email marketing quick tips archiveEmail Marketing quick tips archive

Bite-sized chunks of best practice tips to help you on your way to email marketing excellence!
 

General tips

  • Link your email marketing with your online branding for brand consistency. Synergy between your email and landing pages will get a better response. Take a look at our presentation for more details.
     
  • Don't just ask if your open and click through rate is any good, set goals so you know what you're aiming for. Our article has more detail.
     
  • Don't be scared of competing with the big brands. There are many opportunities for small business to achieve market share and compete effectively. Remember to check out the competition, keep looking good and stay front of mind. Read more.
     
  • Copying text into your email from a document or a website?  Copy and paste it into Notepad first, then copy from Notepad into your email to avoid bringing over any unwanted hidden coding. Read more.
     
  • Determining how often to send can mean the difference between success and failure for email campaigns. Send to often and your subscribers will switch off or worse report you as spam. Send to little and you may miss valuable opportunities. Test to see what frequency works best or better yet, ask your subscribers how often they'd like to be contacted.
     
  • Don't just guess if something is working, test it. One of email marketing's key benefits is measurability so test different elements of your campaign to see what works best. Read more.
     
  • For email campaigns to be effective they need to be relevant to your target audience. After all, why would they spend their valuable time reading an email that's irrelevant to them? Read more.
     
  • If you make a mistake in an email campaign don't panic. Consider the possible outcomes and only react if necessary. Read more.
     
  • Never mislead your subscribers. If you promote an email as a newsletter, ensure that's exactly what you're sending. Manage expectations by explaining exactly what subscriber can expect to receive and how often. Read more.
     
  • Test, test and test some more.  There are no golden rules in email marketing, testing can help you find out what'll work best for you. Read more. 
     
  • Unsubscribes are a good thing. It’s a waste of your time talking to someone who isn’t interested, so don't take it to heart. 
     
  • Start your planning as soon as you can for your next series of campaigns. Whether that's for the next 4 weeks, 6 months or the whole year, remember you're taking your subscribers on a journey and plan accordingly.
     
  • Bespoke/customized landing pages instead of linking to your home page can improve your open and click through rate. The more targeted the message the better.
     
  • There's nothing better than someone else saying how great you are. It's fairly simple to ask your customer to provide a quote and they're extremely useful. You can include them on your site, in your newsletters and in press releases. Read more.
     
  • It can be difficult to make your email look appealing and valuable for your recipients to read. Putting some personality can make all the difference to the success of your campaign. Read more.
     
  • Don't forget an email is the start of your conversation. Encourage your subscribers respond to you and reply back, either by email or by phone, in a timely manner.
     
  • Don't forget email marketing won't revolutionize your business overnight, it's a long term two way communication channel. Keep that conversation going with your subscribers and the bottom line will see an impact.
     
  • Now and again you'll send an email with a mistake in it. Whatever you do don't panic. We'd recommend having a correction plan ready for such instances. Read our full article for tips on what to do.
     
     

 Tips for content, subject line and from details

  • Don’t say more than you need to. Always remain focused on the purpose and intended outcomes of your email campaigns. If something isn’t adding value, consider whether it should to be in your campaign. Read more.
     
  • Make sure you regularly monitor your From Email Address so you don't miss any replies or auto-responders.  While you may include links to everything your subscribers will need, some may just like to reply. Read more. 
     
  • Take advantage of current events. Use topical content to engage your recipients and boost your email marketing. Read more.
     
  • There's no question that fresh content is important. However, we all suffer from writers block from time-to-time. To create great content you can be an expert, feature guest writers, summarise or re-visit old content, feature case studies and discuss hot topics. Read more.
     
  • Use a From Name your subscribers will be most likely to recognise.  It could be an individual or the brand.  If they don't know who you are, they're not likely to open your email. Read more.
     
  • Use personalisation to catch your recipients attention. Good personalisation can help your open and click-through rates, but don't over use it. Read more.
     
  • Use descriptive links to help you achieve a better click-through rate. After all, how inspiring is 'click here'? Read more. 
     
  • You know your business and you know your product. You know your problem...you know too much.  Write jargon free, easy to read marketing copy to help your email connect with your readers, especially if they have limited knowledge of what you do. Read more. 
     
  • Sometimes simple can be the most effective strategy especially if you're looking to reengage your subscribers. Read more.
     
  • Keep your email campaign clean of spam trigger activity. If you would be suspicious of your email in any other circumstance, review your campaign before you send it. Read more. 
     
  • Nobody knows your company better than you do. Remember this when writing your content and proof your email campaigns to ensure the content makes sense to those who don't know you so well.
     
  • Christmas is a time of celebration and your campaigns should mirror this, but don't forget to apply topical content to all your marketing, not just seasonal campaigns. Our article explains in more depth.
     

 Tips for design and layout

  • Always resize your images to the size you want them to appear in your email.  This will ensure your images will display correctly across all email clients.  Read more.
     
  • Check how your email appears in the preview pane. If you're call to action or most interesting information isn't visible in the preview pane, you may be missing an opportunity to encourage a click or open. Read more.
     
  • Don't get too distracted by creating beautiful emails. Sometimes the simplest email can be the most effective strategy. Read more.
     
  • Every email client will render HTML emails differently, so its important to test across a wide variety in order to check you're email will render consistently. Read more.
     
  • If you've got a lot to say or are sending to time-poor subscribers, create clear, eye-catching bullet points. Using bullet points in your email campaigns will help subscribers easily navigate to the most important part.  Read more. 
     
  • Always test your email before you send it as separate email clients will render your email differently. Standard email clients to test in are Outlook 2003 & 2007, Lotus Notes, Windows Live Hotmail, Aol, Yahoo and Orange. Read more about common rendering issues and how to avoid them.
     
  • Make sure your call to action is clearly visible in your email. If your subscribers don't see it, they can't follow it. Read more.
     
  • Make sure your email's branding matches your landing pages and website for continuity and better conversation rates.  

  • Sometimes simple can be the most effective strategy especially if you're looking to reengage your subscribers. Read more.
     
  • Keep a good balance of images to text. If you have significantly more images than text, you may get caught in a spam filter. Your email could also lose it's impact if images are turned off.
     

 Tips for targeting and managing subscribers

  • Email marketing relies on data collection and data hygiene. So this article has a few hints and tips regarding data, which will provide you with some low cost ways of improving your email marketing. Read more.
     
  • It's important to regularly go through your bounce emails and update or delete any out of date contact information. If you don't you're potentially wasting your time/resources on out of date email addresses or losing valuable contacts by not keeping their information updated. Read more.
     
  • If you segment your database and target your emails, you'll be able to write about what your subscribers are interested in. This will get a much better response rate as your recipients are more likely to be interested in your communication. Read more.
     
  • Target your inactive subscribers separately. This can help you tailor your communications to reduce spend and increase your success. After all, you wouldn't treat your best friend and a casual acquaintance the same, would you? Read more.
     
  • Unsubscribes are a good thing. It’s a waste of your time talking to someone who isn’t interested.
       
  • Don't forget to use your reports to see which subscribers are interested in what topics. Use this data to segment your database in future campaigns.
     
     

want to know more?

To find out how NewZapp can help you make the most of your email marketing call us on 0845 612 5544 or email us.