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Back to Basics: 5 Things to Consider with Email Marketing

Two things to be considered with Email Marketing will be mentioned here and the other 3 things will be mentioned in the next article.

Before deep diving into a strategy to integrate social media into your email marketing, you must first ensure that you are implementing general best practices into your email marketing. Social integration isn’t going to boost your email results if your email campaigns are ineffective or poorly written and designed. So let’s go back to basics for a moment and discuss some general email marketing guidelines.

1. Start with a Clean Database

A clean and complete database of contacts is the cornerstone to your overall email marketing success. The same way telemarketing wore out its welcome, so has unsolicited email marketing. Therefore, the best way to ensure that you collect quality information is to obtain it with permission directly from the contact. This is why permission-based email marketing offers better response rates, increased trust in your company’s brand and better deliverability.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself as You Are Building Your Subscription List 1. Am I collecting contact information at every customer touchpoint? 2. Am I asking for permission as well as contact information? 3. Am I clearly describing my email frequency and content? 4. Am I sending a welcome email or a confirmation email when people subscribe? 5. Am I using permission and subscription reminders to stay current?

Building your database can be done by simply asking for it. Every communication or touchpoint with your prospects and customers should start and end with a request for an email address. Build your subscription list wherever you connect with people, whether it is through service or sales calls, events and meetings, day-to-day emails, an in-store guest book or your website and company blog.

According to a study by Transact Media Group, 57% of those surveyed will fill out a card to receive email alerts when asked to. Since email has become a very popular form of communication, asking for a person’s email address is less invasive than asking for their phone number.

Be sure to determine the effectiveness of each technique by evaluating the following:

• Visibility: How prominent does your sign-up invitation appear on your website, landing pages or other forms of communication?
• Transparency: Does your opt-in process appear professional and trustworthy? Do you give users the option to select the subscribe checkbox or is it pre-checked already?
• Flexibility: Do you allow your subscribers to choose the type of content they would like to receive as well as select their preferred frequency and format?
• Continuity: Do you send new subscribers a personal welcome message after they subscribe?

Try subscribing to your own email database and this will shed light on some areas that could be improved in your opt-in / subscription process.

2. Keep it Personal

The trick to keeping your email personal to make your readers believe you are writing to them and only them. You accomplish this by personalizing your messages to include information that is unique to your readers. Emails that open with “Dear Friend” or “Dear Customer” tell the reader that your company is too important to offer a personal connection with customers. Greeting your readers with “Hi John” rather than “Dear Customer” goes a long way.

To do this, you will need to ensure that your database’s first and last names are in separate columns in your email list. When you upload your newsletter into your email marketing system, you would need to plug in the appropriate field in order for the system to pull the correct name field automatically.

Steer clear of including the recipient’s name in the subject line otherwise your email might look “spammy”. You likely wouldn’t write an email to your family, friends or business colleagues with their name directly in the subject line, so keep personalization for the greeting in the body of the message.

It also helps that your email comes from a person in your company, rather than your company as a whole. There is an added sense of comfort that comes from knowing there is a person behind the keyboard. So try signing off your emails with a personal name, business title and direct contact information. You can also include a graphic of the sender’s signature as well as a small photograph to establish increased personalization. Personalization allows you to connect with the reader and improves response rates dramatically.