EBizInsider

E-mail marketing is a powerful tool that allows you to keep in touch with your customers, drive repeat business and reinforce your brand. But it’s more than simply typing up a quick letter. There’s technique, best practice guidelines, regulatory compliance, look, feel and other aspects that go into sending a successful, well-received e-mail.

There are many e-mail options. With managed solutions, an e-mail marketing specialist takes the reins designing, writing and sending your campaigns for you. Other companies require you to do all the work while they simply maintain your lists and send your e-mail. Finally, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) solutions provide pre-designed templates to send semi-personalized messages.

Plan, plan, plan! That’s how you
develop your paid search, affiliate, comparison shopping engine, or website redesign strategy.

Let’s review do’s, don’ts, common mistakes and best practices to help optimize your e-mail campaigns this holiday season.

1 From Address: Tells who you are. HotMess@gmail.com? That’s what you’ll get from this e-mail campaign. Sending from info@pretzelbloggers.com, mail@pretzelbloggers.com, or even sales@pretzelbloggers.com lets the recipient know who the sender is.

2 Send Time: Research shows most people check their e-mail during business, many first thing in the morning, before and after lunch and before they leave the office for the day. The best time to e-mail is often debated. My expertise agrees with industry experts that, for retail purposes, sending between Tuesday and Thursdays, mid-morning to early afternoon are ideal times.

3 Subject: This is your one shot to get them to open. Fail and your campaign is doomed. Remember, 50 characters are all that stands between you and a successful campaign, make those 50 letters colorful, appealing and enticing.

Misrepresentation: It is against the CAN-SPAM Act to misrepresent the content of the advertisement by tricking people to open under false pretenses. As you can see, Pretzelbloggers is not giving away free cash.

Spam Word: Occasionally, “free” in the subject line is a good idea. Too often it will get caught in spam filters.

Capitalization & Punctuation: Spam filters target them as junk mail.

4 Template Design: A custom designed template is always better than a generic one. You can see this template is a “plug and place.” There are predetermined boxes and sizes and you simply fill in the blanks. The template box lines are obvious, the images don’t fit to size and overall the template gives off a very unprofessional appearance.

5 Logo: Include your logo or header. People can identify your brand as soon as they open.

6 Navigation Bar: Remember— when including navigation links – too many is not always a good thing. Including too many can be a distraction to your reader. Deciding what you want them to notice is a sensitive balance.

7 Images: Make them clean, clear and concise. If the image isn’t important to your message, don’t include it. Remember, images are great ways to cheat spam filters – include phrases like ‘free shipping,’ ‘buy now’ and ‘10% off’ in your image.

8 Personalization: Personalization allows you to speak directly to your client. Done badly, it can look cheesy.

9 Text: Including text in every e-mail is important. If the reader opens, doesn’t enable the images and sees nothing, they’ll be quick to close. Include text to convey the message
your images are portraying.

While text is important, so is following CAN-SPAM Act regulations (including capitalization, punctuation, and avoiding key spam words like Free, Sale, Buy Now, and Click Here), ensuring to use spell check and proper grammar. A misspelled work can ruin your reputation.

10 Physical Address: To be CAN-SPAM compliant every e-mail must include the physical address of the company sending the message.

11 Opt Out: Every e-mail must have an opt out link. This link must be a one-click opt-out. Don’t take a chance on this - FTC regulations can fine you up to $11,000 per offense.

E-mail marketing remains a powerful tool in e-commerce, but it’s a sophisticated world out there. E-mail only works if someone reads what you’re writing. Profile your target customers. What would make them open your e-mail instead of dumping it? Review the best practices above and combine it with your insights for e-mail marketing success.

Solid Cactus, Inc. has designed or redesigned more than 3,000 e-commerce sites. Solid Cactus is an Inc. 500 company and was named one of the "Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania" in 2006 and 2007.

All posts by Solid Cactus | E-Mail the author

Name (required)

E-Mail (required)

(Will not be published)

Website

Comments

Security Code

Enter the code above into this box. There's no letters, only numbers. We just want to make sure you're human.