An
overview of email marketing best practices.
Design
It
is important that the design - the look, feel and tone of an email - is
consistent with the company’s brand. Failure of this doesn’t only damage your
brand, but if the audience can’t relate the design to the brand, it could cause
recipients to doubt its authenticity and dismiss it as untrustworthy.
General
design best practices apply too, as the email needs to flow and be easy to read,
understand and pick out the important messages, but the design of an email can
be quite specialist, due to the fragility of maintaining subscribers and
encouraging engagement, so a general designer doesn’t necessarily design good
emails. (SendGrid,
2018)
Check for Mistakes
and Testing
Ideally,
all emails should be scheduled well in advance, allowing plenty of time for
refining its design, messages and engagement tactics. Once the button is
clicked to send an email, it can rarely then be changed, so it is important to
check, and check again, before sending.
Software
such as Mailchimp provides various tools for testing emails; allowing the email
to be sent as a test, browser compatibility checks, and alerting mistakes that
may cause the email to be identified as spam. (Mailchimp,
2018)
It is also a good idea to send a test email to a friend or colleague for
proofreading before sending. (SendGrid,
2018)
If
mistakes are made, sometimes an apology email can help maintain trust with your
subscribers and humanise the brand. (SendGrid,
2018)
Call To
Actions
The
objective of almost all emails is to encourage engagement and click-through –
whether it is to gauge feedback, measure metrics, promote a special offer or
maintain your subscriber list. (HubSpot,
2018)
Most
emails do this through Call To Actions (CTA’s) – an action you’d like the
recipient to take as a result of reading the email.
CTA’s
should be prominent and clear, and ideally limited to just 1 or 2 per email, so
as not to overload the recipient and dilute the options. However, they shouldn’t be too big or obvious
to the point of desperation, but they shouldn’t be too small and hard to notice
either. (SendGrid,
2018)
Offer Value
in Return for Value
Emails
shouldn’t be perceived as ‘take, take, take’ one-way traffic – an offer of
value helps to encourage engagement as recipients are more inclined to comply
if they feel they have received value in return. (SendGrid,
2018)
Another form of
this is commonly known as a ‘Gated Offer’, where the value is instead given in
return for a subscriber following a CTA. (Digital Marketing for Dummies, 2017)
Ie; Sign up to our introductory course and receive a free gift, or download a
free Whitepaper, etc. (SendGrid,
2018)
Data
Management
With
the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May
2018, it is now even more important to consider data privacy of your
subscribers. (EU GDPR Portal, 2018)
A
key element of this is offering a clear and quick way of a recipient
unsubscribing from future emails. Ideally, this should be through a simple
one-click link, and failure to comply with GDPR can result in a fine of up to 4%
of an organisation’s annual global turnover.
And a few
common email mistakes to avoid…
No-Reply
Often,
organisations send their emails from a ‘no-reply’ email. Eg; noreply@yourdomain.com.
Using such an address as the reply-to address for your email acts as a barrier
between you and your recipients and restricts two-way communication – a factor
that will likely discourage recipient engagement. (SendGrid, 2018) A ‘no-reply’
address can also cause some email clients to send the email direct to the Junk
folder or regard it as spam. (Arrendale,
2018)
Clear Subject Lines
The subject
lines of emails should be clear and an indication as to the content of the
email, as readers like to know what they can expect to read in their emails and
don’t take too kindly to being tricked by an deceptive subject line. Also,
while not the only trigger for spam filters, the content of subject lines can
greatly influence this, and there is a wide range of words, phrases and
characters to avoid to reduce the risk of your email going straight to spam
folders. (Rubin,
2012)
Non-Targeted Audiences
While it may seem more subscribers means more clicks
and opens, more success comes from smaller, targeted lists, where the email and
its content are tailored to a certain audience.
Don’t fall to the temptation of purchasing an
email list. Sending unexpected (i.e. spam) email to recipients who have not
opted into your emails almost ensures your emails land in the spam folder and
your email domain ends up on a blacklist.
Building your subscriber lists the right way will
ensure that email engagement remains high and your emails get in front of the
eyes that matter. (SendGrid,
2018)
