Email Marketing

Email Marketing – 10 Tips to Success

Email marketing continues to grow in popularity as it is one of the cheapest and easiest forms of marketing your business today. One of the biggest challenges with sending out emails to your potential customers is to make sure that your email isn’t relegated to the spam box.

Tip # 1: Content is King

Before you send your marketing email out, define exactly what your business objectives are and it pays to clearly identify your target audience. It is important to understand what messages or offers your customers may want to receive.

Tip # 2: Building a Mailing List

It is important to be continually building and growing an email database of your recipients. One easy way to do this is to build your list organically via a link on your website.

You may even consider segmenting your mailing list into clients who may only be interested in various topics or services. This ensures that your emails target only those customers who are most likely to be interested in the emails you send out.

Tip # 3: Clean and Streamlined Design

It can be beneficial to consider hiring a web designer or marketing company to design your email marketing for a professional look. Another alternative is to buy a pre-designed email template to edit yourself.

Remember that email marketing should reflect your company branding and the emails should be consistent in design, only changing the content with each campaign.

Tip # 4: Limit Your Imagery

The more images you have in your email marketing, the greater the risk of them getting ‘snagged’ by the recipient’s spam filter.

Images also greatly increase the file size and this will increase the time needed to view your message, which in turn may reduce the likelihood of your email being read by a potential customer.

Tip # 5: Cross-Client Compatibility

When you are working with email templates, it is important to ensure that it works no matter who is viewing it. For example, a poorly designed and coded template may appear differently in Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007/10, Thunderbird or even Gmail.  Most quality email marketing systems provide you with a testing tool, which allows you to view your email in various email readers and spam filters.

Tip # 6: Platforms for Delivery

Email marketing software can make your communications appear more professional. The software can also include tools that provide reports for tracking delivery and click rates.

Spam filtering and blocking can spell doom for many email marketing campaigns. To ensure that your emails reach your recipient’s inbox, good email marketing software is a good way to send emails that work for the majority of readers.

Tip # 7: Spam Compliance

In Australia, under the Spam Act 2003, it is illegal to send unsolicited commercial electronic messages so it is vital for your business to build a database of clients who have given permission for you to send email messages.

A basic rule of thumb is to only email people who want to be contacted. It is important to obtain permission through opt-in forms (online or offline) and email only those who expect to be emailed. Also, always give the recipient the option of ‘opting out’.

Tip # 8: Be Mindful of Timing

There are no hard-and-fast rules on the timing of email marketing campaigns.  Often this can be determined through testing the market to find the best timing for businesses marketing campaign.

Tip # 9: Test, Test, Test

It can be a good idea to send the email to yourself and others in your company before it goes out to check the email can be opened and that there are no spelling mistakes.

Take the time to ensure that all email readers will be able to display the email to your specifications.

Test your campaigns to make sure that they will pass the traditional antispam techniques such as content filtering.

Tip # 10: Use Reporting to Improve Your Campaign Success

You should take the time to look at your email marketing campaigns to guage the success and effectiveness of your campaigns.

Most email distribution packages offer users the ability to access detailed statistics after each campaign and allow you to drill down into various areas of interest.