15 Email Marketing Tips That Genuinely Work
Genuinely practical email marketing tips focus not on hacks but on foundational strategies that build a real relationship with your audience.
This includes mastering audience segmentation for relevance, personalisation to increase engagement, and consistently A/B testing subject lines and calls-to-action (CTAs).
By prioritising good list hygiene to ensure high deliverability, these tactics improve key metrics like open rates and conversions, turning your email list into a reliable revenue-generating asset.
- Treat your email list as a valuable, permission-based asset; enable double opt-in and prioritise engagement over size.
- Nail a 3-email welcome sequence to build trust, set expectations, and deliver immediate value at first signup.
- Send one clear goal per email with human-sounding copy, simple design, and a strong single call to action.
- Focus on deliverability and real engagement: clean inactive subscribers, segment for relevance, and track clicks/conversions.
The 3 Things to Fix Before You Send Another Email
If your foundation is cracked, it doesn't matter how pretty the paint is. Most people skip these steps because they aren't exciting. That's why they fail.
1. Your List Isn't a Number, It's an Asset (So Stop Abusing It)
Your email list is one of the only marketing assets you truly own. You don't own your social media followers; a platform can take them away overnight. Your list is yours.
Treat it with respect.
This means you never, ever buy an email list. It's the fastest way to destroy your domain's sending reputation, land yourself on a blacklist, and guarantee your emails go straight to spam. It's brand suicide.
The goal isn't the biggest list; it's the most engaged list. A list of 1,000 eager fans is infinitely more valuable than 100,000 strangers who never asked to hear from you.
Action: Go to your email platform settings now and enable double opt-in. New subscribers must confirm their email address and prove they want to be there. It keeps your list clean and tells email providers like Google and Microsoft that you're a legitimate sender.
2. Nail the Welcome Sequence (Your Only Chance at a First Impression)
The moment someone subscribes is the moment they are most interested in you. Don't waste it by sending them a “You're subscribed!” notification.
Your welcome sequence is your automated onboarding process. Its job is to build trust, set expectations, and deliver immediate value. Companies like the razor brand Harry's do this brilliantly, using the first email to establish their brand voice and make the new subscriber feel like part of a club.
A simple, effective welcome sequence can have three emails:
- Email 1 (Sent Immediately): Welcome & Deliver. Welcome them and deliver the lead magnet or thing you promised.
- Email 2 (Sent Day 2): Your Best Stuff. Point them to your most popular product, helpful blog post, or a powerful case study.
- Email 3 (Sent Day 4): Ask a Question. Ask them what they're struggling with. This generates valuable customer insight and starts a conversation.
Action: Set up a 3-email welcome sequence. It runs on autopilot and ensures every new subscriber gets a consistently great first impression.
3. Pick One Goal Per Email (Seriously, Just One)
Stop sending “kitchen sink” newsletters with five blog posts, three product links, and a link to your social media. When you give people too many choices, they make none.
This is called cognitive load. You're making their brain work too hard, so they close the email and move on.
Every single email you send must have one primary goal. One call to action. One thing you want the reader to do.
Action: Before you write a single word of your following email, write this sentence at the top of the document: “The goal of this email is to get the reader to ______.” Fill in the blank. If you can't, don't send the email.
Getting Clicks: Subject Lines, Copy, and Design
This is where most people focus their energy, but without the foundation, it's wasted effort. Here's how to do it right.
4. Write Subject Lines for Humans, Not Algorithms
Forget the clickbait and the “secret” formulas. A good subject line does one of two things: it either provides clarity or creates curiosity.
- Clarity: “Your weekly design report” or “Our new jackets are here.”
- Curiosity: “The one font to avoid at all costs” or “Don't make this branding mistake.”
Your audience will respond differently to each. The only way to know what works is to test.
Action: For your following four emails, A/B test a clarity-based subject line against a curiosity-based one. See which style gets more clicks (not opens, clicks!). The data will tell you what your specific audience prefers.
5. Stop Over-Designing Your Emails
This is a pet peeve. Businesses spend thousands on slick, image-heavy email templates that look like corporate brochures. They often hurt deliverability because they trigger spam filters and feel completely impersonal.
When was the last time you got a heavily designed email from a friend? Never.
The most successful newsletters worldwide, like Morning Brew or The Hustle, look more like a simple, personal letter. They are text-focused because the value is in the information, not the wrapper. Simple design feels more authentic and directs the reader's focus to the message.
Action: Try sending your next email using a simple, single-column, mostly text layout. You might be shocked at how well it performs.
6. Make the Preheader Your Second Subject Line
The preheader is the snippet of text that appears next to or under the subject line in most email clients. By default, it often pulls in the first line of your email, which is usually useless, like “View this email in your browser.”
What a waste of prime real estate.
Use the preheader to continue the thought from your subject line, add context, or create a second hook.
- Subject: Your order has shipped!
- Preheader: It's on its way and should arrive by Friday.
Action: Find the preheader text field in your email service provider. Write a custom preheader for every campaign that adds value to your subject line.
7. Your Copy Should Sound Like a Person Talking
Ditch the corporate speak. No one wants to read an email that sounds like a committee of lawyers wrote it.
Read your email copy out loud. Does it sound stiff and robotic? Would you ever say those words to a customer in a real conversation? If not, rewrite it.
Use “you” and “I.” Tell a story. Be direct.
Action: Write your next email as if you were sending it to one single, specific customer you know. Imagine them sitting across from you. This simple mental shift will make your writing 100% more human and effective.
Advanced (But Not Complicated) Tactics
These tactics will put you in the top 10% of email marketers. They aren't technically challenging; they just require a bit of strategic thought.
8. Segmentation: The Closest Thing to a ‘Magic Bullet'
Sending the same generic message to your entire list is lazy marketing. Segmentation divides your list into smaller groups based on interests, behaviour, or demographics.
Studies from Mailchimp show that segmented campaigns can result in a click-through rate that is 100.95% higher than non-segmented campaigns.
Simple segmentation ideas to start with:
- By interest: Group people based on the links they click.
- By purchase history: Create segments for new customers vs. repeat customers.
- By engagement: Separate your most active fans from those who rarely open.
Action: Create a straightforward segment—for example, a segment of everyone who has purchased from you. Send them an exclusive offer or a thank-you note.
9. Use Tags and Custom Fields for Hyper-Personalisation
This is segmentation on steroids. Most modern email platforms, like Kit or Klaviyo, allow you to “tag” subscribers based on their actions.
Did someone click a link about your branding services? Tag them “Interested in Branding.” Did someone visit your web design pricing page? Tag them “Interested in Web Design.
Now you can go beyond just [FNAME] and send hyper-relevant emails to their expressed interests. This is how you make your marketing feel like a helpful, one-to-one conversation.
Action: Identify 2-3 main interest categories in your business. Set up automation rules to tag subscribers when they click links related to those categories.
10. Clean Your List Ruthlessly
Unengaged subscribers are dead weight. They aren't just not buying; they are actively hurting you. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) track how many people open your emails. If a large percentage of your list ignores you, the ISPs assume your content is junk and start sending it to the spam folder for everyone.
Define a “cold subscriber” as someone who hasn't opened or clicked an email in the last 90 days.
Action: Create an automated “re-engagement” campaign. If a subscriber goes 90 days without opening, send them a 2-email sequence asking if they still want to hear from you. If they don't respond, delete them. Yes, delete them. Your deliverability will thank you.
Email Marketing That Doesn't Suck
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11. Resend to Non-Openers (The Right Way)
This is one of the simplest and most effective tactics available. For an important campaign, wait 2-3 days and then resend the same email to everyone who didn't open it the first time. The only thing you change is the subject line.
This can boost your total engagement on a campaign by an additional 30% or more.
Don't abuse this. Reserve it for your most important announcements, promotions, or content. If you do it for every email, you'll just annoy people.
Action: In your next major email, schedule a resend to non-openers 48 hours later with a new subject line.
The Boring (But Crucial) Stuff
Ignoring these details is like building a house with no plumbing. It might look fine, but it's fundamentally broken.
12. Make Your ‘From' Name Instantly Recognisable
The “From” name is one of the first things a person sees. It needs to build trust and recognition instantly. Often, using a real person's name combined with the company name works best.
“John from Inkbot” feels more personal and likely to be opened than “Inkbot Design Newsletter.” People connect with people, not faceless brands.
Action: Test using a personal name in your “From” field. [Your Name] from [Your Company] is an excellent formula.
13. Your Unsubscribe Link Should Be Easy to Find
This feels counterintuitive, but it's critical. Hiding your unsubscribe link is a terrible idea. If people can't easily opt out, they will do the next best thing: mark your email as spam.
A spam complaint is exponentially more damaging to your sender's reputation than an unsubscribe.
Make your unsubscribe link clear in your email footer. It's a sign of confidence. It says, “We think you'll find this valuable, but if not, no hard feelings.”
Action: Check your email footer. Is the unsubscribe link tiny, grey, and hidden? Make it a standard font size and clearly label it.
14. Optimise for Mobile, No Excuses
According to data from 2024, over 60% of emails are opened on a mobile device. If your email is difficult to read on a phone, it's getting deleted.
This means:
- Using a single-column layout.
- Writing in short sentences and paragraphs.
- Use a large, readable font (16px is a reasonable minimum).
- Ensure your buttons and links are large enough to be tapped with a thumb.
Action: Before you send any campaign, send a test email to yourself and open it on your phone. Can you read it easily without pinching or zooming? If not, fix it.
15. Track the Right Metrics (Hint: It's Not Open Rate)
For years, the open rate was the king of email metrics. Not anymore.
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), introduced in 2021, automatically pre-loads email content, causing nearly every email opened in Apple Mail to be recorded as “opened.” This has made the open rate an unreliable and inflated vanity metric.
Stop obsessing over it. Focus on the metrics that actually signal engagement and business results:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): What percentage of people clicked a link? This shows they are actually interested.
- Conversion Rate: Of those who clicked, how many took the desired action (e.g., purchased, filled out a form)? This is the metric that matters to your bottom line.
Action: Define what a “conversion” is for each email you send. Track clicks and conversions, not opens. This is the accurate measure of your email marketing's success.
It's About Trust, Not Tricks
There you have it. 15 tips, zero fluff.
The common thread here is simple: stop trying to “hack” your customers' inboxes and start earning your place in them. Focus on delivering consistent value, being human, and respecting your subscribers' permission.
Do the simple things exceptionally well, and you'll beat 99% of your competition.
Running a business is complex enough. Your marketing doesn't have to be. Mastering these email fundamentals is a core part of any effective digital marketing system. If you’d rather focus on what you do best and leave the intricacies of brand communication to a dedicated team, that’s precisely what we do at Inkbot Design. You can request a no-obligation quote to see how we can help.
Email Marketing Tips (FAQs)
What is a reasonable open rate for email marketing?
This question is flawed because Apple's Mail Privacy Protection artificially inflates open rates. Instead of focusing on opens, track your Click-Through Rate (CTR). A healthy CTR is typically between 2%-5%, but this varies widely by industry.
How often should I email my list?
Consistency is more important than frequency. Pick a schedule you can stick to and tell your audience what to expect, whether daily, weekly, or monthly. Start with weekly and adjust based on engagement.
What's the difference between single and double opt-in?
Single opt-in adds a subscriber to your list immediately after they fill out a form. Double opt-in sends them a confirmation email that they must click to be added. Always use double opt-in to build a higher quality, more engaged list and protect your sender reputation.
Can I use emojis in my subject lines?
Yes, but use them sparingly and strategically. An emoji can help you stand out, but overusing them can look spammy. Test them with your audience; some industries respond well, others don't.
What is the best day to send an email?
There is no universal “best day.” This depends entirely on your specific audience and their habits. The only way to know is to test sending on different days and analyse your data for clicks and conversions.
How do I write a good call to action (CTA)?
A good CTA is clear, concise, and action-oriented. Start with a verb and tell the reader precisely what you want them to do and what they will get. Instead of “Click Here,” use “Download the Free Guide” or “Shop the New Collection.”
What is email list segmentation?
It's dividing your email list into smaller, more targeted groups based on specific criteria like purchase history, interests, or location. It lets you send more relevant and personalised emails, dramatically increasing engagement.
Why are my emails going to the spam folder?
This can be caused by many factors: a poor sender reputation (from low engagement or spam complaints), using spam trigger words (like “free,” “act now”), sending image-only emails, or not having a proper technical setup (like SPF and DKIM records). Cleaning your list is the best first step.
Should I use plain text or HTML emails?
A hybrid approach is best. Use a simple, clean HTML template that is mainly text with a few well-placed images and a clear CTA button. This provides a better user experience than plain text while avoiding the deliverability issues of image-heavy HTML emails.
How do I get more email subscribers?
Offer a valuable incentive, known as a lead magnet. This could be a free checklist, a discount code, a webinar recording, or a helpful guide. Promote this offer on your website, social media, and any other channel where your target audience spends time.
What is a re-engagement campaign?
It's an automated series of emails sent to subscribers who have become inactive (e.g., haven't opened or clicked in 90 days). The goal is to “win them back” or, if they don't respond, remove them from your list to keep it healthy.
Is email marketing still effective?
Absolutely. Email marketing generates one of the highest ROIs of any marketing channel, often cited as high as $36-$42 for every $1 spent. It's a direct, personal, and owned channel for building customer relationships.
