Latest News

Email Marketing Do's and Don'ts

You get only seconds to make a first impression and email is no different. For email marketing to work effectively, you need to make your message stand out from the crowd.

Here are a few tips for those of you thinking of establishing your own email marketing campaigns.

• Keep the email short and snappy; use links to landing pages or your website where visitors can read further information.
• Your subject line is critical – people scan subject lines to see what’s of interest, so make it as relevant and interesting as possible.
• Check how your email will appear in a preview pane and make sure key content can still be viewed in the preview pane.
• Have a call to action – even if it’s only a click through to your website news page.
• Find an email service provider (ESP) that provides detailed statistics and email management, so you can monitor the success of your email campaigns.
• Make sure that the ESP automatically records and manages unsubscribes, bounces, etc.
• If using an overseas ESP, ensure they comply with UK data protection rules; for example, the EU's Safe Harbor Agreement protects data transferred between the EU and the USA.
• Only select a professional email service provider (ESP) who understands about email authentication and domain delegation. Ask a few relevant technical questions to test them. If they don’t know or you aren’t convinced, walk away or you’ll risk having your company’s domain treated as a source of spam email.
• Make sure you have consent from recipients and include an unsubscribe link on all emails so people can opt-out if they want to.
• Personalise your email.
• Make sure your email includes all of your contact information, company registration number and registered address.
• Test, test, test! Most ESP’s offer testing facilities so you can check how your emails look in different browsers, etc. And don’t forget to proof read.
• Try sending emails at different times of the day and week to see which gets you a better response rate; B2B campaigns may fare better midweek while B2C emails may have more success at weekends and evenings.

And some things to avoid: 

• Don’t use words such as ‘free’ ‘guaranteed’, ‘special offer’ etc. in the subject line of your email – as these are often blocked by spam filters. Equally, if you really need to use those words in the body of your email, use them sparingly, for the same reason.
• Don’t just email for email’s sake! Make sure you’ve got something interesting to say.
• Don’t have a high ratio of images to text. This is a classic spammer’s ploy.

Finally, Amatica has helped a number of organisations establish their email marketing systems. We’ve provided advice and support to shortlist and select a suitable email service provider as well as developed branded HTML email templates that enable the client to build and manage email marketing campaigns themselves.
 

© Amatica 17/03/2008