Email marketing moves faster than most people expect. Whether you've been running campaigns for years or you're just getting started, it's worth checking that your approach still holds up. Here are four best practices that are easy to overlook.
Tip #1, Design
Getting the design right sounds obvious, but it's one of the most common areas where campaigns fall short. Aesthetic choices tend to crowd out functional ones.
Start with the basics: set your campaign width to 600 pixels. This keeps your email inside the visible area on most desktop screens, making it accessible to more recipients. It also reduces the number of words per line, which makes the body copy easier to scan. TouchBasePro's template builder defaults to 600 pixels, but if you're working with a custom template, stay under 700 pixels.
Tip #2, Personalisation
Sending a generic campaign to your entire subscriber base is the path of least resistance, but the results reflect that. Research consistently shows a stronger return on investment from segmented and personalised campaigns.
You don't need complex data to start. Target subscribers by gender, location, monthly spend, or whatever you're already collecting, and you'll see conversion rates improve fairly quickly.
Tip #3, Mobile
Between 2010 and 2015, mobile open rates for email campaigns grew by 30%. Today, around 65% of all email opens happen on mobile devices, phones and tablets combined. If your campaigns aren't mobile-ready, you're potentially cutting off more than half your audience.
All built-in templates in the TouchBasePro template builder are mobile-friendly by default. But responsive templates are only part of the picture. Your subject line, pre-header text, and From Name all play a role in how your campaign performs on mobile.
Tip #4, Automation
Regular newsletters and one-off campaigns are still the backbone of most email strategies, but automation has become a significant part of the mix. Automated emails fire when a user takes a specific action on your website, which means they're both timely and directly relevant to what that person just did. That combination tends to produce higher engagement and better conversion rates than broadcast sends.
The goal is simple: the right message, to the right person, at the right time. TouchBasePro's built-in automation tools cover triggered workflows and transactional mail, so the routine emails you send every day can work harder than they currently do.
The Basics Still Matter
The email marketing industry changes quickly. Revisiting these four areas, design, personalisation, mobile, and automation, is a practical way to make sure your campaigns are keeping up.
Frequently asked questions
- What width should an email campaign be?
- 600 pixels is the standard recommendation. It fits within most desktop screens and keeps line lengths short enough to read comfortably. TouchBasePro's template builder uses 600 pixels by default. If you're using a custom template, stay under 700 pixels.
- Why does personalisation improve email marketing results?
- Personalised and segmented campaigns are more relevant to the recipient, which drives higher open and conversion rates. Even basic segmentation by location, gender, or purchase behaviour can produce a measurable improvement over sending the same message to your entire list.
- What share of email opens happen on mobile?
- Around 65% of email opens happen on mobile devices. If your campaigns aren't optimised for mobile, a significant portion of your audience is likely having a poor experience, or not engaging at all.
- What is email automation and why does it matter?
- Email automation sends messages automatically based on a user's behaviour, such as visiting a page, completing a purchase, or signing up. Because these emails are triggered by something the recipient just did, they tend to see much stronger engagement than standard broadcast campaigns.