By: Nikki DeScenza

As a Salesforce implementation partner, we use Pardot as our email marketing platform to engage with our customers, clients, and prospects. Pardot has allowed for easier customization in order to optimize each unique email sent. In order to optimize engagement with your audience through emails, it is important to understand the best practices of email structure. I’m going to share a few tips that can help increase your audience engagement within the emails you are sending.

The way you structure an email plays an important role in getting your audience to respond, engage, and continue to stay connected. Our goal is to get them to engage and keep coming back for more!

The first step is grabbing their attention through a good subject line- catchy, but simple. Get the reader intrigued enough to open the email you are sending.

Another pro-tip to getting your reader’s attention is through a heading banner since it is the first thing your reader sees. Using a clear, high-quality image helps set the tone and adds credibility. Including a subject heading on the banner also gets the reader interested to keep reading- pick something intriguing but to the point. 

Now that you have your readers’ attention, optimizing copy and content within the email itself plays a significant role in getting your message across and allowing an open door of communication for your readers. Define the purpose of your email in a short paragraph or two.

And remember, we want our readers to communicate back to us, whether it be replying to the email, clicking a link within the email, or clicking the link and scheduling an appointment, or following your company on social platforms with links found throughout the email. Even opening the email is a communication from the reader that they are engaging with you.

From here, placing a call to action button or link will tell your reader to take action. Placing a call to action button within the first third portion of your email is best. This immediately encourages your audience to engage with your message. 

Not only is the placement of the call-to-action important but the color used is also important! Choose something bold to stand out from the rest of the email- quite literally calling them to click the button. Staying on-brand with the button color can also help build credibility for your organization. 

Having a secondary call to action (CTA), different from a button, can be helpful to track what your readers are drawn toward. In the email example above, you will have your main CTA button toward the top of the email then a secondary link to direct them again to that same CTA.

Towards the bottom, you can add an additional CTA, including social media links that direct them to follow you there. This extra cushion helps to track what your readers are interested in. 

With these email creation tips under your belt, you can now be on your way to creating emails that might outperform industry averages!