9 Reasons Your Emails Get Rejected

It’s email dating 101: there’s nothing worse than waking up, checking your email, and find that annoying email from last night – trying to get back into your inbox for a second round.

As with dating, a lot can go right in an email. The person you’re currently sharing your message with might just be the perfect customer for your brand. Your email might appeal to their needs and build a lifelong relationship. Or your recipient may discover that while you two have no chemistry, your product would be a perfect match for one of their friends.

But (also like dating) a lot can go wrong. If you’re striking out in your email campaigns, you’ve got to tweak your pitch. Here are nine reasons that marketing emails get rejected – any of these sound familiar?

1. Your subject lines made a bad first impression.

Your recipient’s experience with your email starts before it’s ever opened – with the subject line. A lot is riding on these 50 characters or less. Some classic subject line “don’ts” include boring copy, ALL CAPS, excessive exclamation points, and – of course – deceiving messages. The subject line “Warning” or “Re:” might earn you opens, but it won’t earn you customers.

What to do:  A/B test all your subject lines. Make sure they reflect your email’s intent.

2. You bored them to death.

Are your emails dry, long, and/or monotonous? Imagine that the recipient is looking for her shoes, her dog is barking to be let out, and she’s late for a meeting. She does not have a year to spend on decoding and analyzing your jargon. This is your chance. Don’t waste it.

What to do: Don’t be afraid of a little “edge,” a human touch, or even a fun, unusual inclusion. And don’t write a novel – the faster you get to your CTA (when you ask for a second date), the better.

3. You forgot to test your display.

You wouldn’t show up to a date in a stained shirt, or with toilet paper stuck to your shoe – which is why you check out your appearance before you arrive. Email is similar. Don’t show up in your buyer’s inbox without testing your display.

What to do: Before you send out an email, test it on all email clients – and don’t forget mobile.

4. You advertised a bigger, better, or cheaper version of yourself.

Don’t exaggerate your height in your online dating profile, and don’t make false promises in your emails. Are you a car dealership? Splendid – I’m in the market for a car! But don’t claim your deals are “once in a lifetime” if you’ll be holding the exact same sale next weekend.

What to do: You’re looking for a long-term relationship, not a one night stand. There’s no need to advertise your challenges, but if you highlight qualities you don’t really have, your customer will eventually find out.

5. You forgot his/her name.

During my worst date in college, the girl admitted she’d forgotten my name. She explained that she’d gone on a lot of dates recently, but the damage was done. Guys and girls, you need to personalize your emails – at the very least, don’t use the wrong name.

What to do: When you email your database, use first names if you’ve got them.  This is easy if your marketing automation allows you to use “tokens” in your emails.

6. You brought up money too soon.

Email is not the place to ask for a sale – it’s like asking your date to buy your dinner while you’re still eating appetizers. Many people read emails while they’re rushed, busy, or waiting in line for coffee, which is why an email is a great place to build relationships with your customers or to educate them on your product or deals. Don’t address your greed – address their needs.

What to do: Don’t mention pricing in your email. Mentioning a free trial or referral program is fine, but don’t overdo it.

7. You overshared. Again.

Your audience doesn’t need emails about how you’re remodeling your building, or how your company recently celebrated its fourteenth month in business. Save these kind of updates for your blog or social…or for a phone call with your mom.

What to do: Keep your emails about the reader. They should be interesting and entertaining to people who aren’t already 100% invested in your brand.

8. You came off as insecure.

Making fun of the competition just makes you look insecure. And if you’re saying this to customers of your competitor, it’s even worse – they hear, “Everything you own is terrible, and ours is better.”

What to do: Take the high road. If you are truly better than your competitors, the proof will be in the results.

 9. You didn’t listen.

Email marketing is about conversations. Don’t send multiple emails on a topic your audience isn't interested in; don’t send the same email twice; and – if you have the technology – don’t offer them content they’ve already viewed on your website or on social.

What To Do: Use marketing automation to listen and respond to your audience’s preferences and behaviors. Set up a subscription center. Run a survey. Listen.

Ok, supernova: you are now prepped and ready to make it past the spam filters, past your audience’s apprehensions, and into their hearts. Still wondering why your emails are getting rejected? Drop me a line in the comments below. 

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7 Email Etiquette Rules to Send By

 Etiquette doesn’t just apply to your table manners; it applies to email marketing too. These unwritten rules of the email world are worth reviewing. You don’t want to offend your customers by making an email faux pas, right? We didn’t think so.

Here are seven email etiquette rules that your small business should follow.

1. Always get permission

Just because someone handed you a business card doesn’t mean he or she wants to get emails from your business. You need permission from each and every customer you email. 

2. Make it easy to unsubscribe

Your customers should be able to easily unsubscribe to your emails. The CAN-SPAM laws require this option on every email you send. Don’t worry though, if you’re sending content that has value, your unsubscribe rate will remain low.

3. Make sure the content is error-free

Nothing stains your reputation faster than an email full of misspellings and grammatical errors, says Chas Hendricksen, a marketing analyst at technology company Benchmark Systems.

Your customers have high standards, so don’t let them down. Use spell check and proofread your email more than once. Remember, spell check won’t catch every error, so read carefully to make sure you haven’t mixed up words like “compliment” and “complement.”

4. Check and double check your links

You don’t want to send an email with broken links. Not only does that defeat the purpose of your email and potentially cost you sales, it also drops your credibility as a company.

“The entire point of an email campaign is to generate business,” Hendricksen says. “People want to be able to act instantly to your message. It is your job to provide them with a quick and easy way to do that.”

5. Send short and concise emails

Short, snappy emails help time crunched readers. Even if you’re sending out your company newsletter, you can offer “teaser” information with a link to the full newsletter. Take a look at the promotional email below. The retailer gets its point across with less than 40 words.

6. Your subject line should relate to the content

Don’t be deceptive with your subject lines. If your email is about an upcoming sale, say so in your subject line. You can get creative with your subject line, but don’t try to trick your customers into opening the email. Customers don’t respond well to it, and it’s against the CAN-SPAM law.

7. Keep it classy

You want to convey a professional image. To do that, don’t write in ALL CAPS, it looks like you’re shouting at your customers. Don’t go overboard with things like symbols and exclamation marks, either. It’s just not necessary.

At its core, etiquette is all about being polite. The same rule applies when you’re emailing. Be courteous and respectful of your customers and their time. Make sure your company is putting its most polite foot forward, and you’ll see success. Want more email marketing etiquette tips? Check out our infographic.

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7 Ways to Avoid an Email Blunder

Have you ever quickly sent off an email and were mortified to discover an error after you’d hit send? We’ve all been there and in order to avoid that awful feeling, we’ve created a handy list of seven ways to avoid an email blunder. Here’s what to do before you hit send.

1. Get permission

If you’re sending an email with say, customer quotes, or a newsletter in which you’re writing about another person, have you gotten their permission first? Business relationships take work to build and maintain, and the loss of trust from sharing what was supposed to be a private story publicly without permission can be difficult to rebuild. Play it safe by asking first; there may be factors at play of which you are unaware.

2. Make sure your images are legal to use

Just because you have attribution and a backlink to a site where you’ve obtained an image doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. Unless you have permission to use an image, you could risk a fine or have your site shut down. Wikimedia Commons and morgueFile provide copyright-free images you can use in your blog posts and online articles. iStock Photo will sell them to you at a reasonable fee. If you’ve got a bit of a budget, you can get a subscription to ThinkStock, Getty Images or other similar services.

3. Double-check your hyperlinks

It’s easy to go in and fix a broken hyperlink in a blog post, but after you’ve hit send on an email, it’s often too late. Make sure to double-check all of your hyperlinks to ensure they work properly. Doing this as close to your send time as possible is preferable, so that you’re not linking to a YouTube video that’s already been privatized or removed due to copyright infringement.

4. Check your font and font size

Accidentally cutting and pasting from various sources sometimes leads to mismatched text. In general, it’s a good idea to type into a text editor rather than, say, a Word document, which sometimes adds unnecessary formatting. In any case, double-check your font and font size, and even font color, to make sure everything is consistent before hitting send.

5. Check for typos

News flash: It’s not easy proofreading your own writing, but there are a few strategies that can help. One involves taking some time away from the email or newsletter so that you’re a little more detached when viewing. Or, try reading your entire email out loud. This will help you find errors you may have missed. If you’ve got a co-worker with a good eye, ask them to proofread your message. Getting an extra set of eyes is priceless for avoiding unnecessary errors. And fortunately, there are multiple tools online that can help you with your proofreading efforts with a human eye (which is more effective than spellcheck). If you use the collaborative software program Draft to compose your messages, you can pay a small fee to have your work proofread under a strict NDA. Revision Fairy is another option.

6. Check your subject line

We’e discussed the importance of having a compelling, clickable subject line, but length is important, too. If your readers are checking their email on the way to work, or taking a quick glance at their smartphones on the way to a meeting, they’re not going to see your entire subject line unless you keep it short. If possible, stick to 30 characters or less. When you can’t do that, make sure that the first 30 characters make sense even when your subscribers can’t see the rest.

7. When scheduling an email, check your AMs and PMs

It’s always good to test various times of days to send your email, but make sure you’re doing it deliberately. Double-check your AMs and PMs when you’re scheduling your email, so you’re not inadvertently sending something at 2 in the morning when you were hoping to catch your readers in the early afternoon. Also be considerate of your time zone. If you’re sending an email at 5 pm Pacific time, your east coast friends may not engage with it like you want them to. 

Have any other things you like to check and double check before you hit send? Share with us.

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5 Easy Tricks to Help You Write Catchy Headlines

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. 
—David Ogilvy

In a world full of noise, how do you get people to actually read what you write? It takes more than good content or great design. The most important part of writing an article is the headline.

The same principle applies to blog posts, book chapters, and so on: The title is where your focus should be. You should begin and end every article with the question: “Would this make me want to read on?”
If not, don’t publish until you’ve got a catchy headline. Concentrate on this, and you’ll get more readers, more buzz, and more love.

How to write catchy headlines

Too often the headline is the most neglected part of writing an article. People just gloss over it without taking much time to consider it. In their minds, it’s the cherry on top. No, friends; it’s not. The headline is the sundae.
I sometimes deliberate over titles for 30–60 minutes before settling on one that works. And I often go back and change them. This is what it takes to write a good headline.
If you need some help concocting catchier headlines, here are a few simple tricks (you can also watch me walk you through this in the free video and checklist.that accompanies this post).

Use numbers

There’s a reason why so many copywriters use numbers in their headlines. It works.
Do an experiment: Go to the grocery store, and scan the magazines in the checkout lane. Look at the front-page article headlines. It doesn’t matter if it’s a fitness magazine or a tabloid; many of them will be using numerals to start off the headline.
There aren’t really any rules (as far as I know) regarding what numbers work best, but people typically only remember three to five points. That said, sometimes a really obscure number like 19 or 37 can catch people’s attention.

Use interesting adjectives

Here are some examples:

• Effortless
• Painstaking
• Fun
• Free
• Incredible
• Essential
• Absolute
• Strange

Use unique rationale

If you’re going to do a list post, be original. For example consider the following:

• Reasons
• Principles
• Facts
• Lessons
• Ideas
• Ways
• Secrets
• Tricks

If possible, never use things. Please, for the love of Pete, don’t use things. You can do better than that.

Use what, why, how, or when

These are trigger words. I typically use “why” and “how” the most, because I’m often trying to persuade or enable someone. Typically, you’ll use either a trigger word or a number. Rarely does it sound good to do both.

Make an audacious promise

Promise your reader something valuable. Will you teach her how to learn a new skill? Will you persuade her to do something she’s never done before? Will you unlock an ancient mystery?
What you want to do is dare your reader to read the article. Without over-promising, be bold. Be seductive (in the most innocuous way possible, of course). Be dangerous. And then deliver what you promised.

Try this formula

Here’s a simple headline-writing formula:
Number or Trigger word + Adjective + Keyword + Promise
Example: Take the subject “bathing elephants.” You could write an article entitled, “How to Bath an Elephant” or “Why I Love Bathing Elephants.”
Or you could apply this formula and make it: “18 Unbelievable Ways You Can Bathe an Elephant Indoors”
Another (more serious) example: Take a bold promise like “selling your house in a day.”
Apply the formula and you get: “How You Can Effortlessly Sell Your Home in Less than 24 Hours”
People don’t want to be tricked into reading something boring; they want to be drawn into something exciting. Make it worth their while.
Take extra long time to consider what headline will grab people’s attention the most, and make sure that it describes your content in an honest, but attractive, way. They won’t regret it, and neither will you.
You can go grab the downloadable checklist that accompanies this blog post right here.

What tricks for writing catchy headlines do you use? Share in the comments.



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Email Marketing Promotions Gone Wrong

 When Groupon celebrated their fifth birthday, they sent out an email marketing promotion to their subscribers. Here’s what they did right, wrong and what you can learn from it:

What They Did Right

Groupon did a lot of things right. They used email to reach out to their opted in subscriber base and they used a compelling subject line with a limited time offer “We’re Giving Out $5,000,000 in Groupon Bucks Today.” Plus, there was a sense of mystery–you had to log in to see if you scored bucks.

What They Did Wrong

But here’s where things went awry… when the recipient clicked the call-to-action button with great anticipation of scoring bucks, many were met with a lackluster response to the effect of, “You didn’t score.” Not very encouraging or friendly.

While you can’t expect everyone to win, Groupon ended up annoying some pretty loyal customers with this promotion. A few of my team members expressed the sentiment of “Couldn’t they have at least given me a dollar?” Their thought was, if they had gotten something/anything, they would have felt better about making a purchase vs. getting nothing after spending a lot of dough with Groupon.

What You Can Learn From It

If your company does promotions, take a lesson from Uber. They totally nailed it in their National Cat Day promotion. You can also structure your promotions in a way where everyone feels valued, from your existing customers to new prospects you’re trying to get in the door. By offering a variety of offers all the way through the funnel, you’ll make sure you get customers and keep them.

For example, at VerticalResponse, we wanted to reactivate some customers who hadn’t sent any email in a few months. So we sent an email letting them know we were giving away 10 million email credits and had made a mystery deposit in their accounts. We made sure everyone on the list received credits as an incentive to log in and send some emails on us. And, the likelihood that they’ll buy more credits and send more email out went up exponentially. Plus, they got an unexpected surprise. A win-win.

How do your promotions serve your business and your customers? Share in the comments.

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5 Ways to Help Your Customers Fall In Love with Your Business

Valentine’s Day. Some people love it, and others not so much. But regardless of how you feel on a personal level, it’s a great opportunity to use email marketing to let your customers know you appreciate them. In addition, there’s some lovable tactics you can use all year long to keep top of mind with your customers.

5 ways to help your customers fall in love with your business:

1. Ask their opinion (and use it!): We hear a lot about engaging customers by asking for testimonials, reviews, and survey responses. If you have a good relationship with your customers, they’ll likely give you what you’re asking for, especially if you’re offering a nice incentive like free shipping or a discount on their next order. But once you get this info, what do you do with it? How about putting it in an email and use it to sell more! I received a fun Valentine’s Day email with the subject line: Customers Kiss and Tell their Favorites! This is a great idea because people buy from people.

2. Communicate Clearly: Another Valentine’s Day email I received had a subject line that wasn’t quite as good (imo): Go South for VD – Fares from $9 Each Way. The discount on airfares is great, but they should have thought twice about using the acronym VD. And it wasn’t clear that the email was about Valentine’s Day until it was opened. It’s better to cut to the chase and say what you mean in the subject line, rather than playing with double-entendres that have possible “ick-factors.”

3. Get Personal: Using personalization such as first name or company name can make your customers feel special and unique. This is something you can test in your subject line or the body of your email. But be careful to make sure your information is accurate since no one likes being called the wrong name!

4. Use Flattery: I received an email from a make-up company a while back that said, “You’ve got a fabulous flair for beauty.” They were engaging their customers and asking for product reviews. And you know what? Flattery got them everywhere. Their compliment made me feel great and I wrote a glowing review for them.

5. Give Breathing Room: According to “The Social Break-Up,” the number one reason people unsubscribe from opt-in emails is over-mailing. It’s best not to smother your email recipients. Instead, monitor unsubscribe rates and find a frequency that works well for your business.

What tactics do you use that keep your customers falling for you all year long?

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Why It’s Time To Say Goodbye To “The Fold” In Email Marketing

Before the rise of the Internet and everything mobile (now up to 56% of opens in September), the news used to take time. We’d have our coffee and read the paper page by page. And we knew exactly what to focus on: what was above the fold. That’s where the biggest stories broke each day. If you weren’t sure you wanted to buy the paper, what was above the fold would also serve to entice you to buy, since most newsstands displayed them like so:

Source: New York Times

Now, the news is instant and 24/7, sometimes in as few as 140 characters. Even though the sight of an actual newspaper may be foreign to many cellphone-happy millennials, the term “the fold” has stuck around. For email and web design alike, “above the fold,” is still used to indicate relative importance—and also acknowledges the shrinking attention spans of readers today.

For email marketers, the fold has been a longstanding concern, whether that’s trying to optimize emails to render correctly in Outlook’s preview pane or for newer preview functionality like that in Inbox by Gmail. Marketers know they only have a short amount of time to grab the reader, which made “the fold” a clear demarcating line.

Because of widespread belief that attention spans have shortened and that people don’t read, marketers became obsessed with cramming their important information and CTA above the fold. But scrolling is actually easier than clicking, and subscribers come to expect it. While you can still lead with your most important content, you no longer have to. We’re here to debunk once and for all the idea of “the fold” in email.

SAY GOODBYE TO THE FOLD, HELLO TO “THE SCROLL”

According to Alex Williams, VP & Creative Director at Trendline (and a speaker at Litmus Live in 2016), mobile also has a fold: it’s called the “scroll.”

What does this mean?

Above the scroll means that you have to entice your reader to scroll down—show them why they should read your email in its entirety—by providing compelling and memorable content up top. The goal is to set expectations that your content will be relevant and interesting all the way down the email, and to be memorable right away, thus initiating the scroll.

See the full email on Litmus Scope.

In the above example from one of my favorite daily newsletters, theSkimm, you can see they don’t lead with the most important piece of information (well, #Hiddleswift was kind of a big deal). Instead, they break each section of the email into sections, just like a newspaper.

SUBSCRIBERS THAT DIDN’T CLICK ON YOUR HERO IMAGE, BUT ARE STILL SCROLLING, ARE BIG OPPORTUNITIES. —ALEX WILLIAMS

Because the information is relevant and easy to understand, they’re counting on subscribers scrolling all the way to the bottom, rather than clicking on the first piece of content without reading anything else.

USE THE ENVELOPE TO TEASE YOUR CONTENT

Back in the days of print marketing, the envelope was key to that first step in subscriber engagement: the open. Known as the Johnson Box, this gave mail recipients a window into your mail offer. Designed to draw the reader’s attention to the key message, it also served as a way to entice readers to open the letter—just like the subject line and preheader text in email today.

Regardless of the type of email you’re sending, initiating a scroll starts as early as the envelope in your email’s subject line and preheader text. Experiment with teasing an article in your subject line or preheader text that isn’t found until lower in the email. This can build up anticipation to get to the reason the subscriber opened the email in the first place.

See the full email on Litmus Scope.

In this example from TrackMaven’s newsletter, the content from the subject line (“35 Top Twitter Chats,”) isn’t shown until below the fold. Instead, they lead with top news stories from the past week. The top content is still relevant (and since they include it in every newsletter, expected), but to get to the content teased in the subject line, you need to scroll.

DIFFERENT EMAILS, DIFFERENT GOALS

However, this doesn’t mean “the fold” is completely useless. As with most things in email, the answer is: “it depends.”

When it comes to promotional email, marketers tend to send out three different categories, which relates to the three main areas of the marketing funnel:

• Awareness emails can take a variety of forms, but in general, they introduce the subscriber to something new, such as a blog post or infographic. The goal of these emails isn’t necessarily to sign up or buy your product but to increase familiarity and encourage people to visit your website. They may already be aware of your company (after all, they did give you an email address), but not everything about what you do or what you stand for. Awareness emails are about content consumption, which is a one-way interaction.
• Engagement emails build that 1:1 relationship with the subscriber, sometimes with personalization, recommendations, or an ask for feedback. This could take the form of a welcome email, survey request, sales outreach, gated ebook, or an email like our TEDC ‘16 tickets on sale email that encouraged folks to interact with with the email more deeply. Engagement emails ask for more than reading a piece of content. They’re about building a relationship, which requires two-way interaction.
• Conversion emails focus on completing a sale or purchase. This may be advertising a promotion, re-engaging the list, or asking for signups for a webinar. The ask and goal of the email is clear.

(Want to brush up on your definition of conversion? This article talks through exactly what it means.)

Each type of email requires a different mindset because you’re asking for a different level of commitment on the part of the subscriber. When you set your goals for your campaigns, enticing the scroll makes sense for some categories but not for others.

AWARENESS EMAILS

Awareness emails buy time, rather than buy clicks. How can you get your subscriber to keep reading for two more seconds, and then two more after that? The more they read or see, the higher the chance there is of something happening. Make your awareness emails creative, interesting, and above all, incomplete.

That doesn’t mean leaving the subscriber completely hanging or not finishing a sentence. It means keeping the curiosity gap high at all points in an email, so that they’re constantly wondering, “What’s next?” and satisfying them at each scroll.

See the full email on Litmus Scope.

The copy at the top of the email makes it super clear that the subscriber needs to scroll to see more winter coat options. Boom. Curiosity gap.

See the full email on Litmus Scope.

This product update from Trello doesn’t shy away from showing multiple pieces of news or completely different calls-to-action. The idea is to make people aware of new features, not sell them (though some of those features might require a plan upgrade).

See the full email on Litmus Scope.

This email doesn’t have a sale or promotion until the very bottom. Instead, the focus is on re-engagement and awareness—hey, here’s what you might be missing!

ENGAGEMENT EMAILS

Engagement emails start the conversation with your subscribers in a deeper way than awareness or conversion. They’re to be used sparingly, as they can be incredibly powerful.

To promote Litmus Live 2016, we decided to gamify our email to build excitement, increase engagement, and have a little fun. To reveal our third city, users sent in guesses via Twitter, which then populated a dynamic Twitter “collage” at the bottom of the email itself. We expected it to take 3-4 hours to get 500 shares using the hashtag #TEDC16. (Read why our new hashtag is #LitmusLive here, short version: politics.)

We were blown away 90 minutes later when we hit the mark! Our audience relished the opportunity to engage with us. The entire email worked together to reveal the city and encouraged subscribers to open the email again and again for updates. This completely flips the idea of a “fold” on its head, since our subscribers checked the email continuously to see new Twitter feed updates.

CONVERSION EMAILS

Conversion emails are usually short and to the point, with one ask, so it’s completely clear to the subscriber what action you want them to take. It might be a sales promotion, but it might not. Whether you’re focusing on buying a product or encouraging them to read an article, conversion emails focus on getting the click.

Because of their direct nature, conversion emails often benefit from having the CTA above the scroll to close the deal. It’s fine to include more options after the “scroll,” but those should be more opportunities for them to learn about that same one objective.

See the full email on Litmus Scope

In this example, General Assembly is clear about what action the reader should take: request a syllabus to learn more about their digital marketing class. The objective is clear, to the point, and there’s no need to scroll—you can’t miss that big red button.

See the full email on Litmus Scope.

This email is a great example of how to focus on exactly what you want your subscriber to do in the top section of your email, but still, include information below for those who do want to scroll. It’s clear what action they want you to take.

DON’T DESIGN EMAILS IN A VACUUM

REMEMBER, YOUR MOST IMPORTANT JOB AS AN EMAIL DESIGNER IS TO GET THEM TO OPEN THE NEXT ONE. —ALEX WILLIAMS

When you design emails, you have to think about the overall subscriber journey. Each email isn’t independent—every awareness email you send can ultimately contribute to that purchase when a subscriber does receive a conversion email.

The most important thing to remember about the scroll? Set up expectations as a brand that provides compelling enough content that subscribers will want to scroll—and keep scrolling.

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12 Tips for Christmas Email Marketing Campaigns

 Christmas is well and truly just around the corner. Take a look at our 12 Christmas email marketing top tips to help you build and send fetching, festive email campaigns.

Analyse

Take the time to view and analyse past email marketing campaigns to see what worked well and what didn’t. Once you have acquired this knowledge you can plan your future festive campaigns to give them the best chance of getting good engagement rates.

Research

Spend a bit of time researching what’s hot and what’s not in your industry and check out the competition to see what they have up their sleeves. Try and incorporate these trends into your email marketing to show that you are also on trend.

Set A Goal

Whether it’s to get 20% more opens or 30 more clicks than last year, it’s good to set a goal as it gives you something to work towards. This way you can also aim towards improving results and statistics which always goes down well!

Plan

The old saying ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’ is something to abide by here. Without having a plan of action for your email marketing it’s bound to not do as well as it could. Take a bit of time to sit down and think about individual emails and overall email campaigns. Look out for key dates and content that can be included to target specific audience members.

Punchy Subject Lines

As potentially the most important part of an email, your subject line needs to be powerful and punchy to encourage the recipient to read on. The best subject lines create excitement, urgency and curiosity. This can be done using personalisation or even emojis! Just be sure to keep them short and snappy.

Engaging Content

Probably one of the most important elements of an email – the content. Create engaging content by including clear images, gifs and easy to ready text.

Mobile Optimised

The festive period is a busy time, people are out and about on the move so you want to be able to target them whenever and wherever they are. Do this by ensuring your emails are optimised for mobile. Up to 75% of emails are opened on mobiles or tablets so it’s crucial that you make them compatible with mobile viewing!

Clear CTA’s

Call to actions are essential, they catch the readers eye and give them direction/instruction. Whether this be ‘BUY NOW’, ‘SEE MORE’ or ‘SHOP’ make sure they are direct enough to encourage recipients to click through to your website.

Test

Before any campaign is sent it’s imperative to carry out the necessary tests and checks. This includes making sure your email looks correct across multiple platforms, any spelling mistakes, images load properly, link errors, plus split and multivariate testing. For peace of mind, it’s always handy to have someone else take a glance as a fresh pair of eyes may notice things you haven’t spotted!

Dynamic Content

Some of your subscribers will be previous customers and you will have details of their last purchases. Use this to your advantage and tailor emails using dynamic content to include products relevant to recipients. This way you will have a much better chance of engaging them and potentially making another purchase.

Automation

Automation is crucial for email marketing these days. It allows you to set up multiple workflows for customer journeys including welcome programmes, nurture programmes, basket abandonment programmes, loyalty scheme programmes and many more!
Find out more about our visual marketing automation system, Maxautomation.

Review

Once an email campaign has been sent don’t just forget about it! Use this time to review and analyse how the campaign did. Without tracking and analysing results how will you know if they have been a success or not? Take the time after each campaign to look at delivery rates, open rates, click through rates and conversion rates.



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