Top 10 Email Marketing Best Practices
It’s time to let you in on a few email marketing best practices in case you are already managing your own email marketing campaigns. If you need some assistance to implement the suggestions below, you can get in touch with us to learn more.
1) Always Get Permission to Email
If someone subscribes to your email list voluntarily, it does mean he or she has given you permission to email.
If it’s someone you’ve manually added to your database (for a variety of reasons), it’s only polite to ask.
If you ask and someone says no, that’s better than not asking and getting black listed as a spammer with your ISP.
2) Send Multi-Part (MIME) Emails with TEXT and HTML versions
In our technologically advanced world with high speed broadband, amazing mixed multimedia and super duper web technologies, we often forget that not everyone is as technologically enabled as we are. The advent of mobile internet and broadband on mobile phones also see people receiving email at low speeds of 128kbps and reading email with text only email browsers.
Multi-Part emails have 2 versions built in, a pure Text version and a HTML version (with links to images). If the HTML email recipient downloads images, then he can see your entire newsletter with content and images.
Avoid sending as HTML only or having your newsletter display as ONE big image (with no ability to select text). Definitely not email recipient friendly.
3) Use a Valid Sender Address and Reply To Address, Avoid Free Email Addresses
It’s okay to use fancy names for your email address. Such as thegoodnews@yourdomain.com, but make sure that the email address exists (to get bounce, responded and returned email). Make sure there is someone to read and respond to emails to the “Reply To” email address too.
Try not to do this:
From: “do-not-reply@yourdomain.com” and From: “bounce@yourdomain.com” My gmail account only shows the email username as “do-not-reply” and “bounce” and I instantly get turned off.
Never ever send a mass mailing list with a Hotmail, Yahoo! or Gmail account. Your chances of getting blocked is over 50% if you send bulk email.
4) Send the email to 1 recipient at a time. Stop using your BCC.
I know, hearing this from a professional email marketing service where we send to thousands of emails at a go seems incredulous. But it’s true. While we send to thousands, all emails are sent ONE at a time.
This allows us to input the name and email into every email with personalised content.
To: Sally Jones <sally.jones.88@gmail.com>
Message: Dear Sally, how’s things with your family? Send my regards to your husband, Earl.
This is so much better than this negative example below:
From: The Big Store <almost.spam@the-big-store..com>
To: undisclosed recipients
[Hidden -BCC: sally.jones.88@gmail.com and possibly a thousand other emails]
This smells like spam right away.
5) Allow Your Subscribers to Opt Out of or Unsubscribe from Your Emails
You must provide a way for your subscribers to unsubscribe from your list. This is in compliance with global anti-spam laws. When you receive such a request, you must remove the email address within 10 days.
Here’s a few ways:
“To unsubscribe, reply with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.”
“To unsubscribe, send an email to unsubscribe@yourdomain.com”
“If you do not wish to receive any more emails from us, click here: [place the unsubscribe link here]”
“If you wish to update your email address, click here [update link]. To remove your email address from our list permanently, click here [unsubscribe link]”
“You subscribe to our list as sally.jones.88@gmail.com on [subscribe date]. If you do not wish to receive any more emails, click here [unsubscribe link]“
As we move from the first example to the last, you will see that the level of involvement of the user may be higher. They will have less reasons to unsubscribe or be more convinced that they did give you permission to email them in the first place.
As for creating an unsubscribe link, only professional grade email marketing software can give you this. An alternative is to use an unsubscribe form on your website instead.
6) Always have a “Privacy Policy” on hand for customers to refer to
This is a bit of work, but email recipients feel safer knowing you actually do have a privacy policy that states you respect the privacy and the right of the individual to their privacy and will not share their information with anyone without permission. You should also have a clause to allow you to use a third party emailing service should you require as an acceptable use of that information.
Uphold your privacy policy as law. Do not ever share, sell or rent your contacts’ information. If you wish to do a joint promotion, send it as a personal review or recommendation of another company’s product. Never give them the whole list.
7) Avoid buying email lists
Same principle applies. People belonging to a certain list may not have given their permission to be emailed. Publishing their email address in a directory does not mean giving permission to receive unsolicited business offers or spam.
Email Lists that have already been overused by every possible industry in the world will be virtually useless by the time you get those email addresses in your hands. They will be full of errors or non existent email addresses that will hurt your sender reputation and get you blacklisted as a spammer with major Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
This is a huge no-no. Don’t do it.
8) Be Clear In Your Subject Line (and add the <ADV> if it’s an UCE in Singapore)
Identify yourself, your company or the newsletter name. Be descriptive of the contents they will expect. Be personal with your email subject lines. Respect the law in your country (Singapore allows Unsolicited Commercial Emails to people & businesses in Singapore if you add “<ADV> ” to the subject line.
Try not to have vague subject lines. Avoid too many punctuation marks. Avoid Pitching in the subject line. Avoid money signs. Avoid words that Spam content filters look out for: millions,
Subject: Buy today to enjoy hundreds of $$$ in savings!!!
Subject: You can make millions with this money-making business and get rich quick!
Subject: Spice up your sex life with this nutritious soup
The Subject line is like the headline in a newspaper ad. Make it bold yet subtle. Make it appealing, yet communicate what you mean.
Subject: PathDIrect August Edition: Get Your Email Delivered Into The Inbox Today
Subject: Parenting Weekly: Children’s Art can make you smile
Subject: Karen, when was the last time you took a well deserved break?
Subject: ThriftCentral:10 Brilliant Ways to cut your household expenses by 25%!
Be creative and test which subject lines get you the best response. Make it fun at times too.
9) Never Attach Huge Files In Email (That include images and PDFs)
If possible, never ever send attachments to your messages.
Use hand coded HTML, insert image links that draw the images from the web.
Here’s why:
HTML Email: 50k >> Send 1,000 emails via HTML: 50,000k or about 50MB
Email with Image Attachment: 512k >> Send 1,000 emails with attached image: 512,000k or about 500MB
That’s more bandwidth use for your ISP, your broad band connection, slower delivery times, congested mail boxes (in your bounce account) as well as in your recipients’ email accounts.
This means trouble if you don’t play your cards right. If you sent to 10,000 recipients, you would have used 5GB of email bandwidth and caused far more problems for everyone down the line.
One benefit of attaching images to your HTML emails is that when they download the images, you can also track who opens your mail via a tracking image. Ask us more if you wish to implement this.
10) Be a Professional Email Sender (Always follow the rules and TEST, TEST and TEST)
Do what it takes to get your emails delivered. If you are sending thousands of emails a month, it makes sense to invest some good dollars in professional email marketing services and software. Always test your email campaigns before you click the “Send to Thousands” only to have discovered a critical mistake or a typo error.
Make sure you have the best email deliverability practises as well to get maximum delivery into the inbox.
Good luck in your email marketing endeavours and as long as you follow these 10 Best Practices, you’re in fairly safe grounds.
Comments
- Email Marketing
Can Be As Easy as
Sign up for our 5 Day Email Course and Learn More About How Email Marketing Can Benefit You Today! Find out more.
We value your privacy and will never share,
rent or sell your email address. -
-
-
Join us for EarthHour 28 Mar 8.30pm
-
