Whether you’re an ecommerce or B2B business, trade body or nonprofit organisation, your brand can benefit from best-practice email marketing.

From amplifying brand awareness to securing, nurturing and converting leads, email is a channel capable of single-handedly transforming first-time site users into loyal, long-time brand advocates.

That is, if the emails themselves are up to scratch.

If you’re new to the world of email marketing, you should know now that you’ll be in constant pursuit of perfection from your first email to your last. There are always new optimisations to be made, new variables to test, and new data points to harness.

There are, however, a handful of essential features that are the foundation of any great brand email. Together, these elements form your recipe for email marketing success from your very first campaign.

Here are those key ingredients.

A tantalising subject line

The first element of your email a user is exposed to is the all-important subject line.

This is your opening gambit. The promise you make to users about what’s contained within your email and why they should care.

Your subject line should be punchy, succinct (no more than 9 words or 60 characters) and reflective of the contents of your email. This gives users maximum incentive to open the email rather than leaving it unread and unloved.

While the impact of emoji use in subject lines is limited, appropriate usage can catch the user’s eye, emphasise your message and convey relevant emotion. Just don’t go overboard with emoji use or your email could scream ‘spam’.

A user-friendly layout

When it comes to marketing email layouts, don’t give users any unnecessary work to do. Layouts should be clean, digestible and engaging. They should adhere to the same user experience (UX) best practices as any page on your brand’s website.

Overwhelming the user with a crowded email design without any clear visual hierarchy is a sure-fire way to see click-through rates plummet.

Your written content and any supporting visuals should be laid out so that they’re immediately visible and effortless to consume and navigate. Leave room for white space and let your key messages do the talking.

Concise, on-brand copy

The essence of any brand email is the copy used to communicate your message.

First, there’s your preview text (or preheader), which will appear right alongside your subject line in users’ inboxes. This is your opportunity to expand on the promise made by your subject line. Give users more context as to the contents of your email and incentivise them to look inside.

Like your subject line, your preview text should be succinct, sparking curiosity and providing a clear incentive for users to open the email. Importantly, though, it should complement your subject line rather than duplicating any elements. This way, you can squeeze maximum value out of the limited space available with these teasers.

Once users have opened your email, it’s on you to communicate your message in a clear, concise, impactful way that reflects your brand’s tone of voice. Not only that but the needs, preferences and behaviours of your audience, too.

Use direct address (think ‘you’ and ‘your’) wherever possible to give the email a personal touch and involve users in your narrative.

Waste no time in getting straight to the point. Use a conversational tone where appropriate to build rapport with users. Never use 100 words when 10 will do the job.

Relevant, high-quality imagery

Think of multimedia content as the companion to your carefully crafted email copy.

Imagery in email shouldn’t be an afterthought. Copy and imagery should be relevant to one another and should be mutually supportive in order to truly enhance your email’s message.

Authentic brand imagery is the ideal, whether branded graphics or relatable, real-world photography of your product, service or team.

Naturally, though, not all businesses will have high-quality branded assets at their disposal, or access to a professional photographer. In these cases, you may need to go to plan B: copyright-free stock photography.

Just be sure to keep relevance front of mind when selecting stock imagery for your emails. Having irrelevant visuals that confuse users rather than strengthening your message is worse than having no imagery at all.

The key is to only include imagery where it supports the message of your email. And don’t forget to honour your brand identity through your use of colour, shape and typography in your email campaigns.

Clear, convenient links

Clicks are a primary measure of any marketing email’s success, making the right links a vehicle for successful email marketing.

From informational links that expand on your email’s topic (such as links to blog posts and white papers) to transactional links users can click to access relevant product or service pages, links are the navigational tools that help users end up where they need to be.

But there are also the secondary links to think about, like clickable buttons for your brand’s social media accounts. Oh, and those links you’d rather no user clicked, like the dreaded (yet vital) ‘unsubscribe’ button.

Whatever its purpose and destination, every link in your email should be clearly visible and accurately labelled so that users are left with no doubt as to where they’ll end up.

The golden rule for linking in emails is to keep primary links within the main body of your email to an absolute minimum. Every new avenue you open to users distracts from your email’s call-to-action.

An irresistible call-to-action

The ultimate goal of any email marketing activity is to inspire subscribers to take action. The nature of that action can vary wildly from one business or organisation to the next – but the fact remains that every effective marketing email has a clear and defined purpose.

This is where your call-to-action comes in.

Your call-to-action is your email’s rallying cry. The step every user should feel compelled to take after reading the contents of your email.

Whether you’d like users to shop now, sign up, download, donate, volunteer, get in touch, learn more or get started, your brand has a primary call-to-action that defines how users interact with you.

Give every email a clear objective and point all messaging towards this overarching call-to-action. This way, you can make answering this call feel like the next logical step rather than a fulfilling of duty.

Together, these must-have marketing email elements can help your brand to surprise and delight subscribers for years to come. You’ll always be chasing higher open and click-through rates – such is the nature of email marketing – but this best-practice base will get you off to a flying start.

Our community engagement platform includes a library of effective email templates to take the hassle out of finding a layout that works.

Streamline your email marketing activity forevermore by joining our tribe. Get your free demo of the Six Circles platform now.