Email Marketing Best Practices from a $42 Million Email Company
Last updated on April 16, 2022 - My Free Marketing newsletter 👀
Some people say email is dead.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s proof.
Recently, I tweeted a video to my 57,300 followers on Twitter…
55 clicks.
Meh.
I was curious how email compared. So I sent an email to 60,251 subscribers with the same video…
3,600 clicks! 😲
In other words, email performed 6,445% better than Twitter.
Email has been my #1 most profitable marketing channel for 10 years in a row. It’s one of the reasons we’ve grown Sumo + AppSumo to 8 figures.
| BONUS: Learn the 13 email marketing trends to follow this year |
To learn new email marketing best practices, I met up with Gary Levitt while I was in Israel.
As the founder of Mad Mimi (an email marketing product acquired by GoDaddy), Gary knows how to create ultra-successful email campaigns.
In this episode of Noah Kagan Presents, you’ll learn epic email marketing best practices from Gary.
If you want to land emails in the inbox, increase your open and click rates, and be prepared for the future of email marketing, you'll want to listen.
Plus, you’ll learn:
- Experiences as an Orthodox Jew in business 🇮🇱
- How Gary transitioned from music school student to a successful entrepreneur 👨💼
- What goes on behind the scenes of an acquisition — and what it’s like to sell your company to GoDaddy for $42 million 💰
Listen to the whole conversation with Gary in the podcast below.
It’s the best 20 minutes you’ll have this week. 😀
- How to Focus Your Business to Be Successful — with Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman
- Meet Guy Sharett Who Speaks 7 Languages
- Behind-The-Scenes with the Man Who's Disrupting a Trillion-Dollar Industry
- 3 Important Lessons about Business, Life, and Happiness
3 Email Marketing Best Practices for 2017
Seth Godin.
Dr. Dre.
Karen Taylor from “A Scarlet Thread.”
Gary’s company Mad Mimi has some of the biggest names in business and entertainment.
Here are 3 killer email marketing tips Gary learned working with these customers — and hundreds of others…
1. Keep your emails short
The most important thing about sending emails is to keep it really short.
Here’s why this is Gary’s #1 tip:
- Easier to write: Small and manageable. At Sumo, we focus on “1%” wins to consistently grow. When you’re emailing, use the same philosophy. Keep it short, and focus on consistent growth and improvement
- Simple to read: Keeping emails short makes it easy for subscribers to read on the go, the toilet, or wherever else they’re reading your emails
I keep my emails as short as possible because I know you guys have short attention spans like me. 😉
Here’s a recent email I sent for my interview with Jonathan Sigel:
(If you like this email, you can sign up for my newsletter here.)
Notice the simplicity. No fancy words, no confusing phrases, no 17 million paragraphs to read.
When it comes to writing short emails...
- Get straight to the point
- Hook with a killer subject line
- Share the “why” (aka the benefits of clicking a link in your email)
To get better at writing short emails, take your first draft and try to cut ⅓ of your text.
The goal is to deliver epic value with as little text as possible.
Make every word EARN its way on the page.
I try to think of emails as text messages to my friends and family. I want to only message when I have something valuable to say.
At the end of the day, the more you practice, the more successful your communication will be.
2. Have a single call to action
If you want your emails to be successful, you need to make your call to action clear.
Don’t include a million different links, buttons, and CTAs all fighting for your subscribers’ attention.
Instead, have a single CTA. This tells your subscribers, “this is where I want you to go.”
Here’s another recent email I recently sent.
It’s super short — you can scan it in seconds.
Plus, there’s one clear call to action, so the reader knows exactly what I want them to do.
The best way to craft awesome email CTAs is to think about your goals before you hit send. For example:
- If I want to share an episode of my podcast, I’ll include a single link to the show
- If I want to launch a sweepstakes, the ONLY link will be to enter
- If I’m promoting an event (like SumoCon), there will be a link just to the landing page
Next time you write an email, think about what you want to achieve before you write it.
3. Send emails frequently
Email lists can go stale quickly.
If someone joins your email list and doesn’t hear from you for months, they’ll..
- Forget who the f you are
- Struggle to remember why they signed up in the first place
- Leave your emails unread or send your emails straight to spam
If you want to succeed with email marketing, send emails on a regular basis.
For me, this means sending one email every 1-2 weeks to my list:
Frequency can vary depending on your goals:
- Buffer sends daily emails whenever they publish new content
- Tim Ferriss sends a weekly email to his list
- Kevin Rose publishes his email newsletter once per month
Find whatever works for you and commit. Consistency is incredibly important in email marketing.
You could even set a proactive goal to send at least one email to your list each week:
- Keep your emails super short and to the point
- Have a single, clear call to action
- Send emails to your list frequently
For more email marketing best practices, check out my email marketing YouTube playlist.
Or, listen to more insights below from Gary about selling a company, making millions, and more.
6 responses to “Email Marketing Best Practices from a $42 Million Email Company”
Great post! Interesting and useful article.
Thanks!
nice article, thnks for sharing.
very good post, thank you...
You're saying short emails but Ramit writes super long story based emails. Which is best?
There's no right answer. This works best for Noah, that works best for Ramit. Depends on your style and what you sell. Just test, test, test.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks Roman