The Growth Vault

More people read emails on mobile as opposed to desktop.

If you're not truly creating mobile-first emails, your campaigns aren't fully optimized. 

The good news is that it's easy for email clients & ISPs to automatically adapt mobile-first designs to desktop whereas the opposite is not true. So if you optimize for mobile, your design looks sharp regardless of the device.

Here's how you create great mobile-first emails:

1. Write short subject lines to prevent them from getting cut off on mobile.

2. Keep the design clean to make it easy for readers to engage the content:

• Narrower design with plenty of negative space.
• Bigger, legible fonts.
• Larger, easy-to-click CTAs.

3. Use small files only. Many mobile devices are running weak processors. Prevent people from bouncing due to slow load times by compressing your image files.

4. Send a test and read it on your own phone before scheduling.

There's often a disconnect—marketers use desktop platforms to create and send emails. It's easy to overlook mobile when you're working from a computer.

Some social proof is better than none.

According to a major ecommerce study, a seller with negative reviews and poor photos is more likely to outperform a seller that has zero information.

Chew on that for a second.

Zero information leads to distrust, while negative information facilitates a neutral level of trust.

This finding illustrates the importance of “uncertainty reduction.” That is, people require information to feel more trust about something.

That’s not to say you should actively seek out bad reviews. Rather, understand that having no reputation or photos whatsoever may preclude sales.

Most call to action (CTA) buttons aren't compelling enough. Here's how you can improve yours:

Successful startups describe WHAT you get by signing up:

1. Download the ebook —> Read the book for free
2. Get started —> Create your meal plan
3. Sign up now —> Watch now (Start your 30-day trial)

Always remind people what's in it for them: Simple yet thoughtful changes to your CTAs could increase clicks and conversions.

Decision fatigue might be hurting your conversion.

If people have to make too many decisions when they get to your landing page, they'll tire and bounce.

So what can you do to avoid it?

Decrease the amount of decisions per page that people have to make.

• Only include the most critical links in your nav bar: Don’t distract people from the action you want them to take.
• Limit the types of CTAs you use. You can take this a step further by using Unbounce or Optimize to show a dynamic CTA: a single CTA that is most likely to get a click given the particular person.
• Use plenty of negative space to prevent people from having to choose between focusing on creative or copy.

Remove all unnecessary decisions so people quickly get what they're looking for from your site. They'll be more likely to buy from you.

New subscribers come into your email list in a variety of ways:

• Some sign up for your newsletter.
• Others sign up after reading your content.
• Customers opt-in at checkout.

Yet many startups send each new subscriber the same welcome series even though we know what drove the sign up in the first place.

 Increase your email performance by segmenting your flows:

• When new subscribers sign up for your newsletter, include a sample of the newsletter in your welcome flow—get new subscribers acquainted with your newsletter while it's fresh in their minds. They'll be more likely to notice and open it when you send your next issue.
• When people sign up through your blog content, tailor your welcome flow to send them more relevant blog posts. Get specific: If they signed up while reading a keto blog post, send them more keto content.
• When customers opt-in after a purchase, create a flow that shows them how to use your product. Optimize for a second purchase: 53% of customers who’ve made two purchases make a third purchase.

Most marketers set up a welcome email automation that greets new customers immediately after signup.

But people reflexively discard them: more spam.

Welcome emails are a critical opportunity to move leads down your funnel.

Here's how you get people to open and read your welcome emails:

• Delay your welcome email by 15 to 45 minutes. The time delay removes the subscriber's mental connection between their signup and your email. This bypasses the reflex to ignore.
• Set the email sender name to someone within your company, rather than your business name. An email from Julian Shapiro is more likely to get opened and read than an email from Demand Curve. It's more human.
• Write a unique subject line. Don't simply write "Thanks for joining!" Instead, write something that will people want to click. Allbirds writes "Welcome to the Flock." Grammarly includes "You + Grammarly = Ready for Action."

You should optimize every part of your funnel, and welcome emails are no exception.

Here's a friendly reminder: Slight tweaks to your email subject line can lead to significant swings in open rate.

To get the highest ROI out of your email campaigns, try this:

• Create multiple subject lines and A/B test them on ~10% of your list. Then set up your email software to send the iteration that receives the highest open rate to the rest of your list. We've found that small iterations on your initial subject line work best because they require less time to write.
• Pique curiosity. Subject lines are like cliffhangers. Provide an inkling of the content within without revealing too much: Intrigue readers to open to satisfy their curiosity. Just make sure your subject line does relate to your content—otherwise you'll lose trust.

Reminder: Past email quality has the greatest impact on your open rate. Quality content leads to high open rates on future emails. Subject lines are just the icing on the cake.