Want to create captivating emails that convert? You need the right keywords. Learn how keyword optimization takes your email marketing to the next level.
Master keyword research, types, metrics, tools, and strategies for serious email success.
Why Keyword Research is Crucial for Email Marketing
Keyword research often feels like an SEO-focused activity with the goal of optimizing website content. But make no mistake—selecting the right keywords is equally important for crafting effective email marketing campaigns.
Here are three key reasons why keyword research should be a crucial part of your email marketing strategy:
Identifying Relevant Search Terms and Questions
Put yourself in your subscriber’s shoes. What words and phrases are they likely using when researching topics related to your products or services? Identifying these keywords will allow you to create content that directly answers your audience’s questions and meets their needs.
Tools like Answer the Public are invaluable here. You simply enter a broad keyword like “email marketing”, and it generates hundreds of keyword ideas based on common search queries. This helps you drill down to very specific topics and problems your emails can address.
For example, some suggested questions for “email marketing” include:
- How do I get started with email marketing?
- What is the best email marketing platform?
- How much does email marketing cost?
- How to create an email marketing campaign?
See the granular level of detail you can get? Now you know exactly what content to produce that will resonate with recipients.
Pro tip: Pay attention to keyword difficulty scores provided by tools like KeywordTool.io as well. Focus on moderately difficult keywords with decent search volume—not super hard ones with lots of competition.
Optimizing Email Content for Higher Rankings
While your primary goal is driving user engagement and conversions, you can also optimize email content to rank better in search engines.
When enabled, email archives create webpages search engines can crawl and index. By integrating relevant keywords naturally into your email copy, you can help these pages rank for those terms.
This benefits both the search visibility of your emails and their content if repurposed into blog posts or articles. Always keep SEO in mind when drafting emails focused on traffic driving.
For instance, an email with tips for small business email marketing should incorporate keywords like:
- small business email marketing
- email marketing strategies
- email marketing best practices
Not only will this engage readers, but it can also help elevate rankings for searches related to those terms if indexed.
Crafting Keyword-Focused Subject Lines
Your subject line is the first touchpoint for connecting with subscribers and convincing them to open your email. Using keyword research to optimize subject lines is a surefire way to boost open rates.
Check out these email marketing subject line examples that incorporate relevant keywords:
- [4 Must-Have Ecommerce Email Marketing Automations]
- [Complete Guide to Restaurant Email Marketing in 2022]
- [10 Email Marketing Mistakes Killing Your Open Rates]
See how these subject lines speak directly to the reader while integrating keywords they may use during searches?
Tools like Subjectline.com even let you A/B test different subject lines to determine which keyword-focused variants perform best.
Pro tip: Always keep subject lines concise, direct, and personalized while working in 1-2 strong keywords. People decide whether to open an email in just a few seconds!
By taking the time to research keywords and incorporate them into your subject lines, you’ll send emails that engage your recipients right from the start.
In summary, robust keyword research fundamentally improves your ability to create relevant, targeted email content and subject lines—ultimately leading to higher open rates, click through rates, and subscriber growth. Treat it as an indispensable component of your overall email marketing strategy.
Must-Have Email Marketing Keywords
Crafting an effective email marketing campaign starts with selecting the right keywords to optimize your messaging. Here are some essential categories of keywords worth focusing on.
Audience-Focused Keywords
Tailoring your email content to your recipients is critical. These keywords help fine-tune messaging for targeted groups.
Industry/Vertical Keywords
Focusing on industry-specific keywords keeps your content hyper-relevant to subscribers. For example:
eCommerce: cart, checkout, promo code, free shipping
Travel: vacation packages, flight deals, travel tips
Finance: mortgage rates, 401k, stock market
Demographic Keywords
Demographic keywords let you customize content for recipient groups based on age, gender, location, job role, and more. Some examples:
Age groups: millennials, gen z, retirees
Gender: women’s fashion, men’s grooming
Geo-targeting: London vacations, NYC restaurants
Job titles: marketing director, sales manager
Get creative with demographic keywords! Combine them with industry terms for hyper-targeted content.
Campaign Stage Keywords
Subscribers interact differently depending on where they are in their journey with your brand. Use stage-based keywords in your messaging.
Awareness Stage Keywords
For new subscribers, focus on informing them about your brand, products, and services:
brand story
explore our offerings
new arrivals
latest collection
Consideration Stage Keywords
For existing subscribers, use keywords that move them closer to a purchase:
compare plans
free trial
add-ons
bundles
Decision Stage Keywords
Provide that final nudge to convert interested prospects:
limited-time offer
price drop alert
last chance
buy now
Email Type Keywords
Vary your keyword strategy based on the goal of each email campaign.
Promotional Email Keywords
Promotional emails aim to sell products or services:
coupons
discounts
promo codes
gift with purchase
Transactional Email Keywords
Transactional emails share order details and updates:
order confirmation
shipping update
tracking number
invoice
Lead Nurturing Email Keywords
Lead nurturing emails provide valuable content to subscribers:
guides
tutorials
blog roundup
expert tips
In short, aligning your email keywords to audience attributes, campaign goals, and email types will drive much higher engagement, click-throughs, and conversions. Treat keyword selection as the first step to email marketing success!
Email Marketing Metrics Keywords
How do you know if your email marketing efforts are succeeding? Pay attention to these crucial metrics keywords and optimize accordingly.
Deliverability Keywords
Deliverability refers to your email’s ability to make it to the recipient’s inbox. Track these terms:
Acceptance rate – Percentage of total emails accepted by the receiving server. Aim for 97% or higher.
Bounce rate – Percentage of emails bounced back and not delivered. Monitor for both hard bounces (invalid addresses) and soft bounces (temporary issues).
Spam rate – Percentage of emails marked as spam by recipients. Keep below 3% if possible.
Block rate – Percentage of emails blocked by ISPs or ESPs. Aim to reduce blocks through good list hygiene and sending practices.
IP reputation – A score (0-100) indicating your sender rating and deliverability via an IP address. Above 80 is good, above 90 great.
Throttling – Limits placed on sending capacity to maintain deliverability, like daily email caps. May require segmented sending.
By constantly tracking deliverability keywords, you can nip issues in the bud before your sender rating takes a hit.
Engagement Keywords
Engagement metrics demonstrate how well your content resonates with recipients:
Open rate – Percentage of total emails opened by recipients. Industry average is 20-25%.
Click-through rate (CTR) – Percentage of recipients who clicked links in your email. Good CTR is 2-5%.
Social sharing – Frequency of social shares. This shows wider audience reach.
Read rate – Percentage of emails read to the end. Software can estimate this based on open time.
Unsubscribe rate – Percentage of recipients who opted out after an email. Keep below 0.2% if possible.
Monitor engagement keywords to create content that keeps audiences interested and interacting.
Conversion Keywords
The ultimate measures of email success are conversions and revenue:
Sales – Total sales attributed to email sends. Track by number of transactions and revenue.
Conversion rate – Percentage of recipients who completed a desired action after an email.
Return on investment (ROI) – Revenue earned per dollar spent on email campaigns. High ROI signifies positive gains.
Lifetime value (LTV) – Total revenue earned from a subscriber over the entire relationship. Higher is better.
Cost per lead (CPL) – Dollars spent to generate a single lead through email. Lower is better.
Optimizing conversion and revenue keywords indicates your emails are successfully driving business growth.
The metrics above reveal how well your emails are performing across essential factors—delivery, engagement, and conversions. Monitor these email marketing keywords diligently to assess campaigns and make data-driven optimization decisions.
Negative Keywords to Avoid in Email Marketing
Like search ads, negative keywords help refine your email targeting by preventing delivery to irrelevant or disengaged users. Here are some categories of negative keywords that can optimize your recipient list.
Aggressive Keywords
Too intense or forceful language can turn off subscribers and hurt deliverability. Exclude these aggressive keywords:
Amazing deal, huge savings – Overhyped offers sound like spam.
Buy now, act fast, don’t wait – High-pressure urgency backfires.
You’re a winner, we’re giving away… – Misleading “prizes.”
100% free, risk-free guarantee – Implausible claims trigger skepticism.
Instead, focus your messaging positively on the value you provide customers.
Misleading Keywords
False or exaggerated claims also undermine trust and may get emails flagged:
Best price anywhere – Impossible to prove.
We’ll beat any competitor – Unrealistic blanket statement.
1 rated, customers love us – Subjective and generic.
Cure for, magic solution – Misleading on complex issues.
Keep your language factual. Have specific data or reviews to back up meaningful claims.
Urgent Keywords
Too much urgency and pressure tends to have the opposite effect on subscribers:
Last chance, sale ends today – Sounds like a disingenuous tactic.
Act immediately, supplies are limited – Triggers fear of missing out without substance.
Claim your freebie, now or never – Puts unneeded stress on the recipient.
Your account will close…threats – Aggressive and counterproductive.
Urgency needs to feel authentic, not manipulative. Use selectively for expiring offers or time-sensitive info.
Banned Keywords
Some very specific words and phrases are outright banned by ISPs due to frequent abuse:
Free gift cards, cash bonuses, prizes, etc. – Frequent sources of scams.
Unlimited earnings, get rich quick, – Pyramid scheme associations.
Prescriptions, pharmaceuticals – Heavily regulated terms.
Debt relief, credit repair, payday loans – Markers of predatory practices.
Consult banned word lists to identify risky keywords, as using these may cause immediate blocks or filtering across email providers. Tread very carefully.
While good email copywriting does often involve an actionable call-to-action, you want to inspire action without threats, deception, intimidation, or giving off red flags. Review your messaging and subject lines. Then prudently apply negative keywords to ensure your emails reach only genuinely interested recipients most likely to convert.
Tools and Resources for Email Marketing Keyword Research
Conducting thorough keyword research is fundamental to email marketing success. Here are some of the best tools and resources to utilize.
Google Keyword Planner
Google’s free keyword planning tool should be your starting point when researching keywords. It generates high-volume search terms and provides useful data like:
- Monthly searches – Total search volume for the keyword
- Competition – How hard it may be to rank for the term
- Top trends – Rising keyword opportunities
Filter keywords by category and drill down on niche long-tail variations that align with your email campaigns. Look for “low” competition terms with decent search volume – the sweet spot.
Google Keyword Planner integrates directly with Google Ads, making it easy to save keywords and create new ad groups informed by your research. The ability to filter and download keyword ideas in spreadsheets makes this a versatile option.
Answer the Public
One shortcoming of Google’s tool is it doesn’t suggest keyword questions and phrases – just individual words. Answer the Public fixes this by revealing the actual questions people are asking online around a broad topic.
Simply enter a root keyword like “email marketing” and instantly get 100+ keyword question ideas like:
- what is email marketing
- how to do email marketing
- is email marketing effective
- email marketing best practices
The question-based keywords are automatically grouped by interrogatives – who, what, when, where – making it easy to hone in on different angles for your email content.
Seeing the search questions asked around a subject provides a goldmine of ideas for creating captive email headlines and copy.
KeywordTool.io
For researching keywords on specific search engines, KeywordTool is invaluable. It lets you generate keyword ideas tailored to Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, eBay, Facebook, Instagram and more.
Unlike Google Keyword Planner which only suggests individual words, KeywordTool provides fully formed keyword questions and long-tail phrases. I especially like using it for:
- YouTube keyword research to optimize video SEO
- Amazon keyword research to boost product listings
- eBay keyword research to improve auction visibility
The ability to filter keywords by search volume, competitiveness, relevance and more means finding exactly the right keyword targets for your email campaigns and business objectives.
Google Trends
Google Trends allows you to analyze the popularity of keyword searches over time. Seeing how search volume for a term changes month to month or year over year provides useful insights, like:
- Seasonal interest – when to align campaigns to recurring trends
- News-driven spikes – timely hooks to incorporate into content
- Rising trends – new keyword opportunities to capitalize on
- Declining interest – outdated keywords to deprioritize
Staying on top of keyword trends will keep your messaging and campaigns timed optimally in sync with what people are searching for.
Leveraging these varied tools and resources empowers you to conduct comprehensive email marketing keyword research. Remember to dig into long-tail variations, mine keyword questions, and stay on top of trends. Robust keyword targeting is the key to engaging and converting your subscribers.
Future of Email Marketing Keywords
Keyword optimization is indispensable for successful email campaigns today, and will only grow in importance going forward.
Personalization and Segmentation
The email marketing landscape is moving decisively towards hyper-personalization. Generic blasts to broad lists just don’t cut it anymore. Leveraging keyword research to segment audiences and customize messaging will be essential.
Look for tools that combine demographic data, past interactions, and activity tracking to build detailed subscriber profiles. Then you can define audience subsets and align keyword selection with their attributes and interests for relevance.
Subject lines like “New hiking gear for Denver-area outdoor enthusiasts” speak directly to recipients thanks to targeted keywords. Dynamic content using merge tags to insert subscriber names takes personalization even further.
Importance of Ongoing Optimization
Don’t treat keyword research as a one-time activity. Interests and trends evolve, so you need to continually optimize your campaigns.
Set reminders to re-check keyword planner suggestions and search volumes every 2-3 months. Monitor campaign metrics by keyword to identify low-performing terms. Adjust your targeting accordingly.
Look for emerging topics and keywords in your niche. Ride new trends early, but phase out outdated keywords that see declining searches.
A static keyword list will cause campaign engagement and conversions to stagnate over time. Commit to ongoing optimization based on the latest data.
Finally, a quick recap of key takeaways:
- Research keywords that align to audience attributes and campaign goals
- Mine search questions and long-tail variants for content ideas
- Optimize subject lines with 1-2 strong keyword phrases
- Track keyword metrics – don’t “set and forget” your targeting
- Personalize and segment using dynamic keyword insertion
- Continually optimize keywords based on latest trends and data
Email marketing keywords are your compass for creating relevant, compelling messaging that converts. Follow these tips to master keyword research and stay on the path to campaign success.
Key Takeaways
- Keyword research is essential for creating targeted, engaging email marketing campaigns. Identify terms that align to your audience interests and needs.
- Focus on industry-specific keywords, campaign stage keywords, and email type keywords to match recipients and messaging.
- Track deliverability, engagement, and conversion metrics keywords to optimize campaigns and improve performance.
- Avoid aggressive, misleading, and banned negative keywords that hurt deliverability and trust.
- Leverage tools like Google Keyword Planner, Answer the Public, and KeywordTool to research and select optimized keywords.
- Personalize content through dynamic keyword insertion tailored to each subscriber’s profile and interests.
- Continually refresh your keyword targeting based on the latest trends, data and performance indicators.
- Ongoing keyword optimization is key to driving email engagement, conversions and long-term success.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are keywords important for email marketing?
Keywords help you create relevant content and subject lines optimized for your target audience. This drives higher open and click-through rates.
How many keywords should I use per email?
In your subject line, stick to 1-2 strong keyword phrases. In the content body, focus on thoughtfully integrating 5-10 keywords per 300 words. Avoid over-optimizing.
What’s the best keyword research tool for email marketing?
Google Keyword Planner provides high-volume keyword ideas filtered by category. Answer the Public reveals actual keyword questions people search. Use both to inform your campaigns.
Should I use the same keywords across different email types?
Tailor keyword selection to the campaign goal. Use product-focused keywords for promotional emails, value-add keywords for nurturing emails, etc. Match keywords to email purpose.
How often should I refresh my email marketing keywords?
Ideally, review and update your core keyword list every 2-3 months. Check Google Trends for new opportunities. Replace outdated or underperforming keywords.
What metrics should I track by keyword?
Monitor opens, CTR, conversions, revenue, and unsubscribes. See which keywords drive the best engagement and ROI. Double down on those yielding results.
How can I improve keyword optimization over time?
Segment your lists for more personalized keyword targeting. Review monthly search volumes and trends. Constantly refine keywords based on performance data.