Email marketing communication is a great way to build trust and keep in constant contact with your customers while you’re building and growing your startup. Like any form of marketing, there are some best practices and guidelines for creating an effective campaign.
Here are 10 great tips for getting your email marketing campaign up and running and making it a success.
1.Brand your email – Branding your marketing email is more than adding a logo and choosing your business’s colors (although those things are important.) Make sure you use the same tone when you write your articles, keep the same format and write the same length of articles. Consistency is key, and it will familiarize your email marketing to your clients.
2.Look professional – If you use a template for your email marketing, make sure you virtually cross your T’s and dot your I’s. Forgetting an image and instead leaving a “this image here” placeholder not only looks amateur, it might make clients think you aren’t paying attention to the little details in your business, either.
3.Proofread, proofread, proofread! – Finding errors in marketing communications is almost like a hobby for some people, so make sure you are following writing and grammar rules, have proper punctuation and spelling, and present polished final copy. A little editing goes a long way.
4.Design for mobile users – With more and more people using smartphones for email and web browsing, it’s crucial your email marketing caters to the mobile audience. The iPhone has a viewable space of only 320×356 pixels – compared to about 1024×768 on your desktop. Make sure the template you use can easily resize for mobile viewing so readers don’t have to resize the email.
5.Don’t rely on images – Many email clients, especially company email servers behind a firewall, disable images from external addresses. Make sure your email newsletter isn’t so reliant on images that it’s rendered unreadable. Use images that complement your stories rather than make your stories.
6.Keep it short – Most people have already overflowing inboxes, and the last thing they want to do is read 1000 word essays in an email marketing communication. Keep your text in short blocks of 100 to 150 words, and limit any individual piece to less than 500 words total. Another great idea? Teasing your story and providing the rest on your website. This can help you keep the interest of your readers, keep your email short and scanable and increase your web traffic.
7.Engage your readers – Everywhere we turn, we’re being “sold to” – so making your email marketing communication less like a sales tactic and more like a conversational or informational piece can do wonders for your bottom line. Ask questions, solicit feedback and add quotes to your stories to make them more appealing to your audience.
8.Make it easy to unsubscribe – Readers unsubscribe from email marketing communication for many reasons – too many emails, loss of interest or even something as simple as getting a new email address. Although it may seem counterintuitive, making unsubscribing less of a hassle can endear your readers to your brand – and might even encourage them to sign up again in the future.
9.Send test emails – What’s worse than sending out an email newsletter to 1500 clients then realizing the images were wrong or the links were dead? To an email marketer – nothing is worse! Don’t put yourself in the position of wasting a communications opportunity – or even worse, sending out two emails in a row. Send test emails to yourself and a handful of colleagues to test links and images on different platforms and email clients before you send it to your main list.
10.Avoid “spam” words – What do the phrases “take action now”, “money back” and “risk free” have in common? They are all on the list of words that will potentially send your email marketing communication straight to the spam folder. Before you finalize your copy, check for words and phrases you’ve seen in spam – or avoid directly selling through email newsletters. Another trick is to ask your readers to “whitelist” your newsletter to keep it out of their spam folders altogether.
Image Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Written by Steven Boggs
When Steven isn’t covering the EnMast business community and their best in class tools for small business success, he is immersed in the blogosphere providing his readers with tips of his own!
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