Issue #175 All About Email

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Hi, friend. 👋

Welcome to Issue #175 of All About Email!

Last week, we concluded our look at “Email Flow Basics”.

This week, we look at tips for “building consistency” in email marketing.

Let’s go! 👇

Tips for Building Consistency in Email Marketing

A surefire way to end up in the spam folder and have poor engagement:

• Building email campaigns without a strategy.

• Blasting your entire email list at random intervals.

🧠 Having an email strategy will help you build consistency in your email marketing.

So, friend, we know emails should not be built in a silo. They should be part of your overall marketing strategy/lifecycle.

🤔 So, what can we do to build more consistency in our emails?

Email Checklist

• Make it Timely - This is about consistency and the frequency of your campaigns.

• Make it Useful - Before you send that email, review your content. Can it be improved?

• Make it Actionable - Every email should have a clear CTA (but not too many).

• Make it Personal - Use data to personalise emails to help increase conversions.

• Subject Line & Preview - Keep subject lines short and utilise Preview text. Use emojis if appropriate.

• Find your Prime Time - Analyse your data to discover the best day and time to send emails to your audience.

• Optimise for Mobile - Make sure your emails look good on mobile, as most emails are opened initially on mobile devices. **

• Be Yourself / “On-Brand” - Don’t try to be something you’re not. Be aware of trends, but make them your own, and don’t force them if they don’t work.

• And most importantly…Test!

** 🌓 Bonus points for Dark Mode optimisation.

Testing, Testing!

Test your emails! We all make mistakes, but we can avoid some.

• Check spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

• Check your links and merge tags work.

• Check how emails look on mobile.

• Check how emails look in different inboxes.

• Check Dark Mode.

• A/B Test

• Multivariate test if you are feeling spicy 🌶️

These tests aren’t exhaustive, and what you test will depend on your ESP and your business goals.

🛠️ Tools like Litmus and Parcel offer “Inbox Previews“ to test how your emails might look in different email clients and dark mode.

⚡️ Grammarly is excellent for spelling, punctuation, and grammar (and more these days).

List Hygiene

One last thing: "List Hygiene”.

Over time, engagement rates will drop.

📉 A sudden drop in engagement means something is up, and you might need to clean your audience:

• By re-engaging with inactive users

• Deleting inactive users

Many recommendations are to clean your list every 180 days or possibly every 90 days.

💡 (These times serve as guidelines and are influenced by your sending frequency.)

❤️ You need to care about List Hygiene because ISPs will notice when emails have poor engagement, and then you can get a poor sender reputation, and ISPs can start adding emails to spam.

Some Tips to Re-Engage:

• Segment Inactive subscribers.

• Send a campaign to just these subscribers.

• Delete those subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked (or a combination) the re-engagement campaign.

🚨 Those tips are very basic, and there is a lot more nuance and segmentation involved.

Remember, friend, this mini-series only allows me to cover topics in so much detail, and I have covered re-engagement in much more detail in the past, and I will be doing so again soon.

Further Reading

📰 As part of our mini-series, each topic covered might include additional reading resources for building the workshops and these emails.

This week’s resources on “Building Consistency“ are:

• Subject Line and Preview Checker.

• A lot of ESPs now have internal guidance for this with AI.

• Parcel for Dark Mode and other testing.

• Three things to know before cleaning your email list.

• Cleaning Email Lists: A Guide to Better Engagement and Deliverability.

That’s it for this week 👋

⏭️ Next week, our series continues as we look at “Measuring Performance” in email marketing. It’s a big topic that will take a couple of weeks to cover.

See you next week! 😀

Sponsorship Opportunities

🚨 If you’re interested in sponsoring the “All About Email” newsletter, you can find all the details in this Google Doc. I currently have “Classified” slots and a Main Sponsor slot available.

Email Marketing News & Tips

This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:

• Custom GPT - Whether you're just starting or looking to scale, this custom GPT delivers battle-tested strategies to expand your subscriber base, optimize engagement, and maximize revenue. (Beehiiv)

• Spam Data - Are Complaints Weighted? (Word to the Wise)

• Engagement - How, When, and Where to Engage With Your Newsletter Community. (Inbox Collective)

• Mortal Kombat - Single opt-in vs. Double opt-in. (Email Advice In Your Inbox)

• Building Consistency 😉 - 8 Tips for Successful Email Workflow Management. (Litmus)

• Purchased Lists - Updated guidance for 2025. (Spam Resource)

• DMARC Adoption - A Deep Dive into the Current State of Email Authentication. (Validity)

• Email Strategy - To Suppress or Not Suppress: That Is the Question. (Elizabeth Jacobi)

• Something’s Missing - Do you have a Subscriber Lifecycle automation set up for your email program? (Travis Hazlewood)

• Too Many Candles - Don't burn your subscribers! Let 'em choose their own preferences! (Alison Gootee)

• A Place to Start - Diagnosing Hard Bounces. (Word to the Wise)

• State of Email 2025 - Latest Trends and Statistics in the Email Newsletter Industry. (Beehiiv)

If you have a question about this email or email marketing, reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

I hope you have a great week! 👋