Email Marketing Best Practices10% of the exam
Subject lines, preheaders, CTAs and program planning
How to judge an email's subject line, preheader, calls to action, layout, copy and footer against Salesforce's email marketing guidance, and how personas, a content library, KPIs and testing turn single emails into a program.
Given a customer scenario, evaluate elements and techniques of email marketing to design effective emails and email programs.
~7 min read · 11 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Evaluate a subject line for length, honesty, branding and safe personalization, and fix a blank personalized value with a default.
- Recommend preheader text that supports the subject line instead of repeating it or holding fine print.
- Judge calls to action (CTAs) by number, wording and destination, and judge layout and copy by where the what, why and how sit and how plain the language is.
- Explain what the footer must carry and why it must stay readable.
- Plan an email program: know the audience, build a persona-based content library, define KPIs and benchmarks, then test and evolve.
- Key terms: preheader (the text that follows the subject line in the inbox preview); personalization string (a placeholder that inserts a subscriber attribute); call to action (the prompt that asks the subscriber to act); persona (a group defined by shared data points, mapped to content); content library (reusable content blocks organized by data points, including default content).
Key facts
Subject line length
- Detail
- 50 characters or fewer; providers sometimes truncate
Fake "RE:" subject
- Detail
- Misleading; can drive unsubscribes and spam reports
CAN-SPAM subject rule
- Detail
- Must accurately represent the email's content
Empty personalized attribute
- Detail
- Renders blank; define a default value
Preheader length
- Detail
- About 100 characters; fewer show on mobile
CTA count and length
- Detail
- One to two prominent CTAs, no more than five words
What, why, how
- Detail
- Seen in a single glance near the top
Footer contents
- Detail
- Unsubscribe link, compliance information, disclaimers; illegal to hide
Default content
- Detail
- Displays when you lack clear data about a customer
Analyze Results tasks
- Detail
- Tracking metrics, KPIs and benchmarks
Sources for this section (5)
- Craft Winning Email Subject Linestrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Legal Email Compliance Guidelinestrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Personalization Stringshelp.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Boost Email Engagementtrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Optimize Your Email Marketing Strategytrailhead.salesforce.com (opens in a new tab)
- Why must both versions in an A/B test be polished?
- When does Subject and Preheader Validation warn a sender?
- Which metrics can pick an Email Studio A/B test winner?
- Where in an email can personalization strings appear?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the Marketing Cloud Engagement Specialist pack
- Core concepts
- Exam traps
- Worked scenario
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- All 31 lessons of the Marketing Cloud Engagement Specialist guide, with reading progress
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