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 Email is the most used service on
the Internet and, doubtless, most useful. Many people use
the Internet only for checking their emails. Email
marketing can be useful only if done right. Otherwise, it
can get you more harm that benefits. However, there are
things you can do in order to ensure that your email
marketing campaign is going to be successful. In this
article we provide you with 7 email marketing best
practices.
Deliverability
Deliverability is probably the most important issue in
today's email marketing business. There are many spam
emails and many legitimate emails are flagged as spam so
they are not delivered. They are not getting thru ISP spam
filters. Good deliverability ratio is the first step in
successful email campaign because if your emails aren't
delivered then you don't even have an email campaign!
In order to ensure that your emails will have good
deliverability you have to choose your email marketing
vendors wisely. You have to check if they are on
"Blacklist" or "Whitelist". There are
different organizations like Spamhaus project and
SpamAssasin that have their own lists which are used by
ISP. If your email service provider is blacklisted your
emails won't be delivered! Also, you have to ensure that
your domain name isn't blacklisted. In order to maximize
your deliverability it is recommended that your email
service provider offers Habeas Sender Warranty Email
Header.
Using our award-winning Group
Mail product, whether it is Personal Edition or
Business Edition you can be sure that your emails will be
delivered because we have a constant cooperation with ISP.
CAN-SPAM Compliance
Your email newsletter should be CAN-SPAM Compliant. It is
recommended that you require double opt-in subscription so
that your subscribers have to confirm their request to be
part of your email newsletter. Don't add your subscribers
without their permission and you should avoid adding them
manually even if you have their permission. It is good
that they do it using double opt-in method. Also, avoid
using pre-checked subscription boxes. One of the products
in the Group
Metrics software called Opt-In manager will help
you to do this easily.
It is essential that you provide your subscribers with an
easy way to unsubscribe from your email newsletter at any
time, when they want. It is good that you offer one-click
unsubscription process with an unique address. This way
there will be much less requests from your subscribers
that you remove them.
CAN-SPAM Law also requires from email publishers that they
include their physical postal address so you should
include it, too. Your have to show your subscribers that
you are legitimate company which have a presence in
"offline" world, too.
HTML and plain-text versions
It is essential to offer your visitors to choose if they
want to receive your email newsletter in HTML or
plain-text format. It means that you should regularly send
both types. Sending HTML newsletters have more benefits
than plain-text email newsletters. You can use email
tracking only in HTML newsletter with image embedding,
HTML newsletters have better click-thru ratio because they
look like the real web sites. You can hide long URLs so
that they will look professional.
However, some people prefer plain-text versions and
reasons are different. They use email clients that don't
support HTML emails. Another thing is that HTML newsletter
types are larger than plain-text newsletters. Also, one of
the reasons why some people don't receive HTML emails is
security. In HTML newsletters some people can embed
malicious scripts or use them for phishing (when they
pretend that they are representatives of one company and
when people click on a certain link they are taken to
their web site that is designed almost identically like
original). It is mostly used in financial fraud attempts.
From and Subject fields
Your From and Subject fields are very important for
getting better open ratio and therefore to have successful
email campaign. You have to remember several simple rules.
It is important that your From field be consistent. You
have to choose one name, whether it will be a company name
or personal name and use it constantly. Once you change
your From field it is most likely that your open rates
will decline.
Speaking about Subject field, it has to be short and
catchy, to grab attention of your subscribers. Your email
has to stand out in usually overloaded inboxes. It is
important that you don't shout so instead of
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH…
use
Exclusive Interview with…
It is very good that you make your subject field
standardized and that the title be something related from
the content of that current issue.
For example, if you have a newsletter called Email
Articles your subject line can be something like this:
[Email Articles] How to Improve Your Open Rates, Issue#10,
August 29th, 2005
If your email newsletter has a longer title, for example,
Email Marketing Articles you can use this:
[EMA] How to Improve Your Open Rates, Issue #10, August
29th, 2005
Personalization & Segmentation
Personalization is connected with Subject fields, too.
Some people like to include first names of their
subscribers in subject lines in order to have better open
ratio. Personalization is also very effective when it is
used in editor's welcome message or in articles.
For example,
Dear !*First_Name*!, welcome to the 10th issue of Email
Marketing Articles.
Powerful email marketing software like Group Mail, beside
standard personalization also has "if-then"
personalization for more advanced users.
Segmentation is the most important part in marketing.
"What am I selling and to whom?" It is not the
same to sell your software to novice users (newbies) or to
seasoned users (knowbies). Also, it is not the same to
market your software to small business companies and
corporation. It is good that you make a good segmentation
of your email newsletter. Best way to do that is to
include several additional fields at sign-up process. Of
course this doesn't mean that you have to ask 15 questions
from your new subscriber because many people leave when
they see that there are many fields to fill. After that,
you will make several email newsletters for each
membership type.
With Group Mail 5 (Personal and Business Edition) you can
make unlimited number of lists with unlimited recipients
in each.
Timing is everything
Another very important thing in creating successful email
campaign is timing. In almost every email marketing
statistics you will find information about when to email
your subscribers. So studies show that the best time for
sending email campaigns are days from Tuesday to Thursday.
However, it doesn't mean that someone can't have
successful email campaign sent on Sunday. If you send your
emails in days that are not "prime time" you can
have a chance to avoid competition that will mail their
campaign in prime time. Tuesday-Thursday are generally
best days for mailing because, as you probably know
yourself, too, not many people like Monday (remember that
song?). After a good weekend, Monday is usually reserved
for some consultation with the management about weekly
plans and task. Friday is, on the contrary, favorite day
for many people, because they are planning their weekend.
People often come home earlier on Friday so your email can
be buried in their inbox until Monday. And in Monday, to
be deleted with many others (we have already wrote about
Monday). On the weekend people usually don't work but many
will still check their emails.
Also, you have to decide how often you want to send your
email newsletters. It will depend on your content. If your
email newsletter about latest industry news you can send
your newsletter once a month, because then it won't be
latest news anymore. If you send a corporate email
newsletter with news about company and useful articles
from your area of expertise, monthly frequency is usually
the best one.
You have to make several email campaigns and see which
ones get you best results.
And when we talk about best results the next logical step
is tracking.
Tracking
How do you know if your email marketing campaign was
successful? You have to know how many people opened your
emails, what was your click-thru ratio, your subscribers'
behavior on your web site after they had clicked and
finally - how many subscribers purchased your product.
With user-friendly Group
Metrics you will be able to do that and also to
make polls to get even better view of your email campaign.
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