Aug13th

10 Golden Rules Of Email Marketing

1. Planning

Putting in the effort pre-campaign can be the dividing line between a successful and an ineffective campaign.

Make sure you have meticulously planned out all aspects of what you want from your campaign as you will save yourself a lot of work and frustration in the long run. Just consider how much extra work it will be if a couple of months down the line you decide you need to segment your list but have a detailed autoresponse campaign set up.

2. Be Objective

Make sure that when you’re planning your campaign that you know exactly what you want from it. By always baring this in mind you can always revert back to it when decisions have to be made.

Is your campaign to get sales? Drive people to your website? Keep your branding in their mind? Make sure you know this before any more decisions are made as this is will shape your forthcoming campaign.

3. Keep to Your Word

Subscribers signed up to your emails as you promised them something; make sure you keep to that.

No-one appreciates the informative newsletter they signed up for suddenly turning into a pure sales email. This is a guaranteed way to lose your recipients trust and their interest.

4. Be consistent

Very much like the previous point, your recipients will have signed up knowing that they will receive a certain level of communication from you. By changing the volume of messages either way can harm your messages impact.

If you start bombarding them massive amounts of emails during a certain period, they will become tired and annoyed of you and you run the risk of them unsubscribing.

If you hold off from sending to them for a few months and then start again, you run the risk of them forgetting who you are and once again, unsubscribing.

5. Subject Lines

This is the first point of contact with the recipient and is often an overlooked area. It doesn’t matter how much effort you have made putting together an amazing looking email with a truly fantastic offer if your recipient isn’t even enticed to open the email.

Subject lines shouldn’t be too long (approx 50 characters max) so that the recipient can read the whole message. The subject line should describe what’s inside whilst making an effort to encouraging the recipient to open the email.

6. Design

Once the recipient has opened the email, you have to make a good impression. People will usually make a judgement before reading the bulk of the content so your email must look professional.

Things to consider when creating your template:

Professional Appearance

Clear Call to Action

Branding To Website

Balance between image and text (approx 70% text 30% image)

7. Timing is everything

Make sure your email is sent at an appropriate time. If it is sent at the wrong time, it will fall upon deaf ears.

Email is one of those fantastic communications which when sent at the right time can be a marketing message that is lasting, can be referred too and is without other communications getting in the way.

Sent at the wrong time though and it is just an annoyance to the recipient.

Want to know the best time to send? See point 10.

8. Unsubscribing doesn’t have to be the end

In the past, just letting a subscriber unsubscribe was the end for them. The thing is, they may have only unsubscribed because they didn’t like a certain aspect of your communications.

The modern practice now is to give them options before they finally say goodbye to your emails. It could be that they don’t like the frequency of your emails or that they only want to know about upcoming sales. Either way, let them have the option to choose what they receive so that you can send them what they want to receive.

9. Understand the Results

The results of your campaign can tell you everything about its success. Different results can tell you a bigger story of where your shortcomings or moments on marketing brilliance have come from. Here’s a basic rule to follow:

Open Rates – this will tell you either how deliverable your email was (inbox or junk folder). This can also show you whether your subject line was effective in pushing for the open.
Click Through Rate – This will represent the design of the email. It will show whether the call to action was prominent enough or if your content was interesting to your recipients.
Bounce Rate – Use this in conjunction with the open stats. If your open rate is low and bounce rate high, you probably have a deliverability issue.

10. Test Test Test

There is no set rule to success. Every companies mailing list is different and you must constantly test to see what different factors make your recipients react. Subject line, design, call to action and timing can all be fine tuned by split testing your mailing list.

This is going to keep carrying on throughout your campaigns life. No campaign will ever be the perfect campaign. There will always be room for improvement, and your mailing list will change in habits as time goes on so always re-assess every aspect of your campaign.

Please add your own golden rules below to this list…I’d love to see a definitive list!