking, you can’t accurately measure the success of your email campaigns.

Understanding how your emails perform helps you gauge whether you’re meeting your marketing goals. Analyzing data over time also allows you to spot trends and patterns in your audience’s behavior, helping you tailor future campaigns to their preferences and habits. By pinpointing what works and what doesn’t, you can make informed adjustments to your content, design, and email marketing strategy to improve engagement and conversion rates.

Focus on metrics that matter

Open rates and click-through rates are useful, but go deeper. 

Compare your performance against your own past campaigns first—that’s more valuable than generic industry benchmarks. Then look at industry averages and email marketing benchmarks to see if there are areas where you’re significantly underperforming.

Track conversion rates (the percentage of recipients who complete your desired action), revenue per email, and unsubscribe rates. These metrics tie directly to business results, not just email activity. A 50% open rate means nothing if nobody buys. Conversely, a 15% open rate that generates $5,000 in sales is excellent.

How to track and analyze email marketing statistics

Before diving into analytics, establish clear objectives for your email campaigns. Whether it’s increasing open rates, boosting click-through rates, or driving conversions, having defined goals will guide your analysis.

Next, leverage the analytics features of your email marketing platform to track these metrics. SiteGround Email Marketing, for example, offers detailed reports and insights into your email performance.

Compare performance across various campaigns to determine what the most effective marketing strategies are.

What numbers should you aim for?

Rather than chasing arbitrary email marketing benchmarks, focus on improving your own baseline. Track your averages over 3-6 months, then work to beat them. 

Small business ranges typically fall around 20-25% for open rates, 2-5% for click-through rates, and under 0.5% for unsubscribe rates (according to email platform industry reports)—but these vary significantly by sector, audience size, and business model.

11. Perform A/B Testing

Another of our email marketing recommendations is to perform A/B testing to optimize your email campaigns. A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a powerful technique that allows you to compare two versions of an email to determine which one performs better.

Here’s how you can implement A/B testing effectively:

Start by identifying what you want to achieve with your A/B test. Are you looking to improve open rates, increase click-through rates, or boost conversions? Having a clear goal will guide your testing strategy.

Then, select one element to test at a time to ensure clear results. Some common variables include: subject lines, email content, calls to action, and send times.

As a next step, divide your email list into two random, equal-sized groups. Send version A to one group and version B to the other. Ensure the sample size is large enough to yield statistically significant results.

Send out your emails and allow enough time to gather data—typically 24 hours minimum to account for different checking habits. If you send weekly, wait until your full subscriber base has had a chance to open before declaring a winner.

When you get the results, compare the performance of the two versions based on your chosen metric (including open rate, click-through rate, etc.). Use statistical significance to determine if the results are due to chance. Once you’ve identified the better-performing version, roll it out to your entire audience. Use the insights gained to inform future campaigns and continue testing new variables.

When A/B testing makes sense

You need sufficient volume for reliable results. If your list is small (under 200 subscribers), focus on testing subject lines only—they require smaller sample sizes than testing content or design changes. 

With very small lists, manual observation often works better than formal A/B tests—send an email, see what happens, try something different next time.

However, remember that A/B testing is an ongoing process. Continuously test new ideas and refine your approach to keep improving your email marketing strategy.

12. Maintain Strong Email Deliverability

You can craft the perfect email, but if it lands in spam folders, your efforts are wasted. Strong email deliverability gets your messages into inboxes where they belong.

Authenticate your domain

Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication protocols. These technical standards verify you’re a legitimate sender, not a spammer impersonating your domain. Think of them as digital signatures proving your emails are really from you. Most email platforms provide step-by-step guides for setting these up with your DNS provider. While the setup requires a bit of technical work (or IT support), it’s necessary for maintaining high deliverability rates.

Avoid spam trigger words

We touched on this earlier when discussing subject lines, but spam trigger words don’t just affect whether people open your emails—they also determine whether your emails reach inboxes at all. Phrases like “100% free,” “Act now!!!,” “Limited time only,” “Cash bonus,” and excessive punctuation can trigger spam filters. Write naturally and avoid language that sounds overly salesy or desperate. Instead  of “CLICK HERE FOR $$$,” try “Limited spots available this weekend.” You create urgency while maintaining credibility.Retry

Monitor your sender reputation

Your sender reputation is like a credit score for your email domain. High spam complaints, bounce rates, or low engagement damage this score, making it harder to reach inboxes. Email providers like Gmail and Outlook watch how recipients interact with your emails. If lots of people delete without opening, mark as spam, or never engage, your reputation drops. Monitor your reputation using tools like Google Postmaster or your email platform’s deliverability reports.

Make unsubscribing easy

It sounds counterintuitive, but a clear, easy-to-find unsubscribe link actually helps deliverability. If people can’t unsubscribe easily, they’ll mark you as spam instead—which seriously damages your sender reputation. Include an obvious unsubscribe link in every email footer. Losing an uninterested subscriber is far better than getting spam complaints.

Stay compliant with regulations

Follow email marketing laws like CAN-SPAM (US), GDPR (EU), and CASL (Canada). Key requirements include: adding your physical business address to every email, honoring opt-out requests immediately (within 10 business days), and only emailing people who’ve given permission.

SiteGround Email Marketing handles key compliance requirements automatically—every email includes an unsubscribe link and opt-outs are processed immediately. You’ll need to add your business address to your template, but the platform takes care of the technical requirements. Beyond avoiding legal penalties, compliance builds trust with subscribers and improves deliverability.

Implement These Email Marketing Tips in Your Next Campaign

These 12 tips provide a complete framework for successful email marketing campaigns. Start with the fundamentals—building a quality list and maintaining strong deliverability—then layer in personalization, automation, and continuous testing. Track your results, learn what resonates with your audience, and refine your approach over time.

The businesses that succeed with email marketing aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest lists or fanciest designs. They’re the ones who consistently apply these proven strategies, pay attention to their metrics, and keep improving.

Let us know in the comments below how your email marketing efforts go, and which of these tips was new and most useful for you.

Maybe you’ve heard some people question the email marketing benefits – whether they are still effective in the age of social networks. But let’s think about it for a second – don’t we all check our inboxes at least once a day? Whether it’s searching for a discount on your favorite jeans, reading the weekly techie newsletter you’ve subscribed to, or seeing a client’s feedback on a new product, email marketing remains a go-to communication channel.

So, what exactly is email marketing? It serves a wide range of purposes, from a small business sharing updates with a few customers to a team of marketers crafting customized email sequences, known as drip campaigns, tailored to specific customer needs. Email marketing keeps you connected with your audience by retaining their interest, providing updates, facilitating transactions, or promoting your offerings.

How Effective Is Email Marketing?

The statistics show that 60% of consumers prefer to hear from brands through email. Half of these consumers open their emails to find discounts and special offers, while the other half are drawn to the relevant, personalized information brands provide. Therefore, you can leverage the benefits of email marketing for a variety of purposes and still engage an audience that values your messages. 

Regardless of the specific purpose of your email campaign, the long-term goal of your business is to convert one-time buyers into loyal customers. Marketing by email plays a crucial role in achieving this, with a revenue projected to reach $17.9 billion by 2027, highlighting its growing importance and effectiveness in driving business success.

Who Benefits the Most from Email Marketing?

Whether you are a freelance designer showcasing your portfolio and developing your personal brand, a small bakery sharing recipes and promoting small cozy events, or a large software company launching products and providing educational webinars, email marketing enables direct and meaningful interaction with your audience. 

The advantages of email marketing extend to any type of business because it offers versatile strategies for reaching out to your target audience, engaging them with personalized content, and converting them into loyal customers.

10 Email Marketing Benefits

The possibilities of email marketing are endless, especially with modern email service platforms. As you continue reading, you’ll discover how to leverage its many benefits. 

1. Cutting Costs and Time on Marketing Communication

One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is its cost-effectiveness, making it a perfect solution for businesses with tight budgets. Unlike paid ads or influencer marketing, email allows you to directly reach your audience at a fraction of the cost. Many email-focused platforms, such as SiteGround Email Marketing, even offer free trials or low-cost plans tailored for small businesses.

In the past, sending a newsletter could take days of continuous effort, requiring copywriters, designers, and developers to work together. Today, email marketing platforms have simplified the process, allowing you to create and send an email campaign in as little as 30 minutes.

Our easy-to-use interface, no-code email builder, and integrated AI writing assistant mean you don’t need to hire a professional copywriter or designer to create effective emails. You can also draw inspiration from other brands or use AI tools like ChatGPT to generate content, streamlining the entire process even further.

By cutting down both time and cost, you can create engaging emails and deliver effective marketing communication to your audience with minimal effort.

2. Achieving a High Return on Investment (ROI)

Another significant benefit of email marketing is its ability to deliver a high return on investment (ROI) – a key metric of your campaign’s success. 

On average, email marketing yields on $36 to $42 for every $1 spent, though this can vary based on several factors:

• The industry you’re in: retail and ecommerce tend to see the highest returns, followed by marketing and PR agencies, and the tech industry. But don’t get discouraged if you’re in a different sector; you can still win over your readers with valuable content.
• The frequency of sending emails: sending 9 to 16 emails per month can guarantee a higher ROI. If you think you can’t keep up with high frequency, sending two to four per month can still significantly boost it. Ultimately, consistency is key.
• The timing of your emails: while Tuesday mornings between 9 and 12 AM are often recommended for higher open rates, conducting A/B tests can help identify the best timing for your audience.
• The content of your email: successful email campaigns largely depend on segmentation, message personalization, and email automation. We’ll explore how to implement each of these in the upcoming sections.

By understanding these factors and tailoring your approach accordingly, you can enhance your email marketing efforts and achieve a higher ROI for your campaigns.

3. Gaining New Leads

Email marketing can be a powerful tool for generating new leads. One effective strategy is to offer lead magnets – such as downloadable ebooks or exclusive access to webinars – on your website in exchange for email sign-ups. These resources provide immediate value and demonstrate your expertise, enticing visitors to share their contact information to gain access. 

With their email addresses in hand, you can nurture these leads through targeted campaigns that build trust and encourage them to explore your products or services. To maximize your efforts, we’ve gathered proven email lead generation strategies designed to elevate your business and maximize conversions.

SiteGround enhances this process with a lead generation plugin that seamlessly integrates with your WordPress website. It enables you to create subscription forms and even add subscription options to existing contact forms, making it simpler than ever to capture and expand your email list.

4. Increasing Subscribers’ Engagement 

By now, you might be intrigued by the potential of email marketing, but how can you determine which of your email subscribers are genuinely interested in what you have to offer? After all, there’s nothing more frustrating than wasting your time on leads that aren’t likely to convert into customers.

Email segmentation is one of the benefits of email marketing that can help you overcome this challenge. Indeed, segmented email campaigns result in 30% more opens and 50% more clicks than unsegmented ones. By categorizing subscribers, you can tailor content to specific groups, ensuring your messages and offers are relevant and appealing. Segmentation can be based on factors like demographics, behavior, email activity, and sales funnel position.

SiteGround Lead Generation Plugin allows you to organize your subscribers into specific groups, enabling you to customize your messages to meet the needs of different audience segments. 

5. Building Stronger Relationships with Subscribers 

Who enjoys reading an email that feels impersonal and generic? Likely, none of us do. Email marketing provides you a unique space to address your audience on a first-name basis, fostering a sense of familiarity and engagement.

Start by crafting a compelling subject line – including the recipient’s first name in the subject line can boost the click-through rate by 10.64%. Along with the sender’s name, these are the first elements people notice when receiving an email. Next, personalize the opening line of your email by using the recipient’s name instead of a generic “Dear Customer.” These simple touches can significantly enhance your engagement and connection with your subscribers.

6. Maximizing Marketing Efficiency and ROI

Businesses need more than just time-saving tools – they require solutions that maximize efficiency and return on investment. Email automation achieves this by delivering personalized, timely content without the need for continuous manual input.

Imagine being able to set up a series of emails that are automatically sent to your audience based on their engagement with your brand. For instance, a well-timed welcome email can immediately introduce your brand, offer a freebie, or provide valuable information that builds trust from the start. Automated sequences like these ensure that you stay connected with your customers while spending less time on manual tasks.

Beyond just staying in touch, automation helps you drive more revenue by delivering targeted messages at critical moments. For example, after a customer makes a purchase, an automated upsell email can suggest complementary products or services. By sending the right message at the right time, you increase the likelihood of repeat purchases and higher transaction values – all without additional effort.

The real power of email automation lies in its ability to scale your marketing efforts while maintaining relevance and personalization. This boosts both engagement and conversion rates, directly contributing to better ROI. Instead of dedicating more time and resources to manual processes, you can focus on growing your business, knowing that your email campaigns are working effectively in the background.

7. Providing More Website Traffic 

A significant advantage of email marketing is its ability to generate more website traffic. By directly communicating with your audience through targeted email campaigns, you can effectively guide subscribers to your latest content or landing page. 

Imagine you’ve just launched a course on how to become a wedding photographer. Sending an email with a compelling call to action can entice readers to visit your website, significantly boosting the traffic to your website. It’s advisable to include a link to your website in every email you send, encouraging subscribers to click and learn more about your latest content and offers.

In addition to driving traffic, email marketing provides valuable insights into how your audience interacts with your content. This data allows you to see which content drives the most traffic from your emails, enabling you to replicate or use that type of content more often to drive sales. 

8. Strengthening Your Brand Credibility

In today’s competitive market, people are more inclined to support businesses they know and trust. So another benefit of email marketing is that it allows you to maintain regular communication, ensuring your brand remains familiar and reliable in the eyes of your customers. This consistent engagement not only reinforces your brand’s credibility but also shows your commitment to transparency and customer satisfaction.

Additionally, a well-executed email marketing strategy can boost word-of-mouth referrals. When customers trust your brand, they are more likely to recommend it to friends and family. This organic growth is invaluable, as personal recommendations often carry more weight than traditional advertising.

9. Tailoring Your Products and Services to Fit Customer Needs

Email marketing offers the valuable advantage of gathering customer feedback, which is especially beneficial for businesses looking to establish themselves in the market. By incorporating customer surveys into your email campaigns, you can obtain insights into how your audience perceives your brand. 

To maximize the benefits of these surveys, incorporate quantitative questions to assess customer loyalty, satisfaction, and their likelihood of recommending your product or service. Complement these with open-ended questions to delve into the reasoning behind their responses. This strategy not only enables you to better meet customer needs but also enhances their overall experience.

Moreover, by actively seeking feedback and acting upon it, you demonstrate to your customers that their opinions are heard and valued, fostering greater loyalty and trust in your brand.

10. Providing Valuable Performance Insights

As the saying goes, you can only improve what you measure. Email marketing tools provide valuable insights into customer behavior, offering clear campaign reports that reveal everything you need to know about your performance. By tracking key metrics such as bounce rate, click-to-open rate, and unsubscribe rate, you gain a deeper understanding of how your audience interacts with your content.

When launching an email campaign, the initial engagement typically peaks within the first 24 hours. A few days after sending, you should have a nearly complete picture of the campaign’s performance. However, if your campaign involves multiple emails and spans other channels – such as paid ads, social media, individual sales outreach, or earned media – it may be beneficial to wait longer for a more comprehensive view. 

As data from your campaigns accumulates, you can test and optimize elements like subject lines, content, and send times to enhance results over time. The effectiveness of email marketing also depends on factors such as the quality of your email list, the relevance of your content, and the frequency of your emails. Regular analysis and adjustments based on your findings can lead to improved outcomes.

Leverage the Email Marketing Benefits with the Right Service Provider

As you’ve seen, email marketing benefits are truly endless – from boosting reader engagement to turning one-time buyers into loyal customers. Whether you’re just starting out or managing a large corporation, harnessing the power of email marketing can transform your communication strategy and deliver meaningful results. Now’s the time to give it a try!

Whether you work for a big corporation, or run a small, family business, email marketing is an unrivaled way to captivate your audience, create brand loyalty, and drive conversions. But mastering it isn’t just about sending messages – it also requires a strategy, and avoiding a select list of common email marketing mistakes that can make or break your success. 

So, what email marketing mistakes should be avoided? This article will tackle six of the very worst email marketing mistakes – and how to easily avoid them. With just a bit of extra care in each of these areas, you can ensure that your email marketing efforts are a success, delivering the best possible results for your business.

Why It’s Important to Avoid Email Marketing Mistakes

While the field of digital marketing is crowded and complex, email marketing stands out as a unique opportunity to connect personally and directly with your audience in a highly targeted, strategic way. Not only that, but it’s fairly easy to implement, and offers an astonishing return on investment. 

Indeed, the benefits of effective email marketing are vast, including higher email open rates, a growing list of quality subscribers, increased brand and loyalty, and, importantly, more conversions and business opportunities. 

Before we get started: if you want to get your email marketing up and running but don’t know where to begin, then join our free, six-day email marketing course. It will give you all the tools you need to create highly successful email campaigns with ease – and to start implementing the tips we’ll be sharing here.

What Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

1. Not Using High-Converting Sign-Up Forms

Your email list is the backbone of your email marketing efforts. So one of the top email marketing mistakes you can make is not taking the extra steps to optimize how you acquire subscribers. That’s right: if your sign-up forms aren’t designed to convert, you could be missing out on heaps of potential leads. So how to make this happen? Let’s dive in.

Gather Essential Info

Most sign-up forms typically ask for just an email address and, occasionally, a first name. While this simple approach can increase submission rates, it may not help you qualify leads effectively, especially if your goal is to focus on high-quality prospects. The key is to balance the number of questions with what’s essential for your business to determine whether a lead is a good fit.

For example, an interior designer might ask for project details or budget range, while an online store may only need an email. By gathering the right information from the start, you’ll save time and concentrate on leads that are more likely to convert. That said, don’t ask for extra information unless you really need it – unnecessary fields can reduce sign-ups.

Use a Double Opt-in

While a single opt-in might seem faster and more logical, implementing a double opt-in can actually help you build a higher-quality email list. What is a double opt-in? During this second step, users verify their subscription through a confirmation email. By doing so, you as a business can be extra certain that these subscribers legitimately want to hear from you. This is an especially good thing because it not only increases engagement (because subscribers look forward to your emails!) but also helps reduce spam complaints and bounce rates.

Leverage Lead Magnets

A lead magnet, such as a downloadable resource, eBook, or exclusive content, is among the top lead generation tactics to incentivize users to sign up for your list. People are far more likely to subscribe when they receive something of value in return. Just be sure that your lead magnet aligns with both what you offer and with your target audience’s needs and interests.

2. Not Focusing on a High-Quality List, and Segmentation

One of the most common mistakes in email marketing is focusing on list quantity rather than its quality. Indeed, a smaller, well-segmented list is often way more effective than a large, untargeted one. So when it comes time to improve your list quality, it’s essential to prioritize list hygiene and segmentation.

Clean Your List Regularly

An outdated or unengaged list can harm your deliverability rates and skew your campaign metrics due to unopened, undelivered emails, and spam complaints. By cleaning your list regularly, you can avoid these pitfalls, removing inactive subscribers, reducing bounce rates and improving engagement. 

Go through your list once every three to six months to identify users who haven’t opened or clicked on your emails for an extended period, and consider sending them a re-engagement campaign. If they still don’t respond, it’s time to remove them from your list. 

Segment Your List and Send Targeted Emails

Segmentation is one of the most powerful tools in email marketing. By dividing your list based on demographics, interests, or behaviors, you can send more relevant content to specific groups of people. For example, you might wish to send one message to loyal customers (with a discount thanking them for their business), and a different one to new customers (with a unique offer that entices them to buy). These personalized emails lead to higher open rates, better engagement, and ultimately, more conversions. 

Want to become an expert on growing a high-quality email list? Read our guide on how to build your email list.

3. Not Developing Strategic Subject Lines

Your subject line is the first thing your subscribers see, and it’s often the deciding factor in whether your email gets opened or sent straight to the trash bin. With a little extra work, though, you can increase open rates – and hopefully conversions.

Generate Intrigue

Subject lines that pique curiosity tend to attract more opens – it makes it hard(er) to resist the click! The idea is to avoid revealing too much in the subject line – leave a little to the imagination so that the subscriber feels compelled to click to learn more. That said, ensure that the content inside your email aligns with the intrigue you’re building; misleading subject lines can lead to unsubscribes or spam complaints.

Create a Sense of Urgency

Urgency is a powerful motivator in any type of marketing, and that goes for email marketing just the same. Subject lines that include phrases like “only a few left” or “last chance” can encourage users to take immediate action. Urgency taps into the fear of missing out, pushing subscribers to engage with your email quickly.

Align with Email Content

Your subject line should reflect the content of your email. Subscribers don’t like bait-and-switch tactics, so make sure you’re delivering what you promise in the subject line. So be cautious not to over promise, or to mislead. Clarity in your subject line builds trust and credibility with your audience.

4. Not Using Strong Calls to Action

A great email is virtually worthless without a clear, actionable next step – your email essentially becomes a dead end. So it’s not surprising that one of the most detrimental email marketing mistakes marketers make is neglecting to include effective calls to action (CTAs) in their emails.

Make It Action Oriented

Your CTA should clearly instruct the reader on what to do next. Use action-oriented language that prompts them to take immediate action, such as “Shop Now,” “Download Today,” or “Claim Your Offer.” Avoid vague CTAs like “Click Here” that don’t convey what the recipient is signing up for.

Make it Specific

A generic call to action may fail to capture attention. Be as specific as possible. Instead of “Get Started,” try “Start Your Free Trial” or “Download Your Free Guide.” Specificity makes the offer more compelling and gives the recipient a better understanding of what they will gain.

Noticeable and Strategically Placed

Your CTA should be easy to spot, whether you’re using a button or a hyperlink. It’s often a good idea to include your CTA multiple times in the email—once near the beginning, once in the middle, and once at the end. Strategic placement ensures that even if subscribers don’t read the entire email, they can still easily take action.

So much more goes into creating the perfect email. If you’d like to learn more, read our comprehensive article on how to write marketing emails that people will read.

5. Not Having a Content Calendar

Successful email marketing requires a well-thought-out plan, and one of the most common email marketing mistakes is failing to create a content calendar. Without a schedule, your emails may become inconsistent or irrelevant, leading to decreased engagement. On the flip side, a well-organized schedule will help you stay on top of email marketing, and to better be able to align your marketing with business objectives.

Plan Content Types Strategically

Your emails should include a variety of content types to not only keep your subscribers engaged, but to strategically build your relationship with the customer, and to build your credibility as a brand. Planning ahead allows you to have a bird’s-eye view of what you intend to send out, thus allowing you to balance promotional content with other types of content, such as resources or educational material. A content calendar also helps to make sure that your emails stay fresh and diverse, offering value to your subscribers without overwhelming them with constant sales pitches.

Schedule Content for Consistency and Ideal Frequency

Consistency is key in email marketing. Whether you send emails weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, a content calendar helps you maintain a consistent cadence. It also ensures that your email frequency aligns with your audience’s preferences. Too few emails can lead to disengagement, while too many can overwhelm your subscribers, increasing your unsubscribe rates.

6. Not Optimizing with Goals and Metrics

Finally, one of the biggest mistakes is not setting clear goals or tracking metrics. Without data-driven insights, it’s impossible to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns or optimize them for future success – and this is truly where the real email marketing magic happens.

Identify Goals and Metrics

Before launching a campaign, identify what success looks like. Whether your goal is to increase open rates, drive traffic to your website, or boost sales, having a clear objective will guide your strategy. Next, determine which metrics will help you measure progress toward that goal. Maybe you want to drive sign-ups for a certain course, or increase the sales of a new product, or perhaps simply to grow your list. Whatever your goal, identifying success metrics can help you get there. Common email marketing metrics include open rates, click-to-open rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates – and you can learn more about all of them in our article on email marketing metrics.

Track and Optimize

You’ve defined your goals and metrics, now you must track them. Monitoring performance after each email send allows you to adjust your email strategy from campaign to campaign. If your open rates are low, consider tweaking your subject lines. If your click-through rates are underwhelming, review your CTA or content. If unsubscribe rates or going up, check your content and clean your list. Regular analysis and optimization are essential to long-term success.

Run A/B Tests

A/B testing is a fantastic way to optimize your emails and continually improve their success. It allows you to experiment with and improve different email elements, such as subject lines, copy, CTAs, and design. 

Do this by dividing one of your email segments and sending two different versions of the same email to the two different groups – one version to one group, the other to the other group. It’s important to only change one thing in that email: the element you’ve decided to test (a subject line, CTA, etc). After sending, compare the results from the two emails to determine which one performed better – from there, optimize your campaigns accordingly. The beauty here is that testing helps you make data-driven decisions and improve your results indefinitely.

Avoid Common Email Marketing Mistakes for Lasting Success

Email marketing remains one of the most powerful channels to engage and convert customers, but only if executed smartly. By avoiding these six common email marketing mistakes – poor sign-up forms, ignoring list quality and segmentation, weak subject lines, ineffective CTAs, a lack of content planning, and failing to optimize with metrics – you can elevate your email marketing strategy and drive better results for your business.

By refining your approach, focusing on the needs of your audience, and consistently optimizing your efforts, you can turn email marketing into a reliable and effective part of your overall digital marketing strategy.

Now that you know exactly what to do and not do when it comes to email marketing, it’s time to put everything in motion. Go from email marketing beginner to expert in just six days: join our FREE, six-day email marketing course. 

And if you’re keen to get your email marketing efforts started without all the hassle, sign up for SiteGround Email Marketing – it’s super easy to use, and 80% off!

Every time someone joins your email list, it’s a valuable opportunity. Welcome emails are your first chance to connect and they’re critical. Often underestimated, these emails are one of the most effective ways to engage and retain new subscribers right from the start. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of using welcome emails, share key best practices, and provide templates for different business scenarios in order to help you get started. 

What Are Welcome Emails?

A welcome email is simply the first message you send to new subscribers after they’ve joined your email list. However, a welcome email is more than just a confirmation of their successful subscription or purchase! It’s your chance to make a strong first impression. This pivotal moment sets the tone for how subscribers will perceive your brand and marks the beginning of their customer journey. 

Why Welcome Emails Are Important for Your Business

Welcome emails are quite effective and offer a variety of benefits. Here are some of the most notable ones.

📬 Customers expect them: On average, 74% of people are expecting to receive a welcome email shortly after they join an email list. So, make sure you use welcome emails in order to meet the expectations of your recipients.

🫶 They help build credibility and set the tone: 

A welcome email is a powerful tool for showcasing your brand’s values and voice, helping you build credibility with customers who are new to your brand and may not yet know much about it.

🔝 They are extremely effective and boost engagement: Research shows welcome emails deliver impressive results, such as four times more opens (an average 50% open rate) and five times more clicks (an average 14.4% click rate) compared to regular email campaigns. Plus, subscribers who receive welcome emails show 33% higher engagement with the brand.

Best Practices for Welcome Emails in 2024

Now that we’ve covered what welcome emails are, why they’re important for your business, and why you should leverage them, let’s dive into the key elements every welcome email should include, and what best practices you need to follow. 

Send welcome emails right after the user joins your list

In email marketing, proper timing is very important. To maximize the impact of your welcome emails, make sure they’re sent immediately after someone joins your subscriber list, or within 24 hours at the latest. This helps keep your brand top of mind and significantly reduces the chances of them losing interest or even forgetting why they signed up for your email in the first place. It also shows that you are attentive and organized, which will help you build a positive impression of your brand. 

Personalize Your Emails

Typically, personalized emails perform much better than generic ones. That’s because people are more likely to perceive such content as more relevant to them, and therefore open it and engage with it. To personalize your welcome emails, use the recipient’s name in the subject line or in the greeting at the beginning of your email.

Also, create tailored content that resonates with your audience’s interests or the way they have subscribed. You can segment your audience into groups you find relevant and create different welcome emails for each of them. For example, if you’re a photographer, and you often have prospects interested in professional corporate photography, send them a welcome email including your top corporate photography pieces.

Use Compelling Subject Lines

Your subject line is one of the most important elements of your welcome email, as it is the first thing recipients see from you. To make it effective and attention-grabbing, keep it clear, short (especially for better display on mobile), and give a hint of what subscribers can expect from you. Also, whenever appropriate, consider using emojis, as they can make your emails more visually appealing and engaging. 😉   

Brand Identity and Consistency

One of the best practices for welcome emails is to craft them in a way that aligns with your brand’s identity and maintains consistency across all the different media you use. To do so, make sure to keep the same tone of voice as on your website, social media, and other channels. Use your logo, brand colors, style, fonts, and any other elements that your audience associate with your brand.

Set Clear Expectations and Give Next Steps

Now let’s talk about the content of your welcome email. It’s obvious that in your welcome email you would want to extend a warm welcome to your new subscriber. But you’re probably wondering “what else should I include?” 

As a general rule, don’t overwhelm your readers with too much information. Share only the essential details that they’ll need. People like to know what to expect, and whether spending time on your content will be worthwhile. Set clear expectations and guide your subscribers through their journey with your brand. 

You can outline the type of tips, news or offers they will receive in your email campaigns, and how frequently they can expect to hear from you. It’s also a good idea to include next steps, like exploring your website or directing them to a specific page or blog post.

Add Value

If you encourage subscribers to join by using  a lead magnet  – such as an eBook, guide, exclusive podcast episode, design sample, or discount code –  now is the perfect time to deliver on that promise. Adding the lead magnet to your welcome email will build trust and reinforce the value of being on your list. For example, if you are a style consultant, a subject line like: “Welcome aboard! Your free autumn style guide inside!” would work great. 

Integrate Your Social Media Channels

Welcome emails can be part of a broader, integrated marketing strategy. Use them to invite subscribers to connect with you outside email by integrating your social media channels to your emails. Encourage recipients to follow you for more news, updates, or promotions.

Effective and Clear CTA

Be sure your subscribers know what action you want them to take next by adding an obvious and straightforward call-to-action (CTA) button or hyperlinked text. Your CTA caption should be short and clear, like “Sign Up Today,” “Start Free Trial,” or “Get Your Free Sample.” 

It’s also a good practice to place it above the fold, so that readers can see it even if they don’t read your whole email. If your email is long, consider adding your CTA two or more times. 

Provide an Unsubscribe Option

Even though unsubscribing is probably the last thing you want recipients to do, it’s essential to add it to your welcome emails. It shows that you are transparent, and it’s also an effective way to ensure that your subscriber list contains only recipients who are truly interested in your content. Moreover, the unsubscribe option is important to comply with international laws like GDPR and CAN-SPAM.   

Use Modern, Mobile-responsive Design

It’s essential that your welcome emails are optimized for mobile devices. Choose an email marketing platform that provides mobile-friendly templates that automatically adjust to smaller screens. As a general rule, keep your email content as short as possible so it looks good on mobile devices, opt for a single-column design if possible, and avoid overloading your email with too many images.

Welcome Email Templates and Examples

Now let’s explore some welcome email templates that could serve as  inspiration for what you can create in different scenarios. If you like one of them, you can use it yourself via the SiteGround Email Marketing platform, and easily adjust it to fit your brand’s style.

Welcome Email for New Clients

A well-crafted welcome email can start off your relationship with new subscribers on the right foot. Make it more personal by incorporating a warm message from the business founder. You can tell more about the inspiration behind the brand and its values.

Continue by offering additional resources, product lines or anything else that you think will be suitable to entice subscribers to explore more. Add a clear call to action (CTA) to drive engagement, and include social proof to build trust.

Newsletter Signup Welcome Email

When a person joins your newsletter but hasn’t yet made a purchase, it’s a good idea to immediately engage and deliver a special offer or a discount code to encourage them to make their first purchase. This combination of a welcome message, personalized exclusive offer, and clear call to action is an effective way to make subscribers take the first step with your brand.

Welcome Email for Onboarding Subscribers

Here’s another welcome email example that greets a new subscriber while also explaining onboarding steps. If your business or project has a mission, be sure to mention it in your welcome email. Along with this, you could add authenticity by including a note from the founder, and encourage action with a visible CTA. When crafting an onboarding email, make sure to encourage subscribers to interact with your brand – guide them to specific products, send them helpful articles, make them add a reminder for upcoming event, etc.

Community or Loyalty Program Welcome Email

If you have a community, loyalty, or rewards program, your welcome email could include simple steps with what the members will get from it, its benefits, how it works, and a clear call to action.

Event Registration Welcome Email

For businesses hosting events, whether online or in-person, a good welcome email practice is to provide a highlighted section with visible information about the date and time of the event and a call to action to save the date to your calendar. After that, you could add any other relevant information – more details about the event, useful links to resources, social media links, etc.

Welcome Email Template for Delivering a Freebie

If you build your email list with a lead magnet like a free guide or course, the welcome email should deliver the promised free downloadable content right away. To make it straightforward, add a button or a visible link in the beginning of your welcome email, thank the subscriber for their interest, and give more details about how the free piece of content will benefit them. It’s a nice touch to also suggest more relevant resources. This might help you drive further engagement.

Content/Blog Subscription Welcome Email

When a person signs up for your blog, it’s a good practice to briefly explain what they can expect from it in the future. You could add information about the themes and topics you plan to write the most, how often they can expect new content from you, and a few popular posts to get them started. This email is also a great opportunity to invite them to follow your social media channels.

Get Started with Welcome Emails Today

We hope the best practices and tips we’ve shared above will help you easily create your welcome emails and set the foundation for a successful and lasting relationship with your subscribers. Ready to take the next step? Go ahead and give the SiteGround Email Marketing platform a try –  it’s free for the first 30 days! 

Looking to boost your business or project’s results through email marketing? If you’re already on this journey, this article will be quite useful for assessing the success of your email campaigns and determining if they are helping you achieve your goals. We’ll cover the essential email marketing metrics and KPIs, explore what insights they can provide, and explain how you can use them effectively.

What Are Email Marketing Metrics and KPIs?

Email metrics are simply data points that demonstrate how your email marketing campaigns are performing. Think of them as email analytics that inform you about how many people read your email, how many unsubscribe, how many you convert into clients, and much more. 

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), are also measurable values used by businesses to evaluate their success in achieving important business objectives. They differ from metrics even though the two are often used interchangeably.

KPIs help track progress, identify areas for improvement, and guide decision-making. They vary depending on the industry and specific goals but typically focus on critical aspects of business performance such as revenue, customer satisfaction, or operational efficiency.

Below, we will describe which are the most important email marketing metrics and what they show. Under each explained metric, we will also give an example of the business insight it could reveal, as well as some tips for improvement. 

We’ll also go over the most common goals business owners have nowadays and give suggestions about which KPIs could be helpful for you to monitor. But remember: you know your business best, so it’s your choice to determine which metrics and KPIs will   best help you reach your goals.

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Why Is It Important to Track Metrics in Email Marketing?

We all know the satisfying feeling of crafting an email campaign with great design and all the crucial information you want to share with your subscribers. But let’s be honest – it’s not just about hitting “send” and hoping for the best. Evaluating your campaigns is equally important, as it reveals how they impact your business and marketing efforts in the following aspects:

📊 Campaign performance: analyzing email marketing metrics goes beyond assumptions, offering a concrete overview of the campaign performance and its impact on your subscribers.

🥇 Campaign optimization opportunities: metrics help you find out what aspects of your emails could be changed and optimized for better results.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Audience insights: by reading your metrics, you can gain valuable insights into your audience, such as what types of emails and content they prefer, what time of day they are more likely to open an email, and what they might potentially buy from you.
🎯 Strategic planning: observing your email campaigns will help you make informed decisions in the future (like what’s the perfect time to do a promotional campaign), and tweak your email marketing strategy accordingly.

📅 Reporting: evaluating email marketing metrics is crucial for keeping everyone informed, whether you’re working on a team, as a freelancer, or even independently. It helps you and your colleagues, clients, or managers stay up-to-date on all communications sent to subscribers and understand how they are performing.

What Are Your Goals for Email Marketing?

Before we explain the most important email marketing metrics and KPIs, ask yourself what you want to achieve. Define what your biggest goal with email marketing is and don’t skip setting specific objectives for every email campaign you work on. The metrics you need to measure depend on the exact goals you have. They could be increasing your leads, driving traffic to your website, driving sales, etc. 

Email Marketing Metrics to Track & Monitor

Here are the essential metrics that every business owner and email marketer should know and have in mind when working on an email campaign.

Open rate

Open rate is one of the most common email metrics, and it shows the percentage of recipients who opened your email campaign. However, despite its popularity, the open rate is often seen as a vanity metric, and many marketers even consider it unreliable for several reasons.

Generally, most tracking systems count an email as “opened” only when the email software receives a tiny transparent image (aka tracking pixel) embedded in the email for tracking purposes. However, some email apps block images by default, so unless the recipient manually enables them, the email may not be recorded as opened, even if it was. 

Also, with Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, which was introduced several years ago, the content of emails in Apple Mail gets preloaded (including tracking pixels) regardless of whether the user actually opens the email. All these things make open rate not a very accurate and reliable metric for your business, so don’t focus too much on it. 

📍 Formula: open rate = (total emails opened / total emails delivered) x 100​​

💡 Business insight: even if not 100% accurate, an open rate can give you an idea about the effectiveness of your subject line, whether it was interesting and compelling to the recipients or not. It also hints at whether recipients are interested in your content. Beyond individual campaigns, though, reviewing changes in your open rate between multiple sends can offer crucial insights, especially if you’re reaching the same audience. Monitoring the shifts can help you identify patterns in engagement. 

Curious if your open rate is good? An average open rate for small businesses using email marketing is around 36%, based on data reported by SiteGround. If your open rates tend to be much lower, consider applying the following tips.  

🚀 Ideas for improvement: if you want to improve your open rates, make sure to write emails that people will read – experiment with the length, style, and tone of your subject lines. Use personalization in the subject line, as well as emojis, and try different sending times to find out what time of day your subscribers are most active and more likely to open an email.  

Click-to-open rate

The click-to-open rate is another popular email metric that reveals how many people clicked on any links inside your email. If, for example, you have included a link or button to a special discount, the click-to-open rate will indicate what percentage of your recipients clicked on it to learn more about your offer. To determine if your click-to-open rate is good enough, you should track it for each email campaign and analyze the trends over time. Based on data provided by SiteGround, the average click-to-open rate for small business owners is approximately 6.4%.

📍 Formula: click-to-open rate = (number of clicks / number of emails opened) x 100

💡 Business insight: The click-to-open rate is a crucial metric for revealing the effectiveness of your email content and whether it speaks to the subscribers. It tells you whether it is compelling and engaging. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: to improve this rate, first make sure that your email campaign is well-structured, has relevant and helpful content, and has a catchy design. Boost your click-to-open rate by making your call to action visible and clear. 

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is an email marketing metric that shows the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to your subscribers for some reason. This happens when your email gets rejected by the recipient’s email servers and returns to the sender with an automated message indicating a delivery error. It’s important to monitor that metric as a high bounce rate can affect your sender reputation and, in time, even lower your campaigns’ reach. 

📍 Formula: bounce rate = (bounced emails / emails sent) x 100%

💡 Business insight: Along with hurting your sending reputation, a high bounce rate can hint that there will be a potential drop in your open and click-to-open rate, as they depend on actually reaching recipients. It could also suggest problems with the quality of your subscriber list or issues with your email server. A bounce rate under 2% is generally considered a strong performance.

🚀 Ideas for improvement: to lower your bounce rate, ensure that your recipient list is of high quality. Regularly clear it from unengaged and inactive subscribers. Don’t buy email lists and never use spammy tactics in your email campaigns, as this can lead to lots of spam complaints and serious consequences to your sender’s reputation. 

It’s a good practice to implement a double opt-in to ensure that each subscriber is truly interested in receiving your content. 

Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate measures the percentage of recipients who opt to leave your list after receiving an email. Even though seeing recipients unsubscribe from your emails can be discouraging, it’s also beneficial, as it’s a good way to efficiently clean your subscriber list. Providing your recipients with the option to cancel their email subscription is a way to ensure good email deliverability, as this is a requirement in various spam laws worldwide.  

📍 Formula: unsubscribe rate = (number of unsubscribes / number of emails delivered) x 100

💡 Business insight: The unsubscribe rate, if high, can reveal that your email content is not relevant, useful, or interesting to your target audience. It could also suggest that your subscriber list is not well-segmented or that your emails are being sent too frequently. To get meaningful feedback about your content, consider sending a confirmation email to unsubscribers, asking them to provide more information on why they decided to leave your email list. Based on our experience with small business clients using the SiteGround Email Marketing tool, a good unsubscribe rate is below 0.5%.

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To minimize unsubscribes, consider implementing a double opt-in, segmenting subscribers into different lists based on various criteria, and focus on providing them with valuable and interesting content. It’s also a good practice to give recipients the option to choose how often and what type of emails they want to receive.  

Spam complaint rate

This metric shows the percentage of people who mark an email as spam after receiving it. This is critical data to monitor, as it reveals that recipients perceive your message as irrelevant, annoying, or even inappropriate. However, note that the spam rate does not account for emails that get rejected at the network level by spam filters, so this metric may not fully capture all spam-related issues. 

📍 Formula: Spam complaint rate = (number of spam complaints / number of emails delivered) x 100

💡 Business insight: Similar to the bounce rate, a high spam complaint rate can damage your sender reputation. It is also a red flag that there’s a problem with your email content (frequency, relevancy, or quality). Keep in mind that the acceptable standard spam complaint rate is less than 0.1%. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: We have a detailed article that gives you all the tips and tricks on how to avoid your emails going to spam. Generally, to reduce the spam complaint rate, it’s important to only send emails to people who have opted in to receive them, and to avoid sending emails too frequently. Additionally, always include an unsubscribe option in your email campaigns. People often report messages as spam when they get frustrated by not being able to find an unsubscribe link. 

Focus on building your email list organically and improving it by incorporating double opt-in signup. Also, authenticate your sender domain as it is an effective way to prove your emails come from you.  

Delivery rate

Email delivery rate indicates the percentage of emails successfully delivered to the recipients without bouncing or being reported as spam. That means they have passed all the email filters and reached your intended audience.

📍 Formula: delivery rate = (number of successfully delivered emails / number of emails sent) x 100

💡 Business insight: A high delivery rate is important as it is proof that your sender reputation is intact. It could also reveal to you that your email and its content are relevant to your audience as it is not reported as spam. However, a low delivery rate might suggest problems with the quality of your email list hygiene and issues with your server sending infrastructure. Consider that the average delivery rate typically ranges between 90% and 98%. Remarkably, data provided by the SiteGround Email Marketing tool shows an average Delivery Rate of 98.8%, ensuring your messages consistently reach their intended recipients and maximizing your potential for engagement and conversions.

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To boost your delivery rate, regularly clean your email list, and remove inactive or unengaged subscribers. Improve your sender credibility by using a reputable email service provider that maintains a good sender reputation for their servers. 

Also, be mindful of how often you send email campaigns: don’t do it too frequently, as it might lead to overwhelming your recipients, and therefore result in more complaints, unsubscribes, and even spam reports. For further help on this topic, we have a great article that explains in detail how to ensure high email deliverability.

Forwarding rate 

This rate (also quite similar to ”email sharing”) measures the percentage of people who forward your email to others. It’s a strong indicator of how interesting, helpful, and engaging your email is, as subscribers are more likely to share useful content with their friends and family. Keep in mind that not all email marketing tools measure this metric, so if you want to track it over time, you might have to use unique URLs or social media sharing buttons for this purpose. 

📍 Formula: forwarding rate = (number of forwards / number of emails delivered) x 100

💡 Business insight: The forwarding rate reveals whether your content resonates with your target audience. It could unveil whether word-of-mouth organic growth is feasible for your business. A good email forwarding rate is typically between 0.5% to 2%. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To encourage your recipients to share your email campaigns, make it easy for them to do so. Include a clear call to action asking them to forward or share it. Provide helpful content, expert tips, or other valuable information that is worth sharing, and ensure your email design is visually appealing and easy to navigate.

Key Email Marketing KPIs to Track 

There are countless KPIs you could monitor, but how do you decide which ones to track? Here we’ll highlight the most popular KPIs, explain their benefits, and help you determine which ones are best suited to your email marketing goals.

As we mentioned earlier, a KPI can be a single metric or a mix of metrics, specifically aligned with your goals. They are tools that help you and your team monitor progress toward your objectives. As a result, it’s crucial to identify which KPIs are the most important for your business or project early on.

Note that some email service providers automatically provide such metrics. If not, consider tracking the key ones for your business yourself, as they can significantly impact your strategy.

Conversion Rate

One of the essential KPIs that you can monitor as a small business owner is conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of recipients who complete a desired action after receiving your email. This action can vary depending on your specific goals and may include making a purchase, converting a lead into а client, filling out a form, reading a blog post, signing up for a webinar, or visiting your website, among other actions.

📍 Formula: conversion rate = (number of conversions/number of delivered or sent emails) x 100

Tracking conversions typically requires integrating data from two sources: your email marketing platform and your website analytics. To accurately attribute conversions to specific email campaigns, it’s crucial to use UTM parameters in your email links. These are tags added to URLs that allow you to track the source, medium, and campaign name in your analytics tool.

💡 Business insight: The conversion rate can reveal how effective your email campaigns are in encouraging subscribers to engage and take action with your business. The higher the conversion rate, the better your email campaigns are performing. But what qualifies as a good conversion rate? 

Research suggests that the average conversion rate in email marketing hovers around 3%. Note that to truly assess your email performance, it’s important to track conversion rates over time and compare them. Keep in mind that these rates can be influenced by factors such as your industry, your content, sending times, and more. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To improve your conversion rate, you need to ensure that your email campaigns are relevant, useful, and easy to navigate. Clear inactive users from your recipient list, write attention-grabbing subject lines, include visible and compelling call-to-action buttons or links, and experiment with sending times.

Subscriber acquisition cost (SAC)

Subscriber acquisition cost is a critical KPI to track in order to make informed decisions about your marketing spend. In the context of email marketing, SAC represents the cost of acquiring a new subscriber to your list. 

📍 Formula: SAC = total cost of acquisition / number of new subscribers acquired through email

To calculate SAC, divide the total cost of acquiring a new subscriber by the number of new subscribers gained as a result. The total cost should include all the costs, including marketing, design, ads, sales, and everything else that you might have used in the acquisition process. 

If your SAC is high, it could indicate that your marketing efforts are not cost-effective. Note that SAC varies significantly across industries, so you should research what the estimate is for your specific industry and analyze your results for a longer period. It’s also useful to keep in mind that a good SAC is lower than the subscriber’s lifetime value (which we explain down below). 

💡 Business insight: By tracking SAC, you can get an idea of how effective your overall marketing efforts are in acquiring new subscribers and respectively whether you need to change something to help increase your email list. A lower SAC means you’re spending less to acquire each new subscriber, which is crucial for profitability.

🚀 Ideas for improvement: If you discover that you need to lower your SAC after researching your industry’s average, focus on improving your ad design and copy, and create useful and educational content on your website, social media, and on any other platforms that you may use for collecting leads. Try incentivizing readers to subscribe to your email list with different free resources and materials.

Subscriber lifetime value 

Subscriber lifetime value is another useful KPI that estimates the revenue a subscriber is expected to generate for you over the course of time as your newsletter subscriber.

📍 Formula: Subscriber lifetime value =  (average revenue per email subscriber x average subscriber lifespan) – the cost to serve them

Calculating this KPI might not be straightforward, as you need to have specific data. If you are able to calculate it, it will help you to decide how much to invest in acquiring your subscribers and, in the end, will optimize your marketing spend. 

💡 Business insight: Lifetime value is one of the most important KPIs to track because it can give you insights into how much to invest in acquiring new subscribers and how well you are performing in monetizing your audience.  

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To improve the lifetime value of your subscribers, work on enhancing engagement with your email content. Make it more personalized and actionable, and provide more value to your audience with different exclusive offers and promos. Try boosting upsells by sending email campaigns offering related products. 

Return on investment (ROI)

Return on investment is a popular KPI that measures the revenue generated from your email campaigns compared to the cost of running those campaigns. It unveils whether your email campaigns are profitable or not. 

📍 Formula: ROI = (revenue from email campaign – cost of email campaign) / cost of email campaign

To calculate it, you need to subtract the money you spent to run the campaign from the revenue – this represents the money you earned from it, which will show you how much profit you made after covering your costs. Then, dividing by the cost of the email campaign will reveal how much profit you made for every dollar spent. 

Note that to correctly calculate the cost of creating and sending your email campaign for that KPI, you need to again consider the email tools you use to do it, as well as internal writers, freelancers, agencies, and/or design costs.

💡 Business insight: A positive ROI is a sign that your marketing efforts are working and generating more than you spend. According to research, the average ROI for email marketing is $36. Keep in mind that as with most of the other KPIs, the ROI also varies greatly depending on your industry. 

🚀 Ideas for improvement: You can improve your ROI by making your offers more appealing to your readers. For example, you could use personalization and experiment with different content and the way it’s presented. You could also review how you segment your email lists and make changes in order to improve your targeted messaging. 

Revenue per email

The revenue per email KPI could help you assess the profitability of individual campaigns and identify which types of emails are most effective at driving revenue. You can calculate it easily by dividing the revenue of an email campaign by the number of emails sent. 

📍 Formula: revenue per email = revenue from email campaign / number of emails sent

💡 Business insight: This KPI allows you to compare the effectiveness of different campaigns and email strategies. It will help you reveal which email types work the best at driving revenue – whether they are promotional, newsletters, or otherwise. A higher revenue per email shows that your content, CTAs, and targeting are resonating with your audience. Since there isn’t a specific industry benchmark, you need to track and analyze the results for your particular business. 

As a general guideline, the revenue from your email campaign should be equal to or close to the amount you invested. This way, you can ensure that your campaigns are paying off, and you can determine the budget for future campaigns.  

🚀 Ideas for improvement: To drive more revenue for your campaigns, it is again important to increase engagement. Optimize your email content specifically for each segment of your subscribers to make it more relevant. A/B test various subject lines, design styles, buttons, and visuals (one at a time) to see what will bring you the most clicks, engagement, and revenue. 

Choose the Right Email Marketing Tool to Track Metrics 

Having the right Email Marketing Tool by your side is crucial for optimizing all your tasks related to creating, sending, testing, and analyzing your email campaigns. When selecting an email marketing service, make sure you choose a tool that provides you with all this functionality – and that is easy to use and to get started.

With the SiteGround Email Marketing tool, you can rest assured that you have everything in one place. Developed by experts with 20+ years of experience in hosting email, our platform provides an intuitive no-code builder, customizable email layouts, AI copywriter, unlimited audiences, subscriber management, and friendly reporting features. 

You can enjoy automated essential email analytics like open, delivery, click-to-open, bounced, spam, and unsubscribe rates, and interactions stats showing you clicks on specific URLs, the type of the element that has been clicked (button, link, image) and the caption text.

Conclusion

Monitoring your metrics and adopting a structured approach to evaluating your email marketing work will empower you to make data-based decisions and boost your business. Don’t miss out on that opportunity! Now, tell us in the comments: Are there any metrics you already track for your business? Which ones have most helped you to reach your goals?

BONUS: Email Marketing Glossary

Term	Explanation
Open Rate	The percentage of recipients who opened an email, indicating how well your subject line worked.
Click-Through Rate	The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in an email. It shows engagement with the content.
Conversion Rate	The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed a desired action, like making a purchase.
Bounce Rate	The rate at which your emails are not delivered to the recipient’s inbox, either due to invalid addresses (hard bounce) or temporary server deliverability issues (soft bounce).
Deliverability	The measure of the success rate at which emails are delivered to the recipient’s inboxes.
Unsubscribe Rate	The rate at which people opt-out of your email list after receiving an email, indicates the relevance and quality of your campaigns.
Segmentation	The process of dividing your email list into smaller, more specific groups based on certain criteria to send more targeted campaigns.
Personalization	The practice of tailoring email content to individual recipients based on the data you have about them.
A/B Testing	Sending two variants of an email to a small percentage of your total recipients to see which version performs better, before sending the better-performing version to the rest of the list.
Call To Action (CTA)	A button or link placed in your email that encourages your recipients to take a specific action, such as “Buy Now”, “Learn More”, or “Subscribe”.
Email Automation	Email that is sent automatically by the system when triggered by a specific customer action or event. For example, a welcome email after sign-up or a confirmation email after purchase.
CAN-SPAM Act	A US law that sets the rules for commercial email and establishes requirements for commercial messages. It gives recipients the right to stop unsolicited emails from being sent to them and spells out tough penalties for violations.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)	A regulation on data protection and privacy in the European Union and the European Economic Area. It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas.
Email List Hygiene	The practice of regularly cleaning your email list to remove inactive, invalid, or unengaged subscribers to maintain a high-quality recipient list.

If you’re using email to connect with your audience, then you’re always seeking ways to improve engagement and reach. Enter the ‘View this email in your browser’ link – a powerful yet often-overlooked tool in your email marketing arsenal. Let’s explore how this simple feature can solve formatting issues, boost accessibility, and even expand your audience.

What is “view this email in your browser”? 

The simple explanation is that the “view this email in your browser” takes you to a browser version of the email you’re reading. That is, it’s hyperlinked text that takes you out of your email inbox, and into a separate website browser, where you can see the email laid out in full. More technically speaking, it is a web-hosted version of your email, rather than just an email message living in someone’s inbox.

What is the purpose of “view this email in your browser”?

Improve accessibility

Accessibility is an important component of email marketing – that is, all content should be made accessible and viewable for all types of viewers (such as people with visual impairment). But not all email service providers can process and transmit your email information optimally for all audiences. With an alternative viewing option for your email campaign, those keen to consume your content in a different way can more easily use assistive technology (such as screen reader tools) regardless of their email client.

Address email formatting issues

You can send yourself and colleagues loads of test emails to double check formatting and image loading, but at the end of the day, it’s impossible to know how your email will appear on every mobile device and via every email client. Some recipients might even have image loading turned off, thus blocking graphics and hyperlinked images. By including a web browser version of your email, you give subscribers the ability to view your email outside their inbox, and therefore have access to the accurate, full version of your email, and with no rendering issues.

Aid in viewing content- or image-heavy emails

Some emails may be particularly image heavy, or perhaps include animations or other visuals that take longer to load via certain email providers or on different devices. This can result in unviewable content, which will not only impact reader experience, but it will negatively impact your message. Some users might even get so annoyed that they end up flagging your content so that your emails go to spam. Clicking on the “view this email in your browser” allows recipients to exit to the web, where your full email content can load more easily. 

Enable sharing & reach a broader audience

By having a web browser version of your email, you make it shareable. That is, if a subscriber clicks on the “view this email in your browser” link, they can then copy that link and share it with others, allowing you to reach a broader audience. 

How to leverage the “view this email in your browser” link

As we’ve discussed, the beauty of the web browser link is that it makes your emails accessible beyond just a recipient’s inbox. This allows the information to reach more people, and it also means you can refer to and use past content going forward.

This is all fine and well, but you might be wondering how exactly to tap into this apparent potential. Here are a few creative ways to do so: 

Take advantage of social sharing

As we discussed above, having a linkable version of your email allows for sharing, and thus gives your business more ways to reach more people. Here are a couple of ideas to leverage sharing: 

• Share emails via social media and in your social profiles: If you have an email newsletter that contains particularly pertinent information, you might wish to share it via social media and/or include it as a link in your social profiles (for example, as one of your shared links on Instagram). This is also a great way to reach an audience that is already interested in your brand, but maybe hasn’t yet signed up for your emails. 
• Promote content sharing: Maybe you’re running a contest, or perhaps you’ve published research that is relevant to a wider audience – users may be keen to share your email about this via social media. Consider embedding the link as a call to action in your email in order to motivate social sharing. Examples include: “Click here to share `this information via social” or “Click here for a shareable link.”

Encourage bookmarking

Let’s say you share recipes via your emails, or maybe how-tos, or just any kind of information that readers might want to refer back to later – by having a web browser version of your email, readers can bookmark the information you’ve sent. And again, not only do they have the ability to do this by clicking on the “view this email in your browser” link, but you can also embed this link in your email as a call to action (such as, “bookmark this recipe now”) so that your subscribers know that they can save it for later.

Make use of past content

Web browser versions of your emails enable easy access to previously sent messages, allowing you to benefit indefinitely from past email content. Here are a couple ways ways to take advantage of this:

• Create a searchable content hub: you may wish to include an archive of your old newsletters on your website. In doing so, you can even create a searchable content hub so that users have access to a knowledge base of your earlier emails.
• Link to past content: Perhaps you are writing a new blog post, or are selling a product for which an old newsletter’s information might be helpful – you can simply link to it!

How “view this email in your browser” appears in emails

Header

You may find that in some emails the “view this email in your browser” link shows up in the white space in the email header. Some prefer to use this unused area to make the link readily available from the start, thus avoiding any reader frustration. 

Footer

That said, most opt for the footer, as this is where important information unrelated to the email’s content is located. For example, in the footer, you’ll usually find the business’s address, as well as links to unsubscribe, and read terms and policies. The footer is also optimal because placing the link in the header can be distracting, and can negatively impact design and branding. 

Within body text

This would likely only be advisable if, as we mentioned above, you want to provide a call to action of sorts – to bookmark the email, or perhaps share it. Either way, the link should also be included in either the header or footer, as this is where people expect to find it – and it will create reader frustration if it’s buried in your email’s body content.

Using “view this email in your browser” with SiteGround Email Marketing

The benefits are built-in

Because we at SiteGround like to make things easy for our email marketing users, we implement best practices, and automate the whole process for you. This includes the following steps:

• The “view this email in your browser”  link is automatically placed in the email footer, where it’s least distracting, and where users expect to find it.
• The link goes to an already-designed web version of your email.
• The web version includes a link at the top to “subscribe,” which directs to an already-designed subscription page.

How to implement it 

Adding this feature to your emails couldn’t be easier: just enable it, create your emails as usual, and send! Here’s how the process gets set in motion: 

• Turn it on by navigating to the Email Builder > Design >  Footer > “Show browser preview option” > toggle it on.
• A web version is generated after sending or scheduling, and the link is accessible via the send/schedule confirmation page, or via the Email Marketing Dashboard. 
• Edit the subscription page if you wish by visiting Groups > Contacts > Subscribe Page. (Each subscriber added via the subscription form will be added to this Group.)

Track its results

You can track each web version’s engagement by visiting the individual campaign in your Analytics. Here you will be able to see the following statistics:

• Unique Visitors tells you how many unique visitors arrived at the email campaign’s webpage and viewed it.
• Unique Clicks represents the number of unique visitors that clicked on any link in the web version of your email.
• New Subscribers reveals the number of contacts that have subscribed to your mailing list via the web version of your email.

Learn more about how to implement and track the “view this email in your browser” link.

The takeaway

This simple feature is super easy to add, and offers loads of unexpected benefits. Not only does it permit an improved user experience, but it provides your business with many ways to leverage past content, reach a larger audience, and continue to build your list. Toggle it on today, and start getting creative with the different ways you can take advantage of its easy-to-add inclusion in your email marketing.