Best practice tips

Below you’ll find tips from practitioners, from Econsultancy analysts looking at case studies, and from technology suppliers in this sector. I’ve tried to split them up nicely, but they are all fairly meaty posts, ranging from creative to deliverability

General

Email best practice: Evans Cycles shows value of collecting customer data in-store

Aftersales email best practice from ASOS

Six best practice tips for email unsubscribe pages

Five tips for building stronger B2B email relationships

Five ways to reinforce your ecommerce activities with email marketing

10 things I love about your emails (and related arts)

10 things you can do to make me love your emails

Email marketing: getting it right and read

Five reasons you should stop using no-reply email addresses right now

Three secrets of experienced email marketers

Deliverability

15 best practice tips for improving email deliverability

Six email deliverability lessons that you can learn from SEO

Five tips for reducing email spam complaints

How to get your emails into the Hotmail inbox. Step one: welcome new subscribers

Opt-ins

Email reputation: what is the expiration date of your opt-ins? 

How to raise your email opt-in rate: three CRO case studies on overlays

10 useful tips and examples to boost your email signups

Design

Seven tools to optimize your email marketing for mobile

Best practices for mobile email design

Seven top tips for designing welcome emails

Subject lines

152 killer keywords for email subject lines (and 137 crappy ones)

Six case studies and an infographic on how to write effective email subject lines

Personalisation/Segmentation/Automation

Personalized jewelry, personalized email: How Limoges raised revenue per email by 300%

Send more email, make more money?

20 automated emails your customers won’t delete

How RS Components uses automated email FTW

Abandoned basket emails: creative vs. best practice?

Five uncommon ways for ecommerce retailers to segment their email list

Five email tips to consider across different stages of a customer lifecycle

Reviews

There’s a good cross section of UK and US retailers here, with particular focus on the welcome email.

Unsubscribing from email: how top fashion retailers try to persuade you to stay

Email sign up forms: a look at how 16 fashion retailers collect customer data

How welcome emails vary among 16 fashion retailers, and who didn’t send one

How do 15 top US fashion retailers handle email sign ups?

EasyJet email marketing flying high as Ryanair crash lands

How Reiss used email to lure me into browsing its summer sale

Abandoned basket emails: the good, the bad and the ugly

Statistics

Plenty of Econsultancy’s own research and external studies have unearthed some salient points about the changing market. Email still occupies an integral position in customer engagement, and here you can see just how many of your customers are accessing email in different ways, and how many competitors are exercising best practice.

22% of marketing emails fail to reach the subscriber’s inbox: report

More than half of businesses achieve 10% of sales through email marketing

Six case studies and infographics on the optimal time to send emails

Poor quality data is the biggest barrier to effective email marketing: report 

Education companies achieve highest average CTR in email marketing: report

73% of businesses carry out basic email segmentation: report

Marketers still need to work on mobile email: stats

41% of email is now opened on mobile devices

68% of people use their smartphone for email, 26% for shopping

34% of businesses can’t calculate email marketing ROI: report

Smartphone owners more likely to read emails than make calls: stats

Opinion

Some of the finest minds flex their brain biceps here, and ask a few broader questions about email, and its evolution.

Where are your emails opened and why does it matter?

Are you doing the dad dance with your social and mobile emails?

Permission email marketing, it’s what we do isn’t it?

The future of email marketing and three ways it must evolve

Email: the forgotten social network

Why more marketers need to think about responsive email design

Does your company overestimate the value of an email address?

Infographics

Just a couple here; throwing the graphic fans a small bone.

61% of marketers rate their email campaigns as poor or average: infographic

Email is most important channel for driving Christmas sales: infographic

Interviews

Q&A: XYDO CEO Eric Roach on email automation 

Q&A: Nick Carter of ValuePetSupplies.com on infinite email ROI

Reports

Here’s the real meat and potatoes. From our Best Practice Guide to our Platform Buyer’s Guide, if you need to know where to start (and what to do in the middle), take a look at these.

Email Marketing Best Practice Guide

Email marketing: A Beginner’s Guide

Email and Ecrm Statistics

Email Marketing Industry Census 2013 

Building, Monitoring and Improving Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Email Marketing Platforms Buyer’s Guide 2012

Small Business Online Resource Manager – Digital Marketing Template Files

Content Marketing in South-East Asia Best Practice Guide