Email Marketing Best Practices: A Comprehensive Guide

Subject Lines & Preview Text

• Keep subject lines under 75 characters
• Be specific and action-oriented
• Include sales or discounts when relevant
• Ask engaging questions
• Ensure accuracy to maintain trust and comply with CAN-SPAM, CASL, and PECR

Email Content

• Focus on one topic per email
• Include clear calls-to-action
• Maintain consistent brand voice
• Always link to your website
• Keep content concise and valuable

Design Guidelines

• Use light backgrounds with dark text
• Highlight CTAs with contrasting colors
• Ensure mobile responsiveness
• Select clear, readable fonts

Image Best Practices

• Use descriptive file names for alt text
• Keep images under 500 KB (max 20 MB)
• Use only .jpg, .gif, or .png formats
• Include supporting text for image-blocked emails
• Maintain 120 MP resolution limit
• Use consistently sized images in multi-image sections

Mailing List Management

• Only include opted-in subscribers
• Add newsletter signup forms to your website
• Never purchase email lists
• Regularly clean your list of invalid addresses
• Remove unengaged subscribers
• Consider using list-cleaning services for large databases

Legal Compliance

• Include visible unsubscribe links
• Display business name and physical address
• Comply with anti-spam laws (CAN-SPAM, CASL, PECR)
• Verify sender email address
• Use custom domain email addresses

Optimization Tips

• Send test emails before campaigns
• Conduct A/B testing
• Track campaign metrics
• Experiment with send times
• Use personalization tags
• Maintain consistent messaging across all communication channels
• Review analytics to understand audience preferences

Following these guidelines will help ensure your email campaigns are effective, compliant, and provide value to your subscribers while maintaining high deliverability rates.

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