Email Marketing Tips

Written by on May 20, 2011 in Advertising & Marketing - No Comments

Sign-Up Experience

You only have one chance to make a first impression. Potential subscribers like to see past issues and credibility signals before they’re willing to trust you with their email address.

  1. Single opt-in without requiring confirmation is the best way to grow subscribers, but the worst way to grow a healthy list. Confirmed opt-in with a confirmation email that the subscriber must take action on is a good choice for building lists, but will definitely hurt sign-ups compared to an open subscription.
  2. Add a visible link to your privacy policy that demonstrates your no spam policy.
  3. Add a link to the archives for visitors to read past emails and see examples.
  4. Let users select between text and HTML emails during the sign-up process if you provide those options. If you only deliver in a single format, make that clear.
  5. Make your delivery schedule prominent and clear so potential subscribers know what to expect before opting in.
  6. Don’t ask too many questions during the registration process – keep it simple. Ideally, only an email address should be required, and other fields such as the name and how did you hear? should be optional.
  7. Put a bold, vivid call-to-action sign-up button on the page.
  8. While you’ll have sign-up boxes all over the site, you should also create a dedicated email registration page. It should be presented without advertising and have a clear call-to-action.

Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are the confirmation messages new subscribers receive upon sign-up, or in the case of e-commerce sites, the email that’s sent at the point of sale to confirm the purchase.

  1. Include a link to the current issue and to past archives in the transactional email.
  2. Ask your new subscriber to whitelist your email address. Include information about your From email, IP address, and domain. Important: ensure you’re sending transactional emails using the same From email if you do this! If that’s not possible, make sure it’s made perfectly clear what information they’ll need to whitelist you.
  3. Above all, make your transactionals simple, short, clear and concise.

Email Headers

The Subject line is probably the single most important element that drives open rates in email.

  1. Subject lines should be brief and concise. Six words or less is an ideal length. Many email clients will cut off a Subject line beyond about 50 characters.
  2. Perform testing trying the company brand within the Subject line; you should almost always include the brand name as the only field in the From header.
  3. The Subject line should contain actionable information. Keep it narrowly focused to match a tight sales message in the body of the newsletter. Pick one or two sales messages and/or products per email, and stick to it.
  4. If necessary, break your Subject line into sections using colons and dashes.
  5. Be creative. Fun, irreverent Subject lines can grab your subscribers attention and encourage open rates.
  6. Test your email Subject lines.

HTML Design Concerns

The following are a few tips to improve the usability and conversion potential of your email.

  1. Design emails to be viewed in the preview pane. Many users only look at what’s in the window screen, so put the main call-to-action above the fold.
  2. Beware of wide layouts, no one likes scrolling horizontally; keep your designs narrowed down or create them with a flexible layout.
  3. Include less calls-to-action and sales messages. Make it easy for your subscribers to know what they’re supposed to do. Concentrate on a single promotion or product per email. That will also help Subject lines match the content.
  4. Consider using less images (unless you’re a strong brand like Apple). Image-heavy email can cause problems with Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Gmail, Hotmail and many other web-based email readers that disable images by default. Some users also have their email clients set to text only, even if they receive HTML email, and toggle the preference on and off (such as with Thunderbird).
  5. Make the newsletter shorter overall.
  6. Provide value in the mailings with unique tips, content, coupons and specials. Give your subscribers a reason to open your email messages.
  7. Provide content available only through the email newsletter (tips, coupons, product recommendations not provided on the website) in teasers with links to the site. That will encourage subscribers to open the newsletter and click through to your unique content, driving very targeted traffic to the site.
  8. Use a large, bold headline and put action calls, offers, coupons and specials front and center.
  9. Don’t make your subscribers suffer through broken images. Make sure HTML is displaying correctly.