Email Best Practices
Include a banner or link to the email registration page on your home page that is clearly visible to web visitors.
Ask for as little information as possible and only what is absolutely necessary on the email registration page. Too often organizations ask for information that is not relevant and will never be used for segmentation purposes.
Viral marketing – include “Forward to a Friend” link in the email body to enable your subscribers to forward your email to friends, family, and co-workers.
Use every interaction with prospects and customers as an opportunity to sign up for email and “forward to a friend”: on direct mail pieces, event invitations, social network site, SMS (mobile text messaging), drawings at industry conferences and tradeshows, include link on business cards, to download a whitepaper, etc.
Adhere to permission-based marketing practices. Send only the communication to which subscribers have opted-in.
At least once a year send an email asking your subscribers if they want to continue receiving email from you and invite them to sign up for other email communication that you believe would be relevant and valuable.
Ensure that any links included in the email body work and that they direct the subscriber to the appropriate page on your website rather than just your home page.
Market segmentation will help improve relevancy and contribute significantly to retention and brand loyalty.
Survey your email constituents to find out what topics are of interest, the preferred delivery channel, and the frequency with which they want to hear from you.
Make the opt-out process easy and the response immediate.
Send a “thank you” message every time a subscriber follows the “call to action” whether it is downloading a whitepaper or making a purchase. Good perspective: People want to know you care, before they care about what you know.
Start a loyalty or rewards program to engage your subscribers while building brand loyalty.
Sponsor a business-social web community where customers can share ideas, best practices or post a comment. Monitor the interactions and as needed respond to questions and comments within 24-hours. It’s better to have a negative comment posted on your website as opposed to Twitter or Angie’s List. Negative word-of-mouth travels faster than positive.
Words like – free, no charge, click here – have a propensity to trigger spam filters. Try using these words instead:
“complimentary” or “at no cost
“take me to” or “go here”
Limit the subject line to 46 characters or less.
Ask the email subscriber to add the “from” address to their personal address book.
Use Multipart Mime when sending email, which enables both the HTML and text versions of the message to be sent and lets the subscriber’s email client determine which it will accept. Some firewalls prevent HTML email from passing through to the inbox.
Stagger delivery – send 100 email every 10 minutes until all 1,000 are sent as opposed to 1,000 sends at one time. ISPs monitor the number of emails sent from IP addresses and have certain thresholds which they maintain. Each ISP threshold is different.
About ¼ of opted-in email users will at some point become so frustrated with email clutter that they will either block the sender or report the email as spam. To circumvent, cleanse your subscriber list every 3 months which means:
Unsubscribe recipients that have not opened or clicked a link in the message body
Stop sending email to dormant addresses. Here’s a tidbit: At least 1/3 of all email users create new email accounts every year. On average, after 3 soft bounces, stop sending messages to the email address.
Use dynamic content capabilities to ensure that the information being delivered is aligned to the subscriber’s preferences, i.e. – matched to the intelligence you’ve captured about the subscriber. If the data resides in disparate systems, integrate the data sources.
Ensure the subject line, preview pane, links and message content are related and support the value proposition.
Ask subscribers what information is important to them and what topics provide the most value … and then deliver on it.
Most importantly, every email campaign should start with a plan that includes a success statement and a “call to action” for the subscriber. When done properly, email marketing can be the most cost effective marketing vehicle marketing uses to drive business results.
Email metrics can be as simple as number of opens, number of click-throughs, or number of “forwards to a friend,” which have an indirect impact on business results and operating costs. Direct methods, however, carry more weight with senior management and might include:
reduced sales cycle times
increase in net profit
increase in order value or frequency
number of upgrades or up-sells
reductions in marketing costs or demands placed on IT resources for campaign execution and management
number of online purchases made by subscribers to whom the message was sent
increase in new orders or customers
better and more qualified leads for sales
and so on.
Measuring email marketing success can vary by industry, communication purpose, and perceived value to the organization. However you are currently measuring email marketing, it is only when you are able to tie metrics to business performance that senior management will realize its value in building strong relationships, driving revenue and enhancing brand loyalty.
