Many small businesses struggle with sending their email newsletters. Their templates are old and boring or their lists are filled with junk emails. If you’re looking for some tips to bolster your email campaigns, here are 7 that I hope will be of some help.

Optimizing the way you do email marketing is vital to reaching your goals: delivering more traffic, more qualified leads and closing more sales.

Double Opt-In

To make sure you are only reaching people who really want to see what you’re offering, build your list with a double opt-in mechanism. If you’re unfamiliar with what double opt-in is, it’s when your subscriber opts to receive your updates, and then must confirm that decision via an email you send them later.

Remind Them That They Chose You

Often people sign up for a newsletter and then forget about it. To prevent these forgetful fans from marking your newsletter as spam, remind them in every email why they are getting your emails.

Segment Your Lists

Marketers who segment their lists see increased conversion rates, as well as open rates and decreased spam flags. And really, do you think your international customers want to get your 4th of July-themed email newsletter?

Add Your Social Flair

Always link to your social presences in your email newsletter. If you have a community on Facebook, make sure that community is noted in the email. If you’re active on Twitter, share your handle in your newsletter.

## Choose One CTA

Tell them what you want them to do and be specific. Do you want them to act on a sale? Then don’t just tell them your widget is 25% off, tell them to click here for 25% savings. Some people try to cram 5 or more offers into one email. That’s confusing to the reader. Settle on one offer and promote it with thoughtfulness.

An Example CTA:

Send Regularly

An email that comes at the same time every day or every week is comforting. When it’s missed for several weeks, you’re no longer top of mind. Of course, that means when you start sending again, your spam reports will increase as many people on your list will have forgotten that they subscribed in the first place. Same time, every time.

Design to Fail Beautifully

With most people checking email throughout the day on their phones, chances are that a significant portion of your subscribers will read your email newsletter on a mobile device. Though most of them will check it on a smartphone or tablet, many will view it either on a feature phone or on a smartphone with images off.

Have you ever seen what your newsletter looks like with images turned off? Now’s the time to find out. Design for visual beauty, of course, but make sure that even with images off, the layout doesn’t break and the text is still very easy to read. Design your email marketing templates to fail, so that if they do, they will still be readable and worthwhile.