If you haven’t tried it yet, have a look at some of the popular online email services that you may have already heard of, such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp and AWeber. Most of these ask for a monthly subscription to store your email lists (contacts) and send your emails usually dependent on the size of your contact list.
Email Marketing Dos
1. Do tailor your emails to different target audiences. Most email marketing software will let you manage more than one list so you can send one email to potential customers for example and a different message to existing customers. Or different messages based on what they’ve bought before. Either way, segmenting is really important and the more bespoke a message is, the more likely your customer is likely to take action.
2. Do read the stats. Once you’ve sent a promotional email to your list you should see reporting on who opened it and more importantly who clicked through onto any website links that you put in the email. If they clicked they are a potential lead and should be followed up.
3. Do use email marketing to sell. Email newsletters and bulletins are ideal to promote special offers, price incentives, new products and services. This is acceptable as your target list has opted in (see tip number 5) and email is a quick way for them to hear about your products and services.
4. Do test your email format every time. Email message layouts are just like web pages and should be tested to see what gets a better conversion rate. An example would be, if you have a total list of 1000 contacts, prepare two versions of your email newsletter. Before you send to the whole list, email one version to a sample of 50 from your whole list and the second version to another 50. Measure the results and the one that wins, usually based on a good conversion rate (to sale or maybe to click through to view a product or service on your website) is the one that goes to the rest of the list.
5. Do make sure your target lists have all opted in. If they’ve purchased from you previously there’s an automatic opt-in unless they tell you otherwise. If somebody makes an enquiry there is an implied interest but it’s always best to ask them if they would like to receive your emails as data protection is quite strict, particularly if your target audience is members of the general public. Otherwise you can also add a “sign up” box to your website available with most email marketing programmes so interested parties can choose to be added to your list.
Email Marketing Don’ts
1. Don’t send promotional emails out to your contacts using standard email office software like Outlook. If you send anything in bulk from office programmes they are likely to be treated as spam by the recipient servers. This is because the server you will use to send from will not be a recognised authenticated system for email marketing. Email services like the ones we mentioned at the beginning use “white-listed” servers so they can send large quantities of emails without being blocked as spam. If you are blocked you may find that all of your emails form then are blocked from some systems which can cause a real headache. It also doesn’t look very professional!
2. Don’t use a service that doesn’t allow you to have an “unsubscribe” link on the bottom of your emails. Nothing upsets people more than receiving emails they don’t want that they can’t stop.
3. Don’t just use images, as most email clients will not display them automatically. You should also have text only version available if this is likely to cause your recipients problems or the option to view the email online if it won’t display correctly in their email browser. Here's a good example of what can happen:
How the email should look:
This is how the email arrived in my Inbox:
4. Don’t forget to personalise but get it right! Email marketing gives you the opportunity to use the name of your recipients very easily so if you have them, it makes the message much more likely to be opened. Have a look at this how not to do email marketing example from Tesco.5. Don’t think that email marketing is the marketing answer to everything! We receive lots of these in our Inboxes so yours should always be professional and useful. Sometimes the personal telephone call or face-to-face meeting is exactly what’s required.
