Recently, we had our national shopping holidays Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These two days are very special to me because they are my “National Unsubscribe Day” for my personal Gmail account. Fortunately, a few years ago, Gmail began to categorize email into different tabs: Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. During those two shopping holidays, my “Promotions” tab would have 50-plus new shopping deals every few hours. And that would equate to 50-plus new unsubscribes for me.

While studying what was coming into my email on those days, I found mixed up in between Williams Sonoma and Best Buy promotions were legit news briefs and eNewsletters from credit unions and credit union leaders. For me, that's a problem.

Not only is the onus on you and your credit union to send out an email that gets my attention, but Gmail can randomly place your work inside tabs that I consider junk. And god forbid your credit union email goes into my spam folder that I NEVER check.

So, what can you do?

Educate your email subscribers. Hopefully you have an auto-response email that goes out to your members/audience saying, “Thank you for subscribing…” But inside that welcome email, maybe include email filtering instructions for the most popular email platforms to show them how your members can make sure that your credit union email is going to the right place. More eyeballs equals more clicks equals more engagement equals more products and services used. At least that's how my simple math brain works.

Successful email is about timing. Did you know that nearly 50% of Americans check their email in bed? Yes, in bed. When do the other 50% check email? There's no definitive time, but experts say it's a random block of time throughout the day in between meetings, in the bathroom and as their schedule allows. But in bed – that's some quality personal email marketing time. Study the behavior of your audience. Test out your email marketing efforts at different times and days of the week until you find the highest open rates and click through rates for desktop and mobile. Oh, and one handy note, don't test these things during the holiday season. We're all out of whack until after the first of the year.

What's your email subject line? Email marketing is one of those practices that combines art and science equally. When it comes to the email subject line, that's the science! My friends at HubSpot have figured that out. In a post by the digital marketing company, they believe having a subject line with a sense of urgency is the number one element to have. “Save 20% MORE” reads one, “BIG sale on BIG brands” reads another, “FREE 1-3 day shipping” reads yet another (and these are three emails I've received as I've typed this paragraph). Does urgency mean yelling at me? That's how some people see it.

The other big email subject trend during the past year has been to include emojis in the subject line. According to a report by Experian, 56% of brands using emojis in the subject line saw “higher unique open rates” and that's impressive. But, as we know, that trend will only last so long. Be yourself and express the personality of the credit union in the subject line – be consistent. Test out different subject lines while running tests on your audience behavior.

The art of email marketing. According to the email marketing company Litmus, “56% of emails are opened on mobile.” That's why picking the correct email template is so important. Experts agree that designing an email template with your mobile audience in mind should be a top priority. A good guide to that mobile format is to use a single column layout with a maximum width of 600 pixels. This will ensure your email is “cross device compatible.” It's what's on the inside that matters, right? A study of more than two million marketing emails by Constant Contact found “emails with three or fewer images and approximately 20 lines of text result in the highest click-through rates from email subscribers.”

That's pretty amazing if you think about it. It's the true definition of “keep it simple.” Your audience doesn't want to spend a lot of time waiting for your email to load and scrolling down their phones several times. Just get to the point and keep the design simple.

There's an entire theory about email marketing font size, font colors and even the background color of the email. Those are the nitpicky things that come into play once you've figured out the basics of audience behavior, timing and subject lines.

2017 has brought an exhausting barrage of information tossed at our faces and brains, and that's why my national unsubscribe days this year felt so good. My digital goal for 2018 is to simplify my consumption habits to the point where I'm only getting email that I want and nothing extra. Historically, November has the highest email unsubscribe rate of any month. Which makes sense since everyone is after year-end revenue goals. If you're seeing your unsubscribe numbers leaping up, don't take it personally. Take it as a sign that you might need to change your approach.

Michael Ogden is executive editor for CU Times. He can be reached at [email protected].