If you have decided to use email marketing or newsletters as part of your online strategy, congratulations! It’s a great way to stay in touch with your supporters and generate excitement for your brand. To get the most from your campaigns, there are a few email marketing tips to keep in mind.

Simple Email Marketing Tips

Fortunately, most email marketing services (such as Mail Chimp) make it easy to follow best practices on your campaigns, but there are still a few things you should know. These simple email marketing tips can make a huge difference in the success of your efforts.

1. Optimize for Mobile

Just as you should have a mobile friendly website in your arsenal, one of the best email marketing tips is to make sure your emails are easily read on mobile devices. Up to 65% of email is opened on mobile devices, according to a regularly updated website on the subject. That depends on your audience, of course, but most people open the same email accounts on their phones, tablets, and computers. Consequently, if your email is difficult to read on any of the three of those, you frustrate your audience and cause them not to read your content.

If you’re using a template on your email marketing software, make sure it’s a mobile friendly template. For example, when I create an email in Mail Chimp and use the preview screen to see how it’s coming along, there’s a window that previews it in a sample mobile device. It even allows me to rotate the preview to view it in portrait or landscape view. This is a huge help!! Another idea is to send yourself a test email and look at it on your phone to make sure everything is easy to view.

2. Craft an Interesting Subject Line

Notice I didn’t say “write” a subject line. There’s an art to creating a subject that makes people want to open your message. For example, how many email messages do you receive every day? How many do you actually open? That’s what I thought. One of the best email marketing tips I can give you is to tell people WHY they should open your email. Tell them what they will learn or get from clicking that message. Test your subject line to see how it will perform. Getting your email subject line right may be more important than the content of the email. What’s the point of a great email if nobody opens it?

3. Use the Teaser Text

Another of the easiest email marketing tips to consider is the teaser text. At the top of almost any email marketing template is a small section that says something such as “Use this area to offer a short teaser of your email’s content.” In most commonly used email clients, particularly gmail, the text entered in this area shows up in the preview before the user even opens an email. If you don’t change that text, guess what the reader sees in that preview? Yup… he sees the default “Use this area to offer a short teaser of your email’s content.” which looks pretty unprofessional and doesn’t give the best first impression.

Are you offering something special to email subscribers? Mention it here! Is there an exciting announcement in your email content? This is where you should tease it. Make people WANT to open your email using this text. This is another great thing to double check when you send your test email to yourself before you send the final draft.

4. Keep it Simple

From layout to content, simple is best when it comes to email marketing tips. If your message is overly long, most recipients will not read it to the end. People just don’t take the time anymore. Say what you need to say and leave it at that. Don’t put pressure on yourself to make the email long and drawn out… that just reduces the chances that users will read it. On the same token, your layout should not be complicated, either. Choose something simple and stick with it. It’s not necessary to try a different layout for every campaign.

People like predictability, and a newsletter should at least look similar to other issues to keep people comfortable. If you want to try something new, the best time is on a special message, such as a holiday greeting. These messages should show even more simplicity. It’s also good to pay attention to your text alignment and fonts, making sure that it’s easily read by the visually and learning impaired.

These three email marketing tips are easy to implement but can make a huge difference in your email marketing campaigns. So make your emails worth opening and reading, and keep swimming along!