It’s no secret that email campaigns can bring in big revenue when done right. According to Shopify, email marketing can generate $36 for every $1 spent.
Unfortunately, many businesses can’t find the right formula to make campaigns work. So, email takes a back seat to strategies like PPC ads or social media marketing.
These channels can work wonders and should also be used with email to generate inbound leads, but they reach a broader audience and often have higher costs when scaling.
Email, on the other hand, is more cost-effective and gives a direct line to your audience. You can automate, personalize, and scale sustainably without burning marketing and sales budgets.
We’re here to help you get all these benefits through actionable, data-driven, and in-depth email campaign best practices.
Why Do Email Campaigns Fail?
Even if you follow best practices to the letter, you won’t be making the most of your email campaigns if you keep walking into these common pitfalls:
Getting Leads From Low-Quality Sources
Lead sources are where leads come from before entering your sales pipelines. The problem here is many businesses think quantity can offset quality. You need both to find success.
Popular lead sources include lead finder tools, SEO, paid ads, social media marketing, content marketing, referrals, and website visitor identification tools.
Regardless of your lead source, ensure the list you generate is validated. And if you’re looking for a lead source with pre-validated leads, try Instantly B2B Lead Finder.
Failing To Segment Lead Lists
Campaign Monitor found that businesses using segmented email campaigns can see a 760% increase in revenue. That means you should never be sending an email to your entire list.
Try to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. If you just bought a sofa last week from a furniture store, would you want to get bombarded with promotional emails for more sofas? Probably not.
The more relevant the email, the more likely it is to be opened. The more engaged subscribers are with your emails, the more likely they will buy. So, try to segment your list by:
- Engagement level: Active vs. inactive subscribers
- Buying intent: Prospects showing interest
- Demographics: Job title, region, industry, or company size
- Purchasing history: First-time buyers vs. repeat customers
- Product interest: Segment based on inquiries or browse pages on your site
Poorly Optimized Lead Capture Pages
You can’t email campaigns if you don’t have leads to send emails to. One of the best ways to get leads is through inbound marketing, like social media ads, content marketing, or PPC.
However, getting leads to land on your site is only half the battle. You still need to encourage them to sign up for your forms, so ensure you have optimized lead capture pages.
Multiple CTAs or Goals in One Email
Every email should have only one call-to-action (CTA) or goal. This rule applies to every type of email marketing, whether newsletters, cold emails, or automated drip campaigns.
Whatever the CTA is, ensure that it aligns with the entire email. For example, if you’re sending a cold email and want your lead to check out a case study, don’t ask for a quick call or demo.
Email Campaign Best Practices That Help You Scale
Running email campaigns can be overwhelming. You must consider what campaign is best for your business, how to set up the correct email system, and where to find quality leads.
Without the right approach, it’s easy to get stuck sending emails that don’t convert or grow your business. Try this instead:
“Always Be Prospecting” Using Quality Lead Sources
Healthy sales pipelines should have a consistent flow of leads. But you can’t let every lead into your pipeline. You have to consider where they’re from and if they fit your ideal customer profile.
If you buy cheap lead lists from an untrusted vendor, your campaigns will likely have low deliverability and high bounce rates. But even if you’re getting leads from inbound marketing campaigns or lead finder tools, you still have to verify and clean your lead lists.
Verify and Clean Lead Lists
Verifying email lists ensures that you’re sending to accounts that exist and are active. Sending to unverified email addresses will have long-term adverse effects on deliverability.
However, not every recipient from your verified email list will engage with your emails. Let’s say you have 1,000 subscribers, but only 60% engage with your email campaigns.
Remember to check your analytics. It’s better to remove non-active leads and subscribers from campaigns while doing consistent email warmups to protect email health.
Automate Email Warmup To Improve Deliverability
You can't avoid having non-responsive leads when you’re doing email campaigns like cold outreach. Whether we like it or not, these campaigns can lower our email health.
The good news is that automated email warmups can offset the negative effects of all types of campaigns. Instantly.ai users get unlimited warmups for free for all sending accounts.
But even with proper warmup, scaling volume on a single domain is risky. That’s why buying and rotating alternate domains is a must for any high-volume outreach strategy.
Scale Sending Volume With Alternate Domains
Email service providers like Gmail and Outlook have daily sending limits. The limit for Gmail’s individual accounts is 500 daily, and Google Workspace users can send 2,000 daily.
But you don’t want to come close to these daily sending limits, especially if you’re doing cold outreach. The higher the sending frequency, the higher the chances of triggering spam filters.
To avoid issues, use a rotating inbox. With Instantly, you can automate sending between your accounts to help you maintain a balanced email frequency.
Maintain a Balanced and Sustainable Email Frequency
The key to successful campaigns is finding a sustainable cadence that keeps you top-of-mind without annoying subscribers and leads. This cadence depends on the campaign type.
Daily newsletters? It's too much. Weekly updates? More manageable. Cold outreach? 3–5 touchpoints over a few weeks work best.
But without a clear roadmap, it’s easy to lose track of follow-ups, send the wrong emails at the wrong time, or miss opportunities. That’s where email campaign flowcharts come in.
Use Email Campaign Flowcharts
Flowcharts give you a holistic outline of how campaigns play out from start to end. They help you with clarity, organization, segmentation, and iterating on winning campaigns. Here is an example flowchart for a cold email drip campaign:
Flowcharts help you map out who gets what email and when, but structure isn’t enough. If you want recipients to open your emails, they must be relevant and personalized.
Automate Personalization Using Lead Data
Gone are the days where {{first name}} and {{company}} personalization gets you a reply. If you want to personalize at scale, you have to leverage lead data.
For example, if you have a lead list with detailed company descriptions, you can use Instantly’s AI prompts to generate a new column for potential {{pain points}}.
Now, you can use the new {{custom variable}} in your email copy. It’s dynamic and applies to every lead in your email list. That means you can provide more value through relevant offers.
Provide Value First, Sell Later
Even the best sales emails don’t focus on selling. Instead, they focus on providing value. Ask yourself, what’s in it for my prospects? Why should they open my email?
Implementing value-based selling in your email campaigns shifts the narrative from “Here’s what we’re selling” to “We understand what your goals are, and we’re here to help you reach them.”
But even after providing value, there will always be prospects who won’t engage with your email. Instead of removing them completely, you can add them to re-engagement campaigns.
Re-engage with Inactive Leads, Subscribers, and Customers
Before saying goodbye for good, try to reach out to inactive leads and subscribers through re-engagement campaigns. These are your last-ditch efforts to engage with them.
To make re-engagement campaigns more effective, you need to provide more value. For example, Grammarly used to send discounts to users who canceled subscriptions.
The offer should be relevant and appealing enough to entice your audience to engage with your emails again. That’s when sales psychology comes into play.
Leverage Sales Psychology
Sales psychology helps you find the path of least resistance when presenting your unique selling propositions. The best part is that you can use it at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
There are five main principles you can implement in your email campaigns:
- Reciprocity: It’s easier to get value after you give value
- Commitment: Get your audience to commit to soft asks before the hard sell
- Authority: Situate yourself as an expert in your industry
- Social proof: Use reviews, testimonials, case studies
- Scarcity: Leverage FOMO, urgency, and exclusivity
Technical Email Campaign Best Practices
Successful email campaigns take more than just valuable offers and sales psychology. As mentioned, several moving parts under the hood still make your system work.
Proper Email Marketing Infrastructure
Think of email marketing as a complete system. If the infrastructure isn’t sound, the system collapses. For example, if domains aren’t authenticated, emails you send can be seen as spam.
If you send too many emails at the same time, your accounts could be blacklisted. These issues are detrimental to deliverability rates and the overall success of your email campaigns.
You can do DIY email setups if you have the time and enough technical know-how. But if you want something more plug-and-play, use an email setup service.
Test Inbox Placement Before Campaigns
Deliverability is usually a lagging metric. You only get the data after running campaigns. But what if you could test for deliverability before sending your first email?
Instantly helps you do just that with the new Inbox Placement Feature. Users can detect and fix deliverability issues early, identify spam triggers, and set automated spam notifications.
You can test unlimited accounts, set automated tests, and perform actions based on the results. For example, if emails from a running campaign are sent to spam, Instantly can pause it.
A/B Test Email Campaigns
A/B testing pits your emails against one another to determine the best. You can use the results to identify winning subject lines, offers, and CTAs. So, how does this work in practice?
Let’s say you want to send warm emails to an email list you generated using a website visitor identification tool. Instead of sending the same email to every lead, you split it into two groups.
Group A could have a goal-oriented subject line: “Here’s how we got {{results}}.” Group B could have a subject line focusing on pain points: “Here’s how we solved “pain point.”
After the test, you saw that Group A had a higher open rate than Group B. That means sending a goal-oriented subject line to your audience is more optimal.
With Instantly, you can auto-optimize A/B testing while campaigns are running. When Instantly finds your winning email (based on metrics), it’ll send that email to the rest of your list instead.
Understand Email Marketing Metrics and KPIs
Understanding the key email marketing metrics and key performance indicators helps sales leaders improve and optimize sales performance management.
The metrics you track should also depend on the type of email campaign you’re running. For example, if you have an active sales email campaign, the metrics you track should include:
- Open rates: Are subject lines engaging enough for leads to open them?
- Click rates: Is your unique selling proposition valuable enough to merit action?
- Reply rates: Does your offer resonate well with your prospects?
- Deliverability: Are emails landing in primary inboxes or spam?
- Bounce rates: Did you validate and clean your lead lists?
Key Takeaways
Email campaigns are the most cost-effective way to scale your business. To ensure that you’re running effective campaigns that produce results, remember to follow these best practices:
- Setup the proper email campaign infrastructure
- Ensure you’re getting leads from quality sources
- Verify and clean lead lists before using them in email campaigns
- Scale sending volume with more domains and warmup each one first
- Focus on providing value rather than selling
- Add inactive leads and subscribers to re-engagement campaigns
- Automate personalization at scale using lead data
Instantly has all the features you want and need to run effective, scalable, and automated email campaigns. Try it for free today and start growing your business.
