Whether you are writing a welcome email, event invitation, promotion, or an automated series, it can feel daunting to sit down and write your next email. You have a limited amount of time where you need to figure out what to write and how to write it so it drives results for your business. After all, your emails need to build relationships, inspire people, and encourage them to take action.
Last week, we had a webinar where we shared email writing tips that allows you to save time and make your emails more effective. Some highlights from the webinar included:
How to figure out what to write when you’re not sure
A simple formula to write your email
Tips for writing great emails
In this post, you can watch the webinar in its entirety and read some of the questions asked by our attendees. Interested in our free, future webinars? Sign up here to stay informed!
Email
How can I prevent my emails from going into a subscribers spam folder? Are there certain words I shouldn’t use in my subject line? Gmail puts them in spam even though my contacts have requested to receive emails from me.
Our Knowledge Base has some great articles about preventing your email from being marked as spam. One of the first and most important steps you can take is to make sure that your subject line is optimized and doesn’t include any spammy characteristics. We also caution against doing image-only emails and really concentrate on including no more than 20 lines of text per image.
Is A/B testing part of my package? What about automated email series and surveys?
All of the above are part of our Email Plus plan. For a full listing of what’s included in each plan, please visit our Pricing page.
Does Constant Contact plan to add more subject-line emoji to the current palette?
Where can I find pictures to add to my emails? I need some new ideas.
You can use your own photos or use our stock photo gallery! For more information about using images in your emails, check out our recent visual marketing webinar Q&A (or watch the webinar!).
How do we set-up an automated email for new subscribers?
A welcome email is great for this and allows you to immediately engage with your new contact.
Strategy
What's the best day or time to send an email?
We have a list of the best days and times to send an email but you know your list best. Take some time to review your open report to see when your contacts are viewing your email. You might find that your open time differs from what is suggested.
Can I follow up or send an email to those on my list that didn't open the email the first time I sent it?
Yes, we have a few options depending on what you're looking to do. Our Resend to Non-openers feature can resend the email to those who did not open the email. You can't make edits to the email when using the feature aside from changing the subject line so if you did want to make edits, you would need to save the Did Not Open group to a list, copy and edit the email, then send the edited email to that list.
Is this idea of "photo, paragraph, call to action" also applicable for mobile-open emails? Sometimes large photos take up a lot of space in mobile emails causing the reader not to read the rest!
That's a great point! Maybe consider using landscape photos and send a test email to a mobile device so your text can show "above the fold" and your readers won't have to scroll down.
I've noticed that Constant Contact has "emojis" you can include in the subject line. Is this a good thing to include to improve the open rate?
Sure! It's worth keeping in mind that too many can make your email look spammy and to keep them relevant to what you are sending out. Our Knowledge Base has some best practices for including emojis in your email.
Contacts/Sign Up Tools
As a new business, where is the best place to get email addresses, or what is the best way to build a customer list?
The best type of contact list is one that is organically grown. We have a strict email permission policy that basically means you agree to only send to contacts that have requested to receive emails from you. We don’t leave you hanging though! Included in every account are sign-up tools that you can use to grow your list through your website or on your social media platforms.
How do I embed a Constant Contact sign up form on our website that will ask all of the right details such as name, address, birthday, etc, other than just an email address?
You can use an inline form from our Sign Up Tools to display all these fields. Something to keep in mind when including those fields is to not make too many of them required as this can deter new sign-ups from completing your form.
Is there a way to collect birthdays after subscribers have already been uploaded?
You can ask them to update their profile by clicking the link at the bottom of the email. Make sure that your Update Profile form has that field included.
Reporting
What is considered a good "click rate" or "open rate"?
It really depends on the industry since many have different average open and click rates. Visit our Knowledge Base to see our updatedaverage industry rates.
When you resend to non-openers, does the stat go towards the original open rate?
Reporting for the resend is displayed separately from the original send but the overall open rate is a combination of both the original send and the resend.
Other
Does Constant Contact offer the option for Instagram ads as well as Facebook ads?
Yes! We released this feature recently and we’re really excited to give our customers the ability to do more advertising on social media, right in their accounts.
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We had so many amazing questions from our attendees that had to come back do to another quick video! Stephanie French, our Webinar Content Manager (who also runs most of the webinars that we advertise here!), covered a few more topics in an After Hours webinar, including monthly newsletter strategies, list segmentation, and engaging with contacts who don't open your emails. Check it out and let us know what you think.
We take questions asked by customers on the Community and expand on them to help you find answers fast, getting you back to using Constant Contact's suite of amazing tools in no time.
"There's a multitude of ways to engage your audience through us using your social platforms - via ads, social post metrics, email links, and more! " - Will
