Load and send? Batch and blast? These direct marketing concepts are becoming ancient history in the modern email environment. Today’s online marketers who utilize email must navigate their way through a complicated landscape of shifting prospect and customer expectations, challenging new technologies, evolving government regulations and other issues old-school direct marketers never had to face.
Wendistry has compiled an extremely short list of five essentials you should employ to greatly improve email marketing initiatives. Keep in mind that this list is by no means comprehensive, however missing any one of these aspects can affect your ROI, secure your position on blacklists, or damage your reputation with clients and prospects.
1. Permission is not optional: When you send unsolicited email, you hurt your brand, your campaign and your sender reputation. Don’t use “stealth” methods to collect email addresses such as pre-checked boxes on site registration forms. Use a proper, two-stage opt-in process that requires confirmation before the address goes into your database.
2. Manage your sender reputation: Don’t get on an ISP’s (or your customer’s) bad side by sending too many emails too often or by generating a high number of spam complaints. ISPs will block your emails, shunt them into oblivion in the bulk mail or trash folders, and won’t bother to tell you what you did wrong. Your customers will simply delete your messages or unsubscribe from your list… and they won’t tell you what you did wrong either.
3. Focus on list quality over list size: Growing your mailing list is important, but don’t do it at the expense of quality. While it may look impressive to have a large list, quality names should be your highest priority. Make sure your company has defined its target audience and focus your efforts on adding names that fit this target.
4. Design for the Inbox: Poor design and improper formatting frustrate users. If they can’t easily navigate your email or find the information they want at a glance, your messages will fall flat. Your email has to stand out in a crowded Inbox. Some tips for designing for the Inbox and optimizing deliverability are:
- Be sure to test sample messages to see what performs.
- Put your company name in the “from” line for fast recognition.
- Add a “grabber” subject line… 50 characters or less.
- Use teaser text and HTML colors and layout rather than an image so readers can get an immediate “preview” of your email even if images are disabled.
- Put the important content- the offer, call to action, newsletter contents, etc.- at the top of the email for the immediate viewing. You only have seconds to make your case, so make the most of them.
5. Test something every time: Testing is a classic way for direct marketers to refine their efforts to get the best results. If each of your email campaigns doesn’t include a testing component, you’re missing out on an opportunity to improve your ROI. Some elements you may want to test include:
- Subject lines
- Offers
- Deployment date or time
- A new list, or segment your existing list to compare one segment against another
Your testing results will provide new ideas for more effective campaigns and help you get rid of offers, lists or creative that aren’t working.
About Wendi McGowan