Five Best Practice's of Email Marketing
The first example of best practice when using email marketing is having a good subject line. 33% of subscribers of subscribers decide whether or not to read your email based on the subject line alone (Campaign Monitor, 2015). The subject line should reflect the content of your email, be short and concise and be creative as this helps customers open your email. Ensuring your email copy is short and to the point is also an example of best practise. People generally like short, concise emails better than long ones because concise emails have an obvious focus (Lindsay Kolowich Cox, n.b). According to campaign monitor, consider using bullet points to keep everything organised. This makes it easier for the customer to read, navigate and understand the main purpose of your email. Every email should include a call-to-action (CTA) that their email content is focused around. According to Lindsay Kolowich Cox, the best practice for a CTA is to ask with clear language and emphasizing it with contrasting design elements. Adding alt text to your CTA image is also good practice. When you set an image’s alt text, though, you let recipients that can’t view images in their email to know exactly where to click to complete the action (Lindsay Kolowich Cox, n.b). When looking at email marketing, ensure you don’t purchase a contact list. Email campaigns depend on a healthy open rate, if you are contacting people who’s information your brought, rather than earned through previous interaction, you’ll quickly see your emails’ performance drop (Pamela Vaughan, n.b). Email marketing is primarily permission based, a customer must give a company permission prior to them sending information, opting-in to a newsletter or promotional email. There are two different types of opt-in available; Single opt-in or double opt-in. Double opt-in differs to single in the way that once a customer has signed up, their email address is verified in double opt-in but not on single opt-in. By verifying a subscribers email address, it enables you to maintain a good email reputation, keep your email list up to date and ensure your content is reaching your customers, potentially increasing your sales revenue. The final examples of best practice are using consistent company branding and personal greetings in your emails. Personalising the greeting of your emails with your contacts first names grabs the attention of the reader straight away (Pamela Vaighan, n.b) and are more likely to read the email compared to one addressed generically. Also, having consistent branding, colour schemes and fonts enables your email to be more recognisable to the customer and again, will be more likely to be read.
Common mistakes to avoid in email marketing include sending too many or too few emails. Inundating your audience with email after email leaves them annoyed and are more likely to unsubscribe. On the opposite end of the spectrum, too few emails leads to a lack brand recognition from your audience (Machielle Thomas, 2018). It is important to find the right balance to interact with customers effectively and ensure each email adds additional value to them. Other mistakes include not having a personal greeting or including poor grammar and spelling. According to Campaign Monitor, personalised emails have a 26% higher open rates, and over 14% click through rates compared to other non-personalised emails. Spelling and grammar must be checked continuously as it results in consequences such as not looking professional to the customer and not meeting your readers’ expectations, therefore losing their trust and custom, resulting in decrease in sales and decrease in revenue.
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