The success of your email marketing campaign often depends on several complex factors. However, a number of these factors can be pre-empted to ensure an optimized response. Consider the following recommendations when designing your next email campaign.
1. Your list. By far one of the most important aspects of any email marketing campaign, your list, is directly linked to your success. Are your names new? Did they opt into the mailing list? Have they shown interest in products or services similar to yours? Make sure you use a home list (names you've collected yourself) or purchased from a reputable broker.
2. Your subject line. Getting a user to open your message is paramount to any email marketing campaign. The best way to determine the email subject line that works best is to split your emails into three random but identical groups.
Measure the response to each email and use the email with the highest response as a control. In subsequent letters, try to beat the response rate of the control letter.
3. Sender Information. What information is in the sender line of your email? Do your customers recognize it? Will they want to receive an email from you?
Often, emails are deleted before they are opened because the sender's name is indistinguishable. The sender's name should be short and clear.
4. Track results. Tracking allows you to determine who opened your message and clicked on a link or multiple links in your email. By determining what worked and what didn't, you can repeat the success in your next email.
As described above, tracking is especially important when testing subject lines, embedded links and other direct response tools.
5. Make sure your unsubscribe method is valid and working. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires all emails to include clear instructions on how to unsubscribe from subsequent mailings.
Provide an unsubscribed mechanism that allows recipients of your emails to email you and indicates their desire to opt-out of receiving further emails from you or your business.
If your recipients no longer want to receive emails from you, it is in your best interest to remove them from your list.
6. Your images have the correct links, and you have used alt tags in each image. Incorrectly referencing an image can cause it to be broken when you send the email - the dreaded red x.
To make sure the image is referenced correctly, it should look like IMG src="http://www.yourdomain.com...." rather than img src="/images/picture.jpg".
Alt tags are another important part of your images. The new security features of almost all email clients these days automatically disable images. The presence of lt tags allows the reader to identify the image and determine if it is safe to include it.
7. Test, test, test! Regardless of how you feel about email marketing, you need to follow the above guidelines to achieve successful results. Also, the most important thing is to test, test, test!
After each email campaign, measure the number of opens, link clicks and purchases. Document the specific date, time, list, email subject line and content used to get results. Refer back to the documentation before the next campaign.
Emails don't have to be a complicated form of marketing. There are many best practices you can follow and a few simple rules to ensure effective delivery, discovery and conversion.
By following the simple rules presented in this article, not only will you run an effective email campaign, but you'll discover a consistent method of generating revenue for your business.
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