In email marketing, every single element matters. How you use the different essential parts of your email can influence your campaign’s success. Every message you send can affect your delivery, open, and click-through rates. If you don’t know which elements are causing what results, you’ll need to review your strategy.
Every email contains information that email clients use to render it on the recipient’s screen. Marketers may spend a lot of time on the body’s layout and visuals, but the subject line, preheader text, and footer are just as important.
Source: Campaign Monitor
What are the essential sections of every marketing email?
Emails remain the most effective marketing channel. Whether they reach their targets depends on their anatomy. If you’re not adding the necessary information to every section before you hit send, it could negatively affect your campaign. To ensure your emails get the attention they deserve, you’ll need to know what each section means and how it influences your performance.
Research suggests that 69% of recipients may report an email as spam based only on the subject line.
Source: Convince and Convert
“From” label
Rather than using a no-reply email address, you should set up a custom address to be used for sending emails that are linked to your company. Your email service provider will have tools that allow you to customize the address in your “From” field.
Subject line
The subject line is the most important section of your email. If you use the same line repeatedly, customers will stop opening and reading your emails. You should always try to use a subject line that describes the content of your email.
Preheader or snippet
While the “From” label and subject line are the first elements a recipient sees, the preheader or snippet gives them their next taste. When viewed in an inbox, it’ll show the initial text of the message that could entice a recipient to open the email.
Email body text
This is the bulk of your message. It could contain special offers, reviews, or any other content you’d like to share with subscribers. The body is what the recipient sees when opening the email. Subsections of the body text should use images and follow a regular pattern for the best results.
Call to action
After the body text, you should add a CTA. A short and compelling message works better than a long, descriptive paragraph. The CTA should give the recipient a quick and easy way to react to your email by suggesting the next appropriate step.
Footer
The footer is where you put your regular links and information about your services. It should include an unsubscribe link, your disclaimer statements, and access to a preference center. If someone wants to change the frequency of emails, they can do this through the preference center.
Contact information and social media links
Finally, you’ll want to add social media and other contact links for subscribers to get in touch with you. It’s always good to sign off an email with the various channels available to subscribers to engage with the company.
Does it really matter?
Every section of an email serves a purpose. When designing a campaign, you should retain a consistent look and feel while giving people options to opt in or unsubscribe from future communications. The structure of your emails should help to promote your brand’s image but also be familiar to your recipients.
What now?
It’s important to know what the different parts of an email are and how they influence your marketing efforts. Each email should follow the structure mentioned above. While the body text may vary, maintaining a consistent look and feel for the rest of the elements will help improve brand identity and increase click-through rates.
Now that you understand what the essential parts of an email are, you may want to see why your subject line also matters from this blog post.