The Do’s and Don’ts of Email Marketing

Email marketing is the use of email to promote a business’s products and services. In other words, it is the use of emails to communicate commercial or fundraising messages to prospective clients. When it comes to marketing a business, email marketing has become an essential tool and is the top performing digital marketing channel. With the number of emails flooding inboxes every day, it is important to make sure that your emails are as effective as possible.

Here are some important do’s and don’ts to make your email marketing campaign effective:

The Do’s

·         Grow your email list by using a sign-up form that requires the recipient to subscribe in order to receive your emails.

·         Segment your email list. You wouldn’t want to send every single email to everyone in your list. Segment the list based on the interest of the audience.

·         Personalizing the subject line of your email is important. Try including the recipient’s name in the subject line because it increases the “open rate” by an average of 23 percent.

·         Create an irresistible, clever and catchy subject line to grab the attention of your audience.

·         Include attention-getting pre-header text. Use it to highlight exclusive offers, prizes, or additional information about the campaign.

·         According to studies, about 56% of emails are opened on mobiles. Therefore, optimize your email for use on mobiles. Make sure to create buttons and links big enough to click. 

The Don’ts

·         Do not send any email without testing it. Send out a test email to make sure it looks good across desktops and mobiles. This can save you needless embarrassment after it’s sent to your whole database.

·         Do not stuff your email message with lots of links. Many people think that including lots of links helps boost engagement, but in reality it does not. Including too many links makes it difficult to navigate on a desktop and un-clickable on a mobile device.

·         Do not send out emails too frequently. People will get tired of your emails if they pop up everywhere in their inboxes without any apparent purpose.

·         Do not change your “from” name. Keep it consistent. It will help alleviate confusion among your readers and their email providers.

·         Do not buy an email list because it may negatively impact the standing of your domain. It is likely that the people in the email list don’t have any familiarity with your brand and have not asked for you to communicate with them. Therefore, there is a high probability that your email will get deleted.

·         Do not design your email with a big image because it may not display in your recipient’s email and the user may automatically delete without a second look.