I’m willing to bet you’re not sending enough email. I know, I know—that’s a big statement, especially considering how much email each of us receives on a daily basis. What I mean is, we’re not sending enough VALUABLE email. The fact is, if you poll any group of marketers, chances are, they’ll unanimously vote email as their best performing sales/marketing channel.

Question is, what should you send? Answer:  CONTENT 😉. Start to think of email marketing as another channel to distribute your blogs, videos, and social media posts. If you immerse yourself in creating valuable content—tips, advice, and updates about your local marketplace—then no matter where you publish that content, it’ll be received with great enthusiasm. Email included. Why? Because it's valuable/useful.

Now, what to send is one matter—best-practices around HOW to send your email is another. Scan through the stack of images for tips on how to get better performance out of your email marketing campaigns.

1. Everything Clickable: Since Apple’s release of its Mail Protection Privacy program, Open-Rate metrics are virtually unreliable. Nowadays the Mail app on iOS devices preloads ALL your emails on its “proxy servers,” which email service providers interpret as an open—even if the recipient never did so. So hyperlink your images, text, and so forth so that you can get a better read on who’s consuming your campaigns.

2. Smartphone Optimized: Year-over-year, mobile email adoption rates continue to soar. That being the case, it’s critical to ensure your email campaigns are outfitted and optimized for smartphone consumption. For example, make sure text is sufficiently sized so it's readable, avoid multi-column layouts in which viewers have to pinch-and-zoom in order to see properly, and make all buttons extra BIG for an easy tap.

3. Preview Text: When you send an email campaign, there’s an option to customize the “preview text,” which is the sentence-or-two snippet that appears below the sender name and subject line in recipients’ inboxes. If you don’t modify it, by default, it’ll usually say something unfortunate, such as: "Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list." Nooooooo! My advice: customize it!

4. First-Name Personalization: When someone says or writes, JASON—as would be expected, it get’s my attention. Why? Because that’s my name! It’s simple psychology. My advice: utilize your email service provider’s {FIRST-NAME} merge tag feature so that your bulk emails send out personalized to each and every recipient. It’ll increase your campaign's relevance and, by extension, its performance.

5. Drop the ”Newsletter:” Not literally. In fact, I think the concept of a newsletter—that is, a recurrent email campaign sharing news, tips, advice, and/or updates related to your business—makes for a fabulous email. However, that being said--whatever you do--DON’T incorporate the word “Newsletter” in your subject line. It’ll get deleted faster than you can type DELETE.