Assignment 7 - Email Marketing

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)