Here are a few handy tips and tricks we’ve found to be good guidelines for email marketing campaigns…

DO…

• Acknowledge and understand the importance and nature of permission to e-mail. It isn’t taken, it’s given. It isn’t permanent, it is revocable and if your campaign doesn’t deliver as promised, subscribers will revoke permission i.e. unsubscribe.

• Do use the “Less is More” approach, don’t try to tell the whole story in the email; the purpose is to engage the reader’s interest and drive them to your site, landing page or offer page.

• Be creative with design and copy. Show some personality; offer your audience a brand identity that is consistent and trustworthy.

• Do give your subject line a lot of thought. It needs to be both descriptive and inviting. If the subject line doesn’t entice or intrigue it won’t matter how clever the rest of the message is…it won’t be read.

• Do Use links as calls-to-action taking readers to custom landing pages with more information – They guide the reader forward towards your goal and make it easier to track your success via funnels and goals in analytics.

• Ensure you have an opt-out capability i.e. unsubscribe – this needs to work flawlessly and easily with one click.

• Lastly…….Test, test, test. Test the day and time of delivery, test subject lines, test text versus HTML, test offer, test the format in gmail, yahoo, hotmail, outlook, mobile etc., test anything and everything – then study the numbers.

DON’T…

• Don’t send the same message to all subscribers, all the time. Use your email analytics – opens, clicks, conversions, pages visits to identify groups of subscribers with similar characteristics and interests, and create unique messages and trigger campaigns for those groups.

• Don’t use a “donotreply” email address. Email is a 2-way communication medium, and someone who replies to your emails, even to criticise something, is more engaged than someone who does not. Send your emails from an address that someone monitors.

• Don’t write too much in an email. The best campaigns fit with all the calls to action and messaging above the fold. People scan emails and then scan the landing page.

• Don’t use exclamation points, capitalised letters or other blatant marketing techniques that are synonymous with spammers.

• Don’t treat email marketing as a medium to magically get more revenue. Take a long term approach to email campaigns, avoid fatiguing subscribers and use email as a relationship marketing medium.

• Don’t make all your calls to action in picture format as many are blocked by default. You also want to make sure that the entire message is not an image – if it is your message is likely to be deleted before it’s even read.