14 Winning Lead Generation Examples & Why They Work | 2025
If email marketing remains a key part of your marketing strategy, you're on the right track.
Stats show that email is not dead. A report from the Direct Marketing Association revealed that email marketing generates an average ROI of $42 for every dollar spent.
In a Litmus survey, 80% of marketers preferred email marketing over social media marketing.
However, many businesses fail to see the full potential of this powerful marketing channel. As with any other marketing channel, there are best practices to increase your chances of success.
In this article, we’ll explore 27 email marketing best practices that will increase conversions and give you a positive ROI.
Before we get right into it, here’s a short selection of 8 customizable email form templates you can easily edit and publish with Visme. View more templates below:
If you are starting with your email marketing strategy, it’s crucial to understand that the preparation stage is the foundation of your entire strategy. Invest time in getting this right, and the rest of your email marketing efforts will flow smoothly.
To make sure that you cover all the bases in your email marketing efforts, follow these email marketing best practices during preparation.
Think of what you want to achieve with your email marketing campaigns. Do you want to grow your list? Build brand awareness? Or retarget customers who have abandoned their cart?
Answering these questions will guide the direction of your email marketing efforts and make your goals more targeted.
Setting SMART goals for your email marketing campaign help you measure results and improve performance. For example, you can set a goal to increase product sales by 15% in the next quarter or drive more website traffic.
Not sure how to set SMART goals? Use the SMART goals template below or explore 17 goal-setting worksheets & templates.
Take the time to understand who your recipients are, what they like and their preferences. Knowing your audience allows you to create personalized, targeted content that resonates with them.
Find the answers to the following questions to know more about them:
Creating buyer personas is one of the best ways to understand the most about your target audience. They are a fictional representation of your ideal customer, and they help you to create content that appeals directly to them.
Read this comprehensive guide to understand how to build a buyer persona and Visme's customer persona templates to create one.
Don't limit yourself to a single sign-up form on your website or landing page. Implement different sign-up forms, such as pop-ups, embedded forms, slide-ins or exit-intent forms.
Each form type has its strengths, and using a variety can help you capture leads who may have overlooked a single form.
Website forms have looked the same and had the same basic functionality for years. But Visme is changing the game with an attractive and interactive form builder that not only creates a memorable experience but attracts leads fast.
You can then integrate Visme Forms with a great email marketing service that allows you to seamlessly schedule emails, includes strong deliverability, and has excellent automation functionality. Remember to take a look at what analytics your email marketing service allows you to track- you want to be able to keep an eye on the metrics that matter to you.
We tested these forms on over 700k organic visitors, and the results are astonishing: 207% increase in conversions and 205% increase in form engagement.
Email marketing is a long-term investment that requires consistent effort to generate a return. And the best way to stay consistent over time is to plan your emails in advance using a content calendar.
Think of a content calendar as your roadmap for your email marketing success. You can use it to create a schedule for sending emails, newsletters, promotions and product updates.
Make sure to mark important dates, events and holidays in the calendar, Use these dates to automate personalized email newsletters that go out to customers on special occasions.
Spreadsheets or online tools like Google Sheets, Notion and Coschedule are great options. But with Visme, you get much more than a content calendar. You’ll find a wide range of stunning newsletter templates for your next email campaign.
Integrate your Visme account with Mailchimp to export your designs to the platform and upload them to your email newsletters. This makes your email marketing efforts more streamlined and saves you a lot of time.
While specific strategies and techniques may vary among businesses, some email marketing best practices apply to any email marketing campaign.
Whether you're kicking off your new email strategy or looking for a way to improve your current, this section has what you need.
We'll explore general email marketing best practices to help maximize your efforts.
Personalization works magic for increasing engagement, conversion and ROI. According to HubSpot, personalization is the second most effective email marketing strategy after subscriber segmentation.
Personalization is not just about sending the customer's name in an email. It is about understanding your audience and knowing what they need and want. For example, if you email a customer with a product they are interested in, they will be more likely to open and click on it.
Here are some other ways to personalize your emails besides using the customer's name:
Mobile devices account for 42% of email views. If your email looks poor on mobile devices, you could lose many potential subscribers and customers.
Here’s how to optimize your email campaigns for mobile users:
Here’s an example of a mobile-optimized email from Visme. This email contains a YouTube video, text boxes and images that display optimally on a mobile screen.
A call-to-action (CTA) is a button or text on an email that prompts the recipient to take action. It can be as simple as clicking on a link or an action like signing up for your newsletter.
Clear, compelling and well-placed CTAs encourage recipients to take the desired action. Here are some ideas for creating the perfect CTAs for your next email campaign.
Here’s an example of a clear and easy-to-follow CTA in emails. Look how the CTA in this template uses bold color, concise wording and careful placement to attract the audience.
People may want to stop receiving your emails for various reasons, including a lack of interest and relevance. You must respect your subscriber's choices by making it easy for them to unsubscribe from your list.
And it's not only about the subscribers. Adding an unsubscribe option prevents you from having lower open, click-through and conversion rates. It ensures your clean email list is clean and your team focuses on subscribers who'd most likely convert.
Place an unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email so customers can easily find it.
Unlike email newsletters that provide subscribers with updates and news, email campaigns focus more on driving a specific action. These actions include promoting a product or service, driving website traffic, increasing brand awareness and more.
So, you need a different approach to creating effective email marketing campaigns than you would for an email newsletter.
Follow these best email marketing practices for effective email campaigns every time.
Visuals make your email campaigns stand out and convey your message. Here are some ways you can make your emails more visually appealing:
With Visme's email design templates, you can create beautiful emails that will help you make a lasting impression.
Here’s an example email template from Visme.
Use Visme’s visual assets, such as icons, illustrations, 3D animated graphics, high-res stock images and more, to customize your template.
Also, if you are looking for a specific visual you can’t find elsewhere, use Visme’s AI image generator to create it on your own.
Describe your idea for the graphic and choose an output style such as photos, paintings, pencil drawings and 3D graphics, and the tool will generate it within seconds.
According to HubSpot, audience segmentation is the most effective email marketing campaign strategy.
And there's a good reason why: it allows you to tailor your email content, message and offers so that they are most relevant to the specific needs of each audience segment.
As a result, you get more open rates, better click-through rates and a higher conversion rate. And that means more sales!
But how do you segment your audience?
However, create only a few segments that you have enough subscribers in each group to target effectively.
You have segmented the audience for better-targeted emails and decided on the visuals to make your emails visually appealing. But how would you keep them reading and make them take action?
The answer is to create engaging content. Most email newsletters write so generic content that any competitor could easily create.
One of the email copy’s best practices is to write content that people will actually want to read. You can do this by using the information you have about your audience.
For instance, if you know that most of them are part of a specific industry, write an email highlighting trends in that industry or even an example of how your product has helped someone in that field.
If you need assistance in writing engaging content, Visme's AI writer is here to help. It will take the information you provide and use it to create an email that is relevant, interesting and matches your brand voice.
Also, you can use it to brainstorm email topic ideas, draft content structure and edit your content.
Maintaining consistent email branding is one of the email campaign best practices that helps you build brand recognition, establish credibility and create a cohesive experience for your recipients.
Include all your branding elements, such as brand colors, brand fonts and company logo, in every email you send.
This will help you build trust in your company and make it easier for customers to recognize your emails in their inboxes.
Here's an example email from the SEO platform Semrush. They seamlessly incorporate their brand colors, blue and orange and use specific font styles in each email they send.
It not only reinforces their professional image but also creates an immediate connection with recipients who are familiar with their brand.
Including your branding assets every time you design an email might sound challenging. But Visme takes away all of this pain for you.
With Visme's brand design tool, you can create and save all your branding assets for once and apply them to every design in just one click.
This is a great way to save time and energy. You can also use it to design your emails in just a few minutes without worrying about the different elements that make up your brand.
Read this comprehensive guide to set up your branding kit in Visme or watch the video below to learn more.
According to a recent study, 77% of B2B customers favor email as their primary mode of communication, which is more than twice that of any other channel.
Therefore, B2B companies need to invest in effective email marketing strategies.
Here are some of the B2B email marketing best practices that will help you take your email campaigns to the next level.
If you want to send out highly targeted emails that appeal to your ideal customers, you need to study their needs and behavior.
You can get more insights by creating an ideal customer profile. An ideal customer profile or ICP is a detailed description of your perfect customer and their problems.
By creating this profile, you can better understand their needs and how your product or service fits into those needs.
Also, create buyer personas to capture the demographics and psychographic information of the decision-makers in your target audience.
Then use these findings to understand how they think, their priorities, what drives them and how to communicate with them. Then craft from copy, tone and CTA placement to get the best results
Here’s an example template that you can use right away:
For B2B customers, providing value beyond your products or services is essential.
It's not just about selling a product or service for once. It's about building a long-lasting relationship that paves the way for future growth and collaboration.
Here are some ways to build that lasting relationship with your B2B customers:
Your products and services are solutions that enable your customers to achieve their goals. In the competitive B2B landscape, showcasing how others have successfully utilized your offerings is a powerful connector.
Share customer success stories in your email campaigns to demonstrate the value of your offering. The more specific data points you share, the better!
For instance, if a customer increased their sales by 50%, use this as an opportunity to show how they achieved this feat through your product or service.
Use Visme's case study templates to create a compelling visual story that will resonate with your b2b customers.
At Visme, we understand the importance of not just telling but showing how our tools and services can make a difference. That's why we regularly feature customer success stories in our newsletters.
These detailed case studies outline the challenges faced, the solutions provided by Visme, and the tangible results achieved.
According to Content Marketing Institute, 77% of B2B marketers use educational content to nurture their leads.
Remember that B2B customers are constantly looking for ways to improve their businesses, so you must provide them with relevant educational content to help them achieve their goals.
You can create educational content such as white papers, blog posts, infographics and other forms of content and share them through emails.
Also, you can send out standalone educational emails on specific topics that revolve around your products or services.
Here’s an example of Visme’s email newsletter that aims to educate its audience.
Your email subject line is the first thing your reader sees. It’s the first impression you give them, and it can make or break whether they continue reading your email or delete it without a second thought.
That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to what you write in this field—and here are four simple ways to ensure your subject lines are as effective as possible.
Don't waste your subject line. You only get 40-60 characters to capture your reader's attention, so make them count.
A concise subject line lets your recipients quickly understand what the email is about and encourages them to open it.
For example, suppose you are launching a new product or feature. A subject line like "Introducing our new product!" is much more effective than something vague like "Something exciting" or "We have something for you."
Here's a real-life example:
This is one of the most effective ways to get a reader to open your email quickly. A subject line that makes them feel like they need to know more right now will get their attention. Also your email content needs to deliver on that promise.
Here are some tips that you can follow to achieve this:
Here’s an example of Grammarly’s email subject line that starts with “Ending Soon” to create urgency.
Even if you have a significant amount of data about your subscribers, it doesn't guarantee that you fully understand their preferences and behaviors.
Some respond better to something funny and conversational, while others prefer more formal language. So, you should test different approaches and see what works best for your audience.
A/B testing is one of the most common and straightforward techniques for testing email subject lines. In this method, you need to send two versions of the same email with two different subject lines. But, pick only a few recipients in two groups.
Then analyze the results to identify which version of the email performed better. Once you have the best-performing subject line, you can send it to a larger audience.
Follow these email marketing content best practices for effective communication in your email marketing strategy.
Make sure that your content is valuable and relevant to your subscribers. Whether it's informative content, exclusive offers, or personalized recommendations, make sure your email provides relevant information that is useful and meaningful to your audience.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve written the most captivating subject line ever or made your design a piece of art. You’d be wasting your efforts if you send emails about beauty products to fitness freaks.
Email marketing is all about capturing the recipient's attention and creating a personal connection with them. And maintaining an engaging and conversational tone throughout the email is one way to do that.
Try to avoid overly formal or corporate-sounding language and strive for a friendly and approachable tone that resonates with your target audience.
However, don't get too casual, either. Your emails should still have a professional tone and avoid slang or colloquialisms that will seem out of place.
Your email must be well-structured to make it easy for your subscribers to read and understand. Use short paragraphs, bullet points and plenty of white space so readers don't get overwhelmed by the load of information.
Also, organize the content in a logical, easy-to-follow structure. Start with a compelling introduction, highlight key points and end with a clear call to action.
Scientists have found that the average human attention span is only 8 seconds. That’s not enough time to capture someone’s attention and keep them reading.
For example, do you carefully read every email newsletter from brands you signed up for? Probably not; no one does that.
Most people just skim their emails rather than reading them in-depth. To accommodate this behavior, make your email scannable by using short sentences and paragraphs, bold or highlighted keywords and bullet points or numbered lists.
This email below is scannable. Readers can quickly grasp the main points and any information they are interested in.
A critical factor in email deliverability is maintaining a clean and accurate subscriber list. Remove bounced emails, unsubscribes and inactive users to improve engagement rates. Not only does this keep your list focused on engaged users, but it also reduces the chances of being marked as spam.
Another approach to keeping a clean subscriber list is to create a high-quality email list from the start. That's why you need Visme's no-code form builder to create interactive forms that can significantly enhance the quality and accuracy of your subscriber list.
This powerful tool can increase your form engagement rate by up to 205% and conversion by 207%, enabling you to capture more accurate user data and, consequently, leading to successful email marketing campaigns.
Visme allows you to build various forms, such as lead generation forms, email sign-up forms and even website pop-up forms, without coding or design experience.
Email clients use robust filters to protect users from unsolicited or harmful emails. If your emails contain certain elements known as spam triggers, they might be sent directly to the spam folder, drastically reducing their visibility and effectiveness.
Here are a few key spam triggers to avoid:
We've already discussed how to personalize your email earlier on. Another reason why you should ignore it is that personalized emails are less likely to land in spam folders. This means you'll have increased open rates, click-through rates and reduced unsubscription rates.
Always test your emails before sending them out. Most email marketing tools have a feature to send a test email, allowing you to check for broken links, grammatical errors or distorted images that might affect email deliverability.
Testing ensures your email is polished and professional before it lands in your recipient's inbox.
We are constantly bombarded with emails. The average person receives about 100 to 120 emails everyday.
In this world of information overload, how do you get your emails noticed? Follow these email design best practices to save your emails from being lost in the crowd.
Designing each email manually takes up a lot of your time and effort. It also makes you prone to making mistakes.
The fact that you have to follow lots of best practices makes it tougher.
To avoid this, use email design templates to help you create beautiful emails quickly and easily.
Visme has a variety of email templates that you can use as is or customize to fit your needs. We have created these templates based on real-world data and best practices, so they will be more effective in helping you reach your audience.
So, whenever you need to design a professional-looking email, a template is available right inside Visme.
But don't just take our word for it. Our templates are designed with users in mind, aiming to make the email creation process as smooth and efficient as possible. Many businesses have found success using Visme's email design templates, and you can too!
One such satisfied customer is Dave, who shares his experience:
“For a small content and marketing agency, I can generate a Blog story article lightning-fast and publish it live on the web in seconds. It makes your agency appears fast as hell, I like that!”
Dave | Co-Founder
Colors evoke emotions, enhance brand recognition and influence engagement.
Choosing colors that match your email’s tone and brand is important. For example, if you send a promotional email, you should use bright and vibrant colors, while emails with a more serious tone should be in darker shades.
If you don't already have your branding elements, read our articles on brand colors, brand fonts and logo design to make your own.
You can use Visme's color dropper tool to create a custom color palette using the color wheel or copy-pasting a HEX code. Also, Visme comes with pre-made color palettes that you can use for your designs.
Fonts are crucial in getting the message across instantly, and the right font choice will significantly impact the email design.
While it's easy to get carried away and use many different fonts, it's not a good idea. Using too many different fonts can make your email look cluttered and disorganized.
Limit your font selection to two or three, and make sure they complement each other well. Use one font for the headings and another for the body.
Also, ensure that the fonts you use are easily readable and don't look out of place with each other.
For example, if you're using a serif font for your body text and a sans-serif font for your headings, ensure the two fonts work well together. If you want to use a fancy decorative font, use it sparingly in the email.
Email design is a team effort. Ensure you include your team in this process to get their feedback. Ask them to review your email design and ask for suggestions on improving it. In addition, ask them if the design is easy to understand.
To help you get the most out of your team efforts, Visme comes with some advanced collaborative design features.
These features include live editing, commenting, annotating, version control and file sharing. Invite your team members via email or a shareable link and start working on your email design together. Watch the video below to see these features in action.
Here’s our comprehensive guide to email design that you can read and get a complete understanding of designing impactful emails.
While email marketing is a highly effective marketing channel, ensuring high open rates, click-through rates and conversions can be challenging. But if you follow these 27 email marketing best practices, you can boost your email conversions and turn more people into loyal customers.
We've covered everything from planning your emails to designing them in a way that catches people's eyes. And, Visme's email design templates can make your emails look great and work well.
However, you must build a high-quality email list to start with an email marketing campaign. And, Visme can help you create irresistible forms that will persuade your audience to share their email addresses with you.
Sign up for Visme forms to supercharge your email campaigns.
Improve your data collection from emails, leads, to surveys and more, by using beautifully designed forms that convert up 2X better.
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About the Author
Raja Antony Mandal is a content writer at Visme with 5+ years of experience in the B2B SaaS space. With a background in English Literature, he is passionate about using storytelling techniques to inform and engage readers. Raja writes about visual content creation, design tips and marketing strategies, and his specialty is making complex topics easy to understand.
He also knows the fundamentals of on-page and off-page SEO, which helps him rank his articles high in search engine results. In his free time, he enjoys playing guitar and tabla. You can connect with Raja on LinkedIn.