Email marketing is a flexible and powerful method of marketing products and services. This electronic form of direct marketing has already started replacing paper based direct mail. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), about 4.3bn marketing emails were sent in the UK, compared to 5bn direct mail in the year 2005. For the first time in 2007, email marketing has overtaken direct mail in terms of volume, according to the latest National Email Benchmarking report produced by the Direct Marketing Association's Email Marketing Council. No wonder, email is creative, timely, measurable and cost effective.
What you should consider when planning you email marketing campaign
Personalisation - This is the best way to increase the response of your email marketing efforts. Greet and address recipients individually with their name, this will help you speak directly to your targeted customers/audience. Use first names for your existing customers to make the email message personal and use surnames in formal email messages. Personalising email marketing messages brings one-to-one marketing communications a step closer.
Email Versions - You must design your email message to read and display properly in preview pans, blocked images and the text base readers. As best practise, email shouldn't be more than 600 pixels in width and must be compelling form the first line. Don't rely on images; always include text and an online version of each email. Give users choice to receive text or HTML version. In HTML emails avoid using external CSS, if you have to use CSS style then always use inline styles and don't forget to use short and descriptive ALT attributes for images.
Email Goals - Add a clear call to action point(s) in your email messages. Call to actions should be very clear and your message should tell the user what to do in response to the message in easy steps. Too many links and offers could distract users. Call to actions should be simple as "Click here - special offers for cardholders only". If required, create specific landing pages according the requirements of the email marketing campaign. Using the brand name in the subject line will increase the user comfort, trust and will maximise the open rate.
Clean List - It is very important to keep your email list clean. A clean list will help to built good relationships with ISPs (internet service providers) and will also improve the qualified response of your campaigns. CAN-SPAM dictates a clear and working unsubscribe link therefore clearly describe the un-subscription method in the email and explain the un-subscription process. Check the inbox regularly for bounce back email addresses. Remove un-subscribers and bounced emails periodically for an improved and clean list.
Avoiding Spam - You have to be very careful while sending your marketing messages through emails. Spam filters are getting smarter every day. Your email could be trapped in spam filters if you use keywords like cheap, $, guaranteed etc. Full image base emails also could raise flags for spam filters. Adding text within the HTML body will help to pass the spam filters; more text means more chances to pass the spam filters. Test your email before you broadcast it. You can get accounts with different email service providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and Google Mail and send test email messages. You have the technically correct emails if your message lands directly in the inbox. One way to ensure that your subscriber will receive your future emails is by sending them a plain text email and asking them to add your email address in personal white list/safe contact list.
Metrics - Track individual email messages technically; such as open rate, bounce rate, un-subscribers, click through rate and delivery rate. Once you track emails, then you need to track the marketing output metrics to measure the success of email broadcast campaigns such as revenue generation, revenue per email, ROI (return on investment) per email, total orders/registrations and total leads.
Mailing Frequency - It is not easy to find out the right frequency that keeps your subscribers engaged without annoying them with too many emails. One way to find out is by review your broadcast data and to look at trends in you open, unsubscribe and complaint rates, if you see a decrease in open and an increase in unsubscribe and complaint rates then you should review your mailing frequency and improve the email content.
Have you ever tried an email campaign with little or no results? Or are you new to email campaigns? Then read on to gain some basic steps. First off, a good email marketing campaign can be hugely successful if carried out correctly but there is a right and a wrong way to do it. The other problem is how to pick a good bulk email sender; this problem can be overcome by doing some careful research, read reviews and ask questions.
Have you ever received emails saying ?Receive $20 paid to you immediately in you PayPal account!? or something similar and what do you do with them, yes delete them straight away, at least most people do.
The title is the most important item within your email, this cannot be stressed enough you have about two to five seconds to grab the reader's attention; if you lose them here they will be gone forever.
The advertisement title above was actually selling a website called a magnet website and the idea was to get other people to sign below you and send you unlimited $20. I get hundreds of emails sent to me every day, I just delete them with titles like that, what else would I do.
When you write a title consider asking a question for instance ?would you like unlimited $20's? or even suggest that people do not read this email, chances are they will because most people are curious.
Spend some time with titles, write many different variations experiment and choose your best title for your email campaign.
Think of sending emails like reading a book, if the introduction is not interesting then chances are the rest of the book will also be uninteresting. If you get your reader past the title then you are more than half way to your ultimate goal.
Next is the content of your email. You have to get your reader to find this so interesting that they just have to know more, how do you do this? You will have to convince your reader that if they turned away this offer then it would be the biggest mistake they ever made. You will have to do this in a very short few lines, why? People will not read long emails. You must get straight to the point within your email and get them to take the next step clicking through to your sales page.
So you have a great title and great content within your email, your next stage is to do a spell check, there is nothing worse than receiving emails with spelling mistakes.
Lay your page out with plenty of paragraphs so that it is easy to read and keep your message short and sweet.
Something to remember, it may take your reader several attempts before they will actually buy anything from you so you must budget for this.
My advice here would be to send a small amount of emails and then follow up in maybe a week or two weeks time.
If you stick to the basic guidelines above you will have plenty of success just remember to research, plan and experiment then just go for it.
Both Imran Khan & Chris Bennett are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Imran Khan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Debts Loans, Email Advertising and Car Loans. is a full service digital marketing agency providing a wide range of solutions from strategic thinking to the deployment of advanced ecommerce solutio. Imran Khan's top article generates over 40500 views. to your Favourites.
Chris Bennett has sinced written about articles on various topics from Email Advertising, Computers and The Internet and Entertainment Guide. I had to learn the hard way about website promotion and in the past had many failures. now I have had some great success with my advertising and often I like to share some tips.. Chris Bennett's top article generates over 1900 views. to your Favourites.