3 Ways to Better Email Marketing for Small Business

Email marketing for small business is easier now than ever before.

Thanks to the many email marketing  services out there, small business owners have all the necessary tools at hand to stay in touch with their mailing lists. But whether you’re using a straightforward drip campaign or trigger-based emails to nurture leads, it’s important to make the most of your email communication.

By focusing on three simple elements of an email – the From Name, Subject Line and Preview Text – you can optimize your messaging to improve your email open rates with customers and prospects.

From Name – Personalize and Brand It

Let’s start at the top. A lot of statistics are quoted on websites about how much the From Name influences open rates but rarely is a source mentioned. In other words, there is no conclusive evidence.

That doesn’t mean you should ignore its usefulness. The From Name can be an opportunity to build your brand.

Brand building is a challenge in the early stages of business growth. Brand recognition is low, and as a small business owner, often times, you are the brand.

So how do you ensure that recipients recognize emails from you and your brand?

For small businesses, I recommend using [Your First Name] from [Company Name] as your From Name. Doing this adds a sense of personalization while building your company brand. It may even help keep your emails from being labelled spam.

Subject Lines – Keep them Short

Today’s mobile devices and email readers tend to cut off subject lines.

According to Litmus, the 4 most popular email clients in the world are all mobile-based. With this in mind, the optimal subject line length should be 50 characters or less, that’s about 5 to 7 words.

About 10 years ago, Return Path, an email metrics company, found that open rates with subject lines less than 50 characters were 12.5% higher than emails with longer subject lines. Emails with shorter subject lines also had 75% higher click-through rate. Those are amazing results but how true is that today?

A couple of more recent studies, one here and another one here, suggest that there may be no correlation between subject line length and open rates. While this provocative research is worth contemplating, let me ask you this: when you’re competing with dozens of email subject lines every day, would you rather have your subject line be seen or not seen?

Whether or not your emails get opened, you want the email recipient to see your subject line. Write subject lines that do 3 things: Offer value, pique curiosity, and fit on small screens.

Preview Text – Use It

Much like the From Name field, the Preview Text or Preheader Text can help with the perception of your brand.

The Preview Text is a snippet of text that appears after the email subject line. If there is no dedicated Preview Text composed, email clients will display the first part of your message in its place. This doesn’t always look pretty and may influence how people treat your email.

Some people use preview text as a presceening tool. Is this email worth opening later?

Nobody has time – or spends the time – to read everything anymore. People scan their emails. One study suggests that people now have an average attention span of 8 seconds. Yes, our attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish.

We’re all competing for those 8 seconds.  Carefully crafting preview text that entices your reader to open your email – or remind them of what you do – can be a powerful subliminal message.

Take the time to write an effective one and it can help your email stand out in a very crowded inbox.

To ensure the Preview Text is seen across all programs and devices stick to 40 characters.

Monitor and Measure

Tools are only as good as the user. Whatever you do to improve email marketing for your small business, make sure to monitor and measure to discover what works best for your unique audience.