Before we get started you're going to need a platform to work from. Drop everything and go sign up for MailChimp and make sure it’s completely setup with domain email, Analytics, Facebook/twitter integration, DMARC/SPF records set, the whole nine yards!

First, you want to create highly targeted, top funnel content that targets those of us that are still in the research phase of the buying process. This is where users are likely to subscribe more willingly and these “future customers” will give you the largest ROI, in the long run. Now that you have your honey laid we need to convert these researchers into subscribers with tools. Stop what you're doing and go get SumoMe Pro installed and connected to MailChimp. Go to that “top funnel” page I had you make earlier and sprinkle in an image every ~100 words or so. Make sure there’s a heading every ~300-500 words or so and prior to every heading or at the end of every content section throw in a subscription value proposition and call to action or value proposition and MailChimp subscribe form w/call to action. The image every ~100 words will keep them reading through the content. The heading every ~300-500 words will improve reading comprehension and retention. It also gives you a nice way to break up the content and not make the conversion attempt seem so random. Now just spin up SumoMe’s list builder and tie it only to that page. In a few clicks, you’ll be capturing subscribers when they try to bounce at whopping rates, like up to ~42%. This is just one tactic for building traffic to a page that’s intended to grow your email marketing subscriber count, you should optimize your MailChimp list by removing the last name field and renaming the first name field to just name, accepting whatever users are willing to give is an email marketing best practices pro tip. Another way to capture more subscribers is to have them opt-out when contacting you through the forms on your website. Make sure you target the list their subscribing to by using segmentation tactics like a hidden field that notes what page they were on when they submit the form. It’s also common to convert your current and new customers into subscribers. According to eMarketer, 81% of online shoppers who receive emails based on previous shopping habits were at least somewhat likely to make a purchase as a result of targeted email. Tweet this stat! You can do this honestly by sending out infrequent emails to your existing customer base asking them to subscribe and adding list subscription call to action buttons to your thank you page and purchase or lead confirmation emails. Another great place for a list subscription call to action button is your vacation/auto-responder emails. You're well on your way to having a great, responsive email marketing audience.

The from name, avatar, subject line and initial snippet are the most important components of having a successful open rate. Make sure that all of these components... ...are relevant to your recipients. The example shown above is not relevant to me, I’m already world class at “Getting on Page 1 by tomorrow (Urgently)”. But it has something to do with me cause that’s my life’s work and I’m interested to see what Wyatt (Drip Apps) has to say about it. Hopefully, it’s not another eBook sales pitch! How do you make sure all of those components are relevant to all of your subscribers all of the time? Segmentation, segmentation, segmentation. The more insights you have into what your recipients want to read the more opens you’ll get, generally speaking.

Add hidden fields to all of your list building forms that will tell you at a glance what users want from you. You can also have separate MailChimp lists for separate marketing groups so that the landing page subscribers aren’t getting the same remarketing emails as the subscribers from your confirmation emails or emails from your link building efforts. Optimize your subject line, make sure it’s short, sweet, to the point and that it’s an honest representation of what’s inside. Get all the garbage/fluff/technical crap out of the first line and start with something meaningful to the recipient and leading to what the email’s intentions are. Now you’ve got a basic understanding of how to get more opens out of your MailChimp email marketing lists.

Stop pretending you know what you're doing with plain text campaigns and start creating real engaging emails. People love shiny stuff, ~90% of the info our brains process is visual Tweet this stat!, so says HubSpot, but don’t take my word for it, watch 10 minutes of reality tv, ooh shiny! Billions of people respond to visual content in a big way every day. In the digital marketing realm, visual content gets 40x more shares and improves retention up to 600% more than any plain text marketing out there Tweet this stat!, so what made you think that didn’t apply to email marketing? Inspire me to click, that’s all. Want to really boost click through, get all the garbage links out of your email template and give them only one highly relevant option, a call to action button, preferably blue, specifically in hexadecimal notation #2196f3. Why that specific color, cause it works. Google did a bunch of human color response research when they were developing their material design guidelines for mobile apps and found the best color swatches for people using mobile devices possible. The Google Material Design Color Palette consists of 20 color groups and includes every color of the rainbow in it’s most appealing hue, saturation, and brightness on mobile screens. Roughly 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices Tweet this stat!, according to Campaign Monitor. So, you better rely on Google to give you the most well-researched color palette available to date for designing your emails with.

Having said all that, MailChimp did another study on call to action button colors using the Google Material Design Color Palette and they found that, by a landslide, that specific (#2196f3) blue color got the highest click through rates. Your results depend on the design and visual hierarchy of your email design, of course. Choose a complimentary color to your overall design that stands out with lots of contrast. You can look just above your screen and squint your eyes a little to see if the button color stands out enough and make sure the call to action font color has a high enough contrast ratio compared to the button background color and the same for the contrast of the button background color to the element it's on as well as the surrounding layout elements and their colors/contrast ratios.