What Makes a Good Email? 9 Elements That Actually Work

Email campaigns can, will, and should look vastly different between companies, between purposes, and between audiences. So how do you decide what makes a good email?

There is more to an email than just the email itself. Let's start with what goes into the message, then look at everything around it.

The Building Blocks

Every email should have all three of the below.

Personalisation and Imagery

It is all about being relevant. If you send generic newsletters with one-size-fits-all messages, you might get a response here or there when a subscriber's needs happen to line up with what you sent. But if you send targeted campaigns centred on your customers' interests and addressed directly to them, you will see a much higher engagement rate. Your customer wants to feel like more than an email address on a spreadsheet, so get personal.

Subscribers also do not want to wade through a wall of text. Visuals help recipients quickly understand what the email is about.

Responsive Design

Effective email campaigns are designed for every device subscribers use, desktop, tablet, and smartphone. Mobile is especially important: 67% of emails today are read on a smartphone or tablet. If you are not designing for mobile, you are leaving the majority of your audience with a broken experience.

An Appropriate Call-to-Action

Every marketing email must have a meaningful call-to-action (CTA). Subscribers receive dozens of emails a day. If you are taking up their time and inbox space, the message needs a point. Give them something to do with what you have sent.

What About Design?

What works will vary across industries and audiences, but design is about more than aesthetics. It is about what the email says about the sender.

Research into reading behaviour found that the average user spends just 51 seconds with a newsletter after opening it. That is barely enough time to skim a few paragraphs, let alone absorb everything you have written. Your design needs to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Are your images reinforcing your message, or are they just decoration?

Designs should be:

• Relevant, to the audience, the subject matter, the message, and your company
• Consistent, across branding, your website, and social media, so the brand is always recognisable
• Meaningful, does it say something, and does it represent you well?

What About Copy?

Personality goes a long way. If you are on a first-name basis with a subscriber, they should be on a first-name basis with you. Be a human on the other end of the email, not a faceless corporation.

That said, do not ramble. Keep it short and to the point, but that does not mean cold or clinical. Know your audience, know who you are talking to, and know what you can and cannot say to them. Balance that with your brand's personality and you will have newsletters your subscribers actually want to read.

Regular Sending

Trust is built through reliability. Stick to a schedule so subscribers know what to expect. If you only send once every few months, subscribers will forget you exist. That hurts your marketing effectiveness and raises your spam flag risk. Communicating regularly gives a better impression and keeps your sender reputation healthy.

Reputation

Brands need to be trusted before subscribers will sign up. But once they are on your list, do not ignore them. Replies to your campaigns must be handled quickly. You started the conversation, so you need to keep it going. Always monitor the inbox that receives replies, and never send from a no-reply address.

Brand Consistency

We mentioned that design should stay consistent across channels. The same applies to how your brand communicates. If you say something on social media that contradicts your last email campaign, you have a problem. Keep your tone, your message, and your positioning consistent across every channel. Inconsistency erodes trust and gives subscribers a reason to leave your list.

Rules and Laws

Email marketing has rules, and we take them seriously. Without a clean sending reputation, nothing else matters. The GDPR, POPIA, ECTA, and CAN-SPAM Act all cover various aspects of email marketing, with some overlap, and we are compliant with all of them. That means only emailing opt-in lists, including an opt-out in every campaign, and adding company details to the footer, among other requirements.

So, What Makes a Good Email?

Here is a quick checklist based on everything above:

• The email connects visual design with a clear, simple message.
• The content serves the customer more than the company.
• There is consistency across branding, website, and app, the email and the website look, feel, and sound the same.
• The campaign uses current best practice. Brands should be testing new things in the inbox.
• It surprises and delights. Even a routine transactional email can be enjoyable to receive.
• It is likely to perform well, based on what we know about email marketing.
• It balances live text and imagery. All-image emails are a hard no.
• It works across every device and screen, and is accessible to everyone.