People make quick judgements, whether you like to think you’re open minded or not, you will still make an initial judgement on something/someone new within the first few seconds of seeing it/them.

Bearing this in mind, you should really look at the impact of your email when someone first opens it. A judgement will be made almost instantaneously when the email is first opened.

You need to firstly make sure that the campaign looks professional. The best thing to do is look through your inbox and find an email you like, then set that as the benchmark for your campaigns standard. The worst thing you can possibly do is construct an email that ultimately looks no better than the junk that you receive. If your camapaign lacks that air of professionalism about it, it will ultimately fail.

Secondly, the branding of the email can have an influential effect on the success of your campaign. There is still apprehension on trusting online services (need quote from recent survey) and if you have a different branded email to your website, a recipient can be (and rightly so) untrusting of the email authenticity. Always use your own website as a base of what your campaign should be constructed around. I’m not saying copy your website, but make sure that the campaign has a familiarity about it.

A lot of people will also scan read something and not pay full attention to it. What your email design needs to do is ensure that the things they do scan over are what you want them to pay attention to the most. If there is an offer on, or you want someone to take note of a certain area of interest in the email, make sure it is prominent to a scan reader. The best thing to do is to place your main points at the top of the page, and then go into further details further down the page.

This also works well for my next point; the preview pane. This should also be thought about as you should be trying to ensure that your email fits neatly within this preview pane. There are obviously different sized preview panes, depending on the email client but a general rule is no longer than 650px wide. This should allow the whole width of the email to be viewed in the pane, meaning you can get your whole message across to them before they open. Further to this point, I tend to find myself not bother with emails when they come into my outlook and I can’t view the full width of the campaign in my preview pane.

Though most design is down to personal taste, if you follow these rules, then you will at least have a good solid foundation to work from.

Within your list you will have a number of different groups; there will be the regular openers who trust the quality of your campaigns and will subsequently open virtually every email as they have a genuine interest. 

Then there’s the occasional openers who pick and choose when to look at your emails.  These people are more likely to be affected by relevance of email, timing of email, enticing subject header etc.

Finally there is the dead email addresses.  People who have only opened your email once, twice or sometimes never. 

Understanding what makes these people tick is the key to unlocking the full potential of your whole mailing list.

Firstly, the advocates of your company.  These people are already delighted with your company and it’s email campaign.  The key for them is to keep up what you are already doing.  No sharp changes in your format or direction of your emails will keep your core subscribers happy.

The occasional openers will require a little more research.  You need to look back at your previous campaigns and see where you had high open rates and then look at the factors which may have caused it.  An ideal thing would be to carry out A/B split testing on your list to see which factors encourage or discourage opens. By constantly testing your campaign you can get those occasional openers to at least become more regular.

Now for the dead emails.  This is always a tough decision for an email marketer to make but sooner or later you’re going to have to ask yourself “when is it time to remove them from the list?”

We have a customer who is currently going through this question with a sizeable list.  The first thing to do is try and eliminate all possibilities before believing that it is a lost cause.

Try changing the format or style of your email.  If it is quite a graphical email, there’s a chance that some of them are just not receiving the email. 

Another alternative could be that that you have never managed to entice them in.  In this case maybe offering these people a decent sized incentive to open the email will tempt the recipient back into the loop.

Eventually though, if you’ve tried these ideas and still had no response it may be time to part with them.  Some of them may have just signed up to enter a competition or entered in a hardly ever used email address just because they didn’t want their own inbox swamped.

Either way, with each passing campaign that you send out and they ignore, it will be getting more dangerous for you to keep sending to them.  The last thing you want is to have your reputation affected by someone who opens up the email after a year and has forgotten who you are.  Though your list will look less impressive, you will at least be able to concentrate your efforts on your active subscribers.

I’ve read a couple of blog posts recently that turned out to be a bit of an eye opener and have really helped me to look at email marketing in a new light (look at the bottom of the page for links).

Now, I can hold my hand up and admit that I may have spent too much time getting obsessed with the strategic side of email marketing and not offering some more inspiration for creativity.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a well thought about and well maintained email marketing campaign can really work wonders for you.  The problem lies in the fact that more and more companies are taking on email marketing and soon enough there will be many well maintained email marketing campaigns and yours will not be standing out from that crowd as much.

As well as having a stand out campaign, the main goal in todays climate is to not only grow the recipient list but to make sure that these recipients are attentive to your messages.  With that in mind I started to think about email campaigns and the holy grail of viral-ability (yes, I have just made that up, but if Ian Dowie can do it….).

In a previous post I pointed out how H&M had exceeded my expectations by giving me a £10 voucher when I signed up, which I then subsequently told my friends about who also signed up.  Though this was an expensive technique that most companies can’t really afford, the idea of it is still worth some heavy thought. 

Yes, I know, it’s easier said than done but if you can get something that has that forwarding on effect, you can guarantee yourself some serious, cheap exposure.

You have your usual just for laughs viral campaign that will guarantee forwarding during those long office hours (such as reggae irie name generator). 

But it doesn’t have to just be the usual type of viral campaign.  The H&M one was just such a good offer, it would be rude not to tell your friends about free money.  Another great example of this is from one of our own customers, The Urban Shop. They offer 15% off to anyone who forwards the email to their friends, plus another 10% for the person who gets the forwarded message.  Both people benefit from the forward whilst at the same time encouraging the recipient to sign up to the list to receive greater discount in the future.

Another thing you’ll have to remember is to not leave it to the customer to forward this email on.  Treat the link like you would a call-to-action (which it is really), and make sure that a well-placed forward button is present for them to click on.

So when you’re next creating an email make sure that you think long and hard about your forward link, it could be a fantastic way to not only re-ignite or maintain your recipients interest in your campaign, but may prove to be a successful way to increase your mailing list size in the process.

Useful Related Articles:

BeRelevant: How To Make Your Email Marketing Campaign Stand Out From The Rest

No Man is an iland: Take a design risk and get animated? I was dubious about this idea until I read the post and then was left with a head-nodding hmmm at the end

I thought I’d be nice and give you some important dates for the summer period. See if you can relate some of these events to your email campaigns:

Sporting Events

Wimbledon - 23rd June-6th July

Major Festivals

Notting Hill Carnival - 24th & 25th August

Bank Holidays

25th August

There’s also Fathers Day on the 15th June