Email Design: 9 Best Practices for 2021

Maximizing your agency’s ROI with Madison Taylor Marketing 

Founded over 15 years ago, Madison Taylor Marketing has become a well-known agency in Denver, Colorado, for its success in bringing unprecedented results to clients. The agency's smart strategies have helped clients ensure alignment, reduce costs, optimize their resources, and, more notably, maximize ROI by almost 300% across all marketing efforts. 

In a live session with Chris Copen, Chief Operating Officer, Cassie Renier, Creative Specialist, and Andrea Davis, Creative Manager, they shared their insight into how agencies can maximize their ROI with email marketing. 

What is ROI? 

“ROI, or Return on Investment, is one of our most important performance indicators as an agency. 

ROI is not just a metric, but it measures the profitability of our business and our investments and helps us understand the value that we're generating from our efforts and resources. 

By tracking ROI, we are trying to ensure that our strategies are effective, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions.

For agencies, achieving a high ROI is really important because it reflects our ability to deliver value to our clients and continually optimize operations. Ultimately, this empowers us to drive growth for ourselves.

For our clients, our ability to achieve high ROI demonstrates our ability to use budgets wisely to deliver maximum value and achieve their business goals efficiently.”

_{Excerpt from Chris Copen at our live session with Madison Taylor Marketing.
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With a return of $36 per $1 spent, why do agencies struggle to increase email marketing ROI? 

“We have found that that email is a powerful tool for achieving ROI for our clients. It's been around for a long time, and it's a tried and true tactic. While people have changed their media consumption habits, email continues to produce results for us. Email marketing connects our clients directly with their audience segments, allows us to deliver personalized content, and drives conversions.

Despite its potential, though, we have definitely experienced struggles over the years.

For both ourselves and our clients, we’ve found that the main challenge with email marketing is how much time and effort it takes.

Creating visually appealing and effective email campaigns requires significant time and effort.

We have found ourselves really bogged down in the minutiae of design details and trying to craft the “perfect” layout and visual elements. While important, this detracts from strategic activities that might yield higher returns.”

We've also experienced the challenge of hard coding emails and getting those emails to work across platforms. This process is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. Little mistakes in the code can lead to rendering issues across different email clients, which has obvious consequences for a campaign’s effectiveness and ROI.

In addition to that, there's the issue of too much back-and-forth. When we collaborate on email campaigns, this often involves multiple rounds of feedback and revision. 

All of that just adds to the cumbersome and lengthy process and leads to diminishing returns - addressing all of those is critical in unlocking the full potential of email marketing for ROI. 

_{Excerpt from Chris Copen at our live session with Madison Taylor Marketing.
Optimized for readability and engagement} 

How can agencies optimize their email marketing ROI

“By optimizing our email creation process, leveraging automated tools, reducing manual coding, and streamlining our feedback mechanisms, we were really able to improve our ROI. Cassie has been one of our leaders in helping us find the right tools and helping us increase our productivity and efficiency.”

^{- Chris Copen}

1. Find the email marketing tools 

"Finding the right tool enables and empowers us to execute our vision and our client's vision without hindering their goals.

As a designer, when I'm looking for the right tool for email marketing, there are a few things to look for.

Ease of use is the first thing. Whatever tool you use should be user-friendly, intuitive, and allow me to create and customize designs quickly and effectively. 

Another need is a high degree of flexibility. I need to be able to create unique and visually appealing emails that align with the specific branding of all of our clients. We shouldn’t have to sacrifice elements of a client's brand to fit within the constraints of a design platform. 

The collaborative nature of a tool is also crucial. The right tool should facilitate seamless communication and collaboration, not only with our clients but also internally, throughout the revision process. That includes features like real-time editing, feedback, integrations, approval workflows, and so on. This helps us ensure we are always on the same page internally and with our clients.

Lastly, the right tool should integrate smoothly with other platforms and tools, such as CRM systems, analytic tools, and marketing automation platforms. This helps ensure that we have a cohesive, streamlined process from design to delivery and analysis and are not bouncing between a bunch of different platforms. 

Our previous process before finding Beefree was inefficient and unsustainable. It was clear that our approach was hindering our ability to meet client expectations and deliver high-quality, unique campaigns. 

Recognizing this was the first step toward improving our process. We needed a tool that would propel our agency to go above and beyond what our clients had asked for."

_{- Cassie Renier}

_{Excerpt from our live session with Madison Taylor Marketing.
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2. Optimize your design and collaboration processes 

“When it comes to making something like email marketing work, alignment between vision and capability is so important.

When we're working as a team of marketers and designers, we need to effectively collaborate on an idea from start to finish.

Often, agencies run into issues executing on a vision because of limitations in capabilities, whether human, tools, or resources.

What we've found that works really well is to first clarify the client's situation and goals to ensure we're moving in the right direction. Involving design teams early in the process is crucial to understanding the full context and aligning on the vision.

Then, we need to be able to move from strategy to deliverables in the most cost-efficient manner. This means reducing the time spent on ideation, creation, and revisions. This is another reason why finding the right tools is important.

Beefree, specifically, allowed us to streamline our processes and enabled us to produce high-quality designs rapidly, ensuring timely and relevant communication with our client’s audiences. With Beefree’s collaboration features, all team members communicate in one place, reducing the time spent on back-and-forth and ensuring everyone is on the same page. Also, with real-time collaboration clients could see changes as they happened, reducing the need for multiple rounds of revisions.

By simply optimizing our email and collaboration processes we were able to reduce the time spent on designing while still producing high-quality assets. This allowed us to respond more quickly to market demands and time-sensitive opportunities, improving our ROI.

‍_{Excerpt from Andrea Davis at our live session with Madison Taylor Marketing. 
Optimized for readability and engagement} 

How should agencies measure their ROI

“In terms of measuring external ROI, setting clear, measurable goals for each campaign is important. 

Whether it's increasing engagement, generating leads, or driving sales, having specific objectives helps define what success looks like and provides a benchmark for measurement.

Track all related costs accurately. This includes not only direct expenses like ad spend but also indirect costs such as team hours and the cost of tools we use to streamline email creation and deployment. Knowing your total investment is crucial for an accurate ROI assessment.

Analyze your key performance metrics. These metrics might include open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall engagement. Analyzing this data will provide insights into how well campaigns are performing and how the use of efficient tools contributes to these results.

Consider both short-term and long-term impacts. Immediate results, such as sales from a campaign, are important, but so are long-term benefits like customer retention and brand awareness. Understanding the broader impact helps paint a complete picture of ROI.

Regularly review and adjust strategies and processes based on our findings. ROI measurement should be an ongoing process, helping refine tactics and improve future campaigns, but also providing internal operations insights. This iterative approach ensures continuous improvement and better outcomes over time.

Evaluating distinctly the ROI of internal investments. This includes the tools and technologies we use to enhance our productivity and efficiency. Analyze the effectiveness of these tools in helping you streamline your processes.” 

‍_{Additional insights shared by Chris Copen, Chief Operating Officer at Madison Taylor Marketing.} 

How Madison Taylor Marketing cut down email development time by 66% with Beefree

CEO and Founder Aimee Meester shares how her team uses Beefree to create engaging and personalized content faster than ever before. Learn more about the business impact of Beefree on Madison Taylor Marketing.

What is lifecycle email marketing?

Lifecycle email marketing is the act of segmenting your email subscribers based on where they are in the customer lifecycle. 

The customer lifecycle is the set of stages your customers go through, from when they first hear about your brand to making a purchase and everything in between. 

The stages of  the customer lifecycle are typically known as:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Conversion
• Retention

A survey conducted by Econsultancy found that 74% of marketers experienced an increase in their overall customer engagement rates when using targeted emails. While there are many ways of segmenting your audience, lifecycle email marketing stands out as one of the most effective strategies allowing businesses to send highly relevant content that moves readers to the next stage in the customer lifecycle ending in ideally, unbound brand loyalty. 

Mapping Out Your Lifecycle Email Marketing Key Stages

Lifecycle email marketing is all about customizing emails for each customer’s depending on their familiarity with your brand. Before you can jump in, you’ll need to map out your customer lifecycle stages. The stages are similar for most businesses but they can vary based on the type of product or service you offer or your industry. 

The most common stages within lifecycle email marketing are:

• Awareness: In email marketing, this is when someone first signs up for your email newsletter. 
• Consideration: This subscriber has become highly engaged in your welcome series emails and has a desire to learn more. 
• Conversion: This is when the subscriber has completed the desired action. 
• Retention: Once a customer has completed the desired action, it’s important to keep them engaged in your brand to encourage a repeat conversion. 
• Advocacy or referral: In this stage, you want to encourage them to share their experience with the brand through word of mouth of leaving testimonials. 
• Re-engagement: After a while, subscribers may experience email fatigue and stop engaging with your brand altogether.
  

As mentioned, these are some of the most common stages of lifecycle email marketing and this might look differently for you. We suggest diving into user behavior, patterns, and data to better understand your customer base and how they move through the lifecycle. 

Getting started with lifecycle email marketing

As mentioned above, your lifecycle email marketing stages may differ depending on your business and industry. Here are some key considerations that will help shape what your cycle looks like. 

Step 1: Understanding your customer lifecycle

We suggest diving deep into user behavior, patterns, and data to better understand your customer base and how they move through the lifecycle. Start by analyzing how your customers first discover your brand, what keeps them engaged, and the touchpoints that lead to conversion.

Look at the entire journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase behavior, and identify key stages where customers might drop off or need extra engagement.

By understanding these nuances, you can tailor your email campaigns to meet your customers' needs at each stage, ensuring a more personalized and effective approach.

Step 2: Audit your existing email karketing

Take a look at your recent email marketing and take stock of what stages you’re nurturing most and which ones may not be targeted as well. You might find that you’ve been sending plenty of emails for the conversion stage but not enough for retention, or maybe you haven’t sent any emails directly for the advocacy and referral stages. 

Identifying gaps like these can show you where to be more focused and strategic in your email marketing moving forward.

Building out your lifecycle emails

Awareness

Customers in the awareness stage are just learning about and getting familiar with your brand. Your goal in this stage is to build a relationship with the customer, introduce them to your products or services, and tell them what you’re all about. 

This is when customers decide whether your brand is a good fit for them (think of it as a first date between your brand and the customer), so it’s important that you make a positive and authentic first impression.

A welcome email to those signing up for your mailing list is an excellent opportunity to make a strong impression and build familiarity. It’s also a great time to send emails highlighting your brand story, mission statements, and other introductions to your brand.

Consideration

In the consideration stage, customers decide whether your business is the right fit for them and compare it to similar solutions. At this stage, you want to compellingly show them what you have to offer and how you stand out.

One way this manifests is through comprehensive emails on your products or services. This means highlighting key benefits, features, and use cases. This is also a great place to show vs. tell. Include animations, videos, and gifs that easily illustrate the value you bring. 

Conversion

In this stage, a potential customer is on the verge of taking action. Emails in the conversion stage significantly influence that decision to buy. 

Personalized special offers can resonate really well with recipients as they can be tailored to their specific needs and interests. This can look like offering deals on items they’ve recently viewed on your website or first-time purchase discounts. 

Retention

This stage is where brand loyalty blossoms. Engaging customers beyond the initial conversion is crucial for retention and repeat purchases. During this stage, you can send service or product announcement emails to regularly communicate what’s new with your offer. A monthly or weekly newsletter is also a great way to keep your audience up to date on your brand’s activities and encourage them to explore other resources you may offer. 

Regardless, the emails you send at this stage should be strengthening and affirming the customer’s connection with your brand.

Advocacy

When a customer has developed trust in your brand and offer, they start recommending your brand or organization to others. Referrals are the one most effective way B2B businesses acquire new customers, and according to Nielsen, people are four times more likely to buy a product if they’re referred by a friend. 

When a customer is in the advocacy stage, you’ll want to send them review requests to encourage them to post testimonials, as well as educate them about any referral incentives you have.

Re-engagement

This is a period when your brand has fallen off their radar—they haven’t necessarily decided to stop following you, but they’re not actively interested in your services, products, or messaging. To continue to remain top of mind, we suggest doing regular re-engagement campaigns.

These types of emails could include special incentives like an exclusive discount, or simply “we’ve missed you” emails to show them what’s new. This is a good time to also reiterate the benefits of your offer as they pertain to their unique interest and preferences.

Best practices for lifecycle email marketing

Here are some best practices we recommend to ensuring that your lifecycle email marketing is optimized to build lasting relationships with your customers and drive ongoing engagement.

Segment your audience

The core of lifecycle email marketing is identifying what stage the individual is at any given time. Specifically for lifecycle email marketing, you'll want to segment your audience based on behaviours. This could include purchase history, website interactions, email engagement, or product usage. Patterns in these areas will help you best determine where to place an individual in the lifecycle stages.

Create personal and relevant content

Once you have an understanding of your users behaviours and patterns, use this to personalize your emails. Address recipients by their names, recommend products based on their past purchases, and tailor content to their preferences.

Ensure your emails provide value to your customers that helps move them to the next stage. Offer exclusive discounts, share useful tips, and provide relevant updates.

Timing and frequency

For lifecycle emails timing is crucial. Set up automated emails that are triggered by specific actions, such as welcome emails for new subscribers, cart abandonment reminders, and post-purchase follow-ups. These timely emails can significantly enhance engagement and conversions.

Monitor and measuring success

Along the way, make sure you’re tracking your metrics for each lifecycle stage to see how successful you are in moving folks through the customer lifecycle. Use these insights to refine your strategies and improve your overall strategy.

Testing

You can also conduct A/B tests to see how different email content, subject lines, and other details perform for people in specific lifecycle stages. For example, in your segment of customers who are in the consideration stage, run a test where half of them get an email every two days while the other half get an email every four days and see which group tends to engage more or convert more. This can tell you how frequently to send emails to this segment.

Just make sure you’re comparing apples to apples by comparing the two email versions for the same lifecycle segment, because customers in different lifecycle stages could have different reactions to the same email version.

Ensure brand consistency

Consistent branding helps recipients quickly recognize your emails, which builds trust and familiarity. According to a study conducted by Edelman, "81% of buyers need to trust a brand in order to buy from them," making trust and familiarity two crucial elements of efficient lifecycle email marketing.

Additionally, consistent branding helps differentiate your brand from competitors. This is crucial in the consideration stage to ensure you remain top of mind.

Designing emails for each stage of your lifecycle email marketing

The tips and strategies above can help you get started with lifecycle email marketing, but the success of your campaigns will also depend on how well you design and target your emails for specific stages and audiences.

That’s where Beefree can help. Our extensive email template library includes templates for many different types of emails that align with each lifecycle stage, and our easy HTML email editor lets you seamlessly customize them for your audiences.

You’ll be able to incorporate all the elements of your brand identity which helps you create brand recognition and build brand loyalty throughout every stage of the lifecycle. Interested in seeing how these templates can make your lifecycle email marketing simpler? Sign up for Beefree and start exploring.

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Effective email marketing in healthcare can have immense ROI. After all, it is a cost-effective and direct line of communication with your patients that, when done right, can drive engagement, encourage repeat visits, and help build ongoing trust and credibility. However, healthcare providers are faced with unique challenges when it comes to using email marketing. 

On the one hand, the goal is to engage patients and provide value to help build long-term relationships. On the other hand, the goal is to promote your services and, ideally, boost revenue via this marketing strategy. This balance can be tricky to achieve due to the sensitive nature of the healthcare industry; however, it is not impossible.

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We’ve compiled 5 examples of healthcare emails done right. These top brands have excelled in the art of healthcare emails by blending valuable, informative content that addresses patient’s concerns with promotional content that presents itself as an empathetic helping hand.  

Healthcare newsletter examples

Sending monthly or weekly newsletters is an excellent way to strengthen relationships with patients or customers. These regular communications serve as a direct line to your audience, allowing you to engage and educate them on relevant health topics consistently. 

Each newsletter provides an opportunity to share reliable and practical health tips and update patients about clinic changes, new services, or special offerings. 

Everlywell 

Everlywell offers folks with at-home “health and wellness solutions.” In a recent newsletter they focus their message on addressing stress, a common concern among their audience. The email begins by empathizing with the reader, reassuring them that stress is a widespread issue, therefore establishing an immediate connection with their readers. 

By offering a free solution—specifically, a list of vitamins and supplements known to alleviate stress—Everlywell demonstrates its commitment to customer well-being. Simultaneously, by subtly promoting its own supplements within the email's content, it reinforces the message that Everlywell not only understands the reader's concerns but also provides practical solutions. 

Seasonal health campaigns 

Another great way to connect with patients beyond the clinic is to send seasonal health campaigns. These campaigns are highly effective because they relate to current health concerns and conditions prevalent during specific times of the year.

Seasonal health campaigns allow healthcare providers to proactively address issues that are top-of-mind for patients during different seasons. 

Natalist

Natalist offers “fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum essentials.” To ring in the new year, their email “TTC in the new year?” leans into the possibility that with a new year, folks begin to consider trying to conceive, thoughtfully tapping taps into the natural inclination people have to reflect on life changes and set new goals as the calendar turns.

This thoughtful and well-timed campaign exemplifies how healthcare providers can connect with their audience by aligning their messaging with their customers' lives' natural rhythms and aspirations.

Promotional healthcare emails 

Promotional healthcare emails can significantly increase patient engagement. Offers tailored to patient needs can inform and encourage them to consider services they may not have known about. However, healthcare promotion emails come with their own set of challenges, HIPAA being the biggest hurdle.

ivee

Ivee offers “individualized medical care” services directly from home, including urgent care, diagnostic testing, IV therapy, and more. In a promotional email about their Membership and Programs, ivee takes the route of promotion through education.

Promoting medical treatments and procedures can be complex and often leaves patients with numerous questions and uncertainties.

ivee’s promotional email addresses this challenge by ensuring the content is clear, concise, and informative. Instead of overwhelming patients with technical jargon or complicated medical terms, Ivee breaks down the information into 3 digestible segments that guide the reader through their offerings:

1. What the patient will receive
2. How the program works
3. What the next steps are 

ivee’s educational approach in its promotional email informs and empowers patients, building trust and confidence in their services. 

By addressing potential questions upfront, ivee reduces any concern that the patient may have regarding this service. This method of promotion through education is particularly effective in healthcare, where informed patients are more likely to engage with and benefit from the services offered.

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Patient testimonials and success stories 

Using patient testimonials and stories in healthcare emails helps build trust and credibility. When potential patients read or hear about others who have successfully navigated similar health challenges, it reassures them of the effectiveness and reliability of the services offered. These narratives humanize the healthcare experience, which can sometimes feel cold and direct, by showcasing real people and their journeys. 

Much like any healthcare email, this one is particularly affected by the US HIPAA regulations. These emails require explicit consent and the careful handling of personal information. 

Additionally, it is crucial that these testimonials and stories remain authentic. Fabricated or exaggerated stories can damage credibility, and it's important to avoid over-promising outcomes. 

GoodRx

GoodRx provides telemedicine to track prescription drug pricing in the United States and offers drug coupons and medication discounts. In an email promoting their telehealth services, they use a patient testimonial to communicate the ease of their service.

GoodRx balances this strategy with maintaining client privacy by using anonymized testimonials and obtaining explicit consent from the patient. Anonymized testimonials protect the identity of the patients by removing any personal identifiers, ensuring that their privacy is not compromised while still providing authentic feedback about the service.

Transactional healthcare email examples

Transactional emails play an important role in healthcare, allowing providers to share essential information that brings ease to the patient’s experience. More specifically, transactional emails improve operational efficiency. Some examples of transactional emails in healthcare include

• Appointment confirmations and reminders
• Prescription and medication updates
• Follow-up care instructions
• Billing and payment notification
• Patient portal access 

Hims

Hims is an “online telehealth platform that provides virtual healthcare and support for men's health.” In the order confirmation email below, Hims offers the patient important order information such as order ID, date paid, total charge, and payment method. 

This transparency ensures patients have all the necessary details about their purchase, enhancing their trust in the platform. Additionally, Hims goes beyond just transactional information to offer patients peace of mind by reminding them of all the other free services they receive through their platform.

By highlighting these benefits, Hims reinforces the value of its service and strengthens its relationship with its patients. This approach confirms the purchase and reassures patients that they feel supported in various aspects of their health journey.

Start designing healthcare emails with Beefree 

Navigating healthcare regulations can be challenging, but your email design doesn't have to be. With Beefree's intuitive design tools and templates, you can simplify your communication efforts to adhere to industry standards and focus on what truly matters: delivering exceptional care and valuable information to your patients

Sign up today -- it's free!

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